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Will Golden Hill Residents Have to Pay for Their Now-Defunct Maintenance Assessment District?
I have lived in South Park since 1997 and have participated in many efforts to clean it up. As a homeowner, I voted for the MAD and was thrilled when it passed. To those who say that it was only paid for by the homeowners, you are mistaken. The business owners paid a much higher annual assesment than the homeowners did-- and rightly so, because most of the trash is generated in the business corridors and lessens as one moves further away from those areas. And for those of you who say you have not benefitted-- I hope you enjoy seeing the trash pile up on our streets now that the trash cans will not be emptied. In fact, the trash cans are now slated to all be removed by the city, because the city will not emptly them. You folks won't realize what you had until it's gone... For the years the MAD has been in operation, I have been thrilled to see them often emptying cans, sweeping streets, and dragging couches and old tires out of our canyons and hauling them away. I live off the beaten track, over on 32nd street, and I have seen them working around here fairly regularly. Once I had a tree branch that needed trimming. I called them up and they were there WITHIN THE HOUR pruning the branch. A couple of years after the MAD passed, I opened a business in South Park. Now you will see many of us business owners emptying these cans until they are removed. Those of us who live and work in South Park are proud of our neighbhorhood and like to keep it looking nice, but I don't know how well a few little shop owners like me (who generate no street trash) can keep up with trash generated by all the groceries, liquor stores, and food vendors around, who generate drink containers, cigarette butts, candy wrappers, etc. Anyone who's lived in this neighborhood 15 years or more and been involved with trying to improve it knows how far we have come-- this is a really sad situation. : (— March 31, 2012 1 p.m.