Enhance La Jolla to increase its weekend trash pickup

To spruce up The Village as summer approaches and more and more people start to return, Enhance La Jolla voted April 15 to increase its weekend trash pickup. The more frequent cleanups would be in effect May 1 to Sept. 26, at which point they will be re-evaluated.

Enhance La Jolla administers the Maintenance Assessment District with authority to enhance city-provided services, including landscape maintenance, street and sidewalk cleaning, litter and graffiti abatement and additional trash collection, and to privately fund and complete capital improvement projects in public spaces, such as upgraded trash cans, bench installation, sign augmentation, park improvements, more public art and tree canopies on main thoroughfares.

Enhance La Jolla’s landscaping vendor, Nissho of California, currently deploys one person to pick up trash on weekends.

“It seems to me The Village is busier than it’s been in well over a year,” said Enhance La Jolla President Ed Witt. “There are people walking around and there are more people around. We have noticed there has been more trash, and we are having a hard time keeping up on weekends. We do all this work Monday through Friday and then Saturday comes along and I feel a slippage. It’s been OK through COVID, but I think we can try [the increase] through the summer.”

He posed bringing on an additional worker to pick up trash to the tune of $2,300 a month. “We have the money to cover it,” Witt said.

Trustee Andy Nelson said that “when we have a lot of people coming into The Village who are not residents and they see how clean and nice it is, they will want to come back.”

A motion to add the weekend worker for trash pickup passed unanimously.

Other Enhance La Jolla news

Newspaper rack cleanup: Trustee Ann Dynes said she was continuing her work to inventory news racks in The Village and had written letters to media companies that have excessive racks or racks in poor condition.

In 2020, in partnership with a volunteer crew from La Jolla Golf Carts, Enhance La Jolla removed and disposed of 26 abandoned newsstands from La Jolla’s sidewalks. The end goal is to move news racks into corrals in groups of six so they could be maintained more easily.

“The regulations as to where these can be located are quite detailed, such as how close they can be to an intersection or to a handicapped parking space,” Dynes said. “If we identify any violations of the newspaper racks, we can report it.”

“We are looking at how to responsibly and carefully address the number [of racks]. There are 70 or 80 in about 12 blocks,” she added. “We can have a conversation with almost all these operators because there is either an unnecessary frequency of location or they are really ugly and could be replaced.”

Dynes drafted a letter to the operators to make a change based on concern about frequency, condition or both. A motion to approve the inventory in concept and write a letter to offending operators passed unanimously.

Several tree wells like this one on Girard Avenue were refreshed with new rocks and plants (some plants were there previously) during Enhance La Jolla Day on March 20.

(Elisabeth Frausto)

Tree well rocks: After about 50 volunteers from local community advisory groups placed new plants and rocks in tree wells on the east side of Girard Avenue and along Wall Street during the inaugural Enhance La Jolla Day on March 20, the board voted to continue the effort on other streets.

The day was “enlightening,” said Witt, who added that he was proud to bring all the groups together. “I’m not aware of that ever happening before in La Jolla,” he said.

The board formed a committee to organize next year’s event. “It has a lot of energy behind it that we can use going forward,” he said.

Enhance La Jolla meets quarterly. The next meeting date has not been announced. Learn more at enhancelajolla.org. ◆