I had an idea to increase our law enforcement. I have seen where groups of businesses, neighborhoods, or others made special assessment districts. They have been used to improve business areas, and create and maintain landscape areas. I generally do not volunteer for taxes, mostly because they do not seem to be used very well. In working with the newsletter delivery, I realized that we have over 1200 households in RP. If we created a special assessment district for as little as $100 each year, we could pay for an extra officer for RP. The tax would be collected as part of our property tax.

This is just a brainstorm at this point for which I have only made a few inquiries into. The $120,000 I am told would be enough to pay for the training of the officer through the academy. We would have to propose the assessment and pass it by 2/3 of the owners?’. I have not done a lot of research on special assessment districts, so if anyone knows about them please tell me if I have this correct. I would want to see that we do not pay for our existing officers, just to have the funds that were used go to another area. If we are to pay directly then I?’d like to see it go directly to benefit us by an increase in officers. What do you think? Am I nuts or have I had a great idea? Have I missed some critical points that would keep this from working? Do you have any suggestions? This is how we can together to do what we cannot do alone; and hence, why we formed this group.

Not sure City would do it.

I'm not sure if the City would get into this due to the issue of more affluant neighborhoods having more police protection than poorer neighborhoods. I seem to recall the police department having to prove in the past that they weren't giving La Jolla a faster response time than other communities. I'm certainly all for it if we can do it. And it is certainly worth asking about.