Health & Fitness
La Mesa’s Centennial—Not Ready for its Close-Up! Cleanup Request Planned
At Tuesday's Parking Commission meeting, I will make a motion to add to next month's agenda discussion of allocating meter money toward a centennial cleanup of the Village.
La Mesa turns 100 this year. This once-in-a-lifetime event will bring hundreds if not thousands of visitors to our city in 2012. Sadly, La Mesa Village, the historic symbol of all La Mesa, will not boast clean sidewalks, unlittered streets or beautiful flowers in our large planters.
The blame is not lack of funds since money, raised via parking meters to “improve” La Mesa Village, is ample. The Downtown Parking Fund has a balance of approximately $800,000. Setting aside $600,000 for reserves, the fund still has close to $200,000.
As a La Mesa Village homeowner, La Mesa Village Realtor, La Mesa Village retail space renter, La Mesa Village Parking Commissioner and board member of the La Mesa Village Merchants Association, I took it on myself to research costs for a simple but effective clean up of downtown La Mesa.
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- An additional once-a-week street sweeping: $300. Annual cost: $15,600.
- Power washing the sidewalks: $3000 per quarter. Annual cost: $12,000.
- Flowers in the planters + planter cleaning (removal of dead/dying plants, cigarette butts & trash): Annual cost: $5,000.
- Total cost of cleaning the Village for our year-long Centennial: approximately $32,000. Even rounding up to $40,000, this amount represents only 15% of parking meter money collected yearly and only 5% of the current balance of the Downtown Parking Fund.
My suggestion of allocating a small portion of parking meter money to spruce up the Village for our Centennial is separate from the PBID currently being considered as a means to improve the Village. Whether the PBID passes or not, it cannot pass or be implemented in time for our Centennial.
Allocating parking meter money for the Centennial Village Cleanup would be an interim measure to avoid looking shabby for the numerous crowd-drawing events taking place downtown this year.
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Tonight, at the parking commission meeting held at City Council Chambers, 5:30-6:30, I will make a motion to add to next month’s agenda, discussion of allocating meter money toward a centennial cleanup of the Village.
I hope at least one of the Commissioners — Wieboldt, McRea, Gillespie and/or Franklin — sees the merit of a fresh and pretty Village for our 100th birthday using already collected Village parking meter money and seconds the motion.
