Most Cities Are Taking Prop. 218 in Stride

With a Tuesday deadline looming, officials across Ventura County are huddling with consultants and staff lawyers, polling property owners and plugging budgetary leaks to comply with California’s latest anti-tax salvo.

Spurred by Proposition 218, city leaders from Simi Valley to Ventura and Moorpark to Ojai are taking a close look at an obscure device used to raise money for street repairs, parks, lighting and landscaping--the special assessment district.

Their conclusions? Although one city is holding a special election and others have lost some revenue, it could be a whole lot worse.

Simply put, Proposition 218 grants residents a right, under the state Constitution, to vote on all manner of taxes, fees and little-known assessments.

General taxes must be approved by a simple majority. Special taxes, which benefit a specific neighborhood or district, must pass by a two-thirds vote. And property owners must decide the fate of fees and assessments.

While leaders in Los Angeles County scrambled to successfully pass special taxes for libraries and fire services, local officials are comparatively sanguine about the change. With some noticeable exceptions.

“For whatever reason, there just hasn’t been the trend toward using [assessment districts] in Ventura County as elsewhere,” said Don Webber, an associate director of MuniFinancial, a consulting firm that helped Fillmore and dozens of other cities comply with the new law.

But all is not rosy.

Proposition 218 threatens to cut as much as $1.3 million in assessment district revenue from Moorpark’s coffers. And it may mean higher water and sewer rates for low-income senior citizens in Camarillo, where rates have been kept low by charging more affluent users higher fees. Within the year, many cities with landscaping and lighting districts will have to make a decision--scotch them, ask voters to preserve them, or fork over reserve money to keep the services afloat.

Such levies, which previously popped up on tax bills with little notice, are now subject to public vote. Anyone who would pay the fee gets a say. If voters reject an assessment, the service would be cut off unless the city dips into its coffers.

Beyond that, there must be a fair relationship between the fee paid and the service received. Voting clout is weighted accordingly.

So, if the oleander and greenery of a landscaping assessment district benefits the house on the corner twice as much it beautifies your house, your fees should be half of your neighbor’s. When the time comes to approve or reject the assessment, your neighbor’s vote counts double your own. Renters don’t get to vote on assessments at all.

“There’s more voter participation,” said Proposition 218 specialist Betsy Strauss, special counsel to the League of California Cities.

And under the auspices of the initiative, all assessments are not alike.

Existing assessments for sidewalks, streets, sewers, water, flood control, debt repayment, and mosquito and medfly abatement are secure indefinitely, or at least until a fee hike is proposed. Starting Tuesday, other existing or new assessments--for landscaping, parks, libraries, fire control and paramedic services--must meet voter approval immediately.

In advance of that deadline, most Ventura County cities have approved their lighting and landscaping districts for the next fiscal year. That gives officials a year to sort out the details of the initiative.

But the practice of councils approving a one-year continuance of existing assessments--without consulting voters--is the subject of debate. The issue hinges on whether the Tuesday deadline applies to any existing assessments collected after that date or just to assessments “adopted” after that time.

“Some agencies have taken a safe approach, saying, ‘The voters of my city passed Proposition 218 because they wanted to vote on assessments, and we want to put those assessments before them now,’ ” said Mike Bannan, also of MuniFinancial. “Others are saying that the reasonable thing is to approve them next year.”

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Supporters of the new law may sue to challenge some of the districts. Come Tuesday, expect some litigation that will clarify the issue, said Joel Fox, president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn., which sponsored Proposition 218.

“At this point, we don’t know who’s complying and who’s not--who’s been naughty and who’s been nice, so to speak,” he said. “We’re not going to sue everyone. We can’t. But we’d like to see some precedents.”

Across the county, the effects of Proposition 218 vary city by city, assessment district by assessment district:

* Perhaps hardest hit is Moorpark, the county’s youngest city.

Two special assessment districts--one for parks and another for lighting and landscaping--make up about 18% of Moorpark’s $5.7-million operating budget.

To recoup $607,000 of what Moorpark city leaders say could be lost because of Proposition 218, the City Council decided to take the case for parks to the voters.

In November, voters will be asked to put a dollar amount on their love of green space, jungle gyms and reasonable Little League fees by approving a special parks tax.

“It’s a very critical issue for the future of this city,” said Deputy City Manager Richard Hare. “Frankly, Prop. 218 is going to put the quality of life in Moorpark at risk.”

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If voters reject the special tax, “choices are going to have to be made to keep parks open at the risk of police services and other vital services,” he said. “These are choices we don’t want to have to make.”

* So far, low-income seniors seem to be the only ones in Camarillo experiencing consequences of the statewide tax-cutting measure.

They may soon be paying up to twice as much for monthly water and sewer bills because Proposition 218 prohibits cities from charging higher utility rates to customers in order to subsidize the service for low-income senior citizens, City Atty. Robert Flandrick said.

The Camarillo City Council will decide after a public hearing Monday whether to discontinue the reduced rates, which have been in effect since 1977. But leaders are looking into ways to keep the rates low for seniors.

* With only two assessment districts to look after, Ventura is in good shape, said City Atty. Bob Boehm.

“I would not say we are in any dire straights by virtue of Prop. 218,” he said.

The city’s assessment districts provide street lighting and pay for dredging the canals that carve through the affluent Ventura Keys community. Ventura’s City Council will peruse the street lighting assessment district within two weeks, to make sure it doesn’t run afoul of the tax-cutting initiative.

The initiative has also put an end to one of the most bitterly disputed tax assessments in Ventura history--the Porto Bello Maintenance Assessment District, formed in 1991. In so doing, it left the city and some residents puzzling over how to pay for dredging about two miles of man-made waterways that would become clogged with sand and dirt without being tended to routinely. The district, which also pays for repair of the rocky riprap on the banks, levies an annual assessment to cover the cost of dredging every seven years or so. The last dredging cost about $3 million.

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Because Proposition 218 requires property owners to agree to such assessments, the city will begin a mediation process with Keys residents to decide how much future dredging will cost and who will pay for it.

* In Thousand Oaks, the only assessment that falls under the initiative’s auspices is a $2-million lighting and landscaping district. The assessment is secure until next July, but city leaders will have to decide what to do when time runs out.

To keep streets well-lighted, City Atty. Mark Sellers said residents may be asked to vote on one citywide assessment or a batch of neighborhood assessments. In years to come, more problems may crop up due to the tax-bill-slashing initiative, particularly when it pertains to issues of open space allotments.

“There are a lot of services that people just have a hard time paying for, and open space is one of them,” Sellers said. “Everyone wants to have land set aside, but the city and ultimately the residents are going to have to pay for it.”

* Simi Valley’s grassy medians, vine-draped block walls and ornamental grasses could be affected by Proposition 218--but not seriously, because most local leaders have long been sensitive to citizens’ tax woes, said Simi Valley City Councilwoman Sandi Webb.

“We were doing things, quite frankly, the right way to begin with,” Webb said. “We weren’t putting in place these special assessment districts for everything under the sun and charging people for it.”

To beat the Tuesday deadline, City Council members recently approved many existing landscaping assessments and a few new ones--worth $784,153--to keep up greenery around streets and tract common areas. In the 1997-98 fiscal year, property owners in each zone will weigh in on whether to keep their assessments in place for the following year.

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Balloting has already occurred among property owners in new zones added to the landscape district, and the assessments were approved. In coming months, the city will also explore asking homeowners associations to take landscaping duties out of the city’s hands, where possible.

* In Oxnard, officials said about 30 assessment districts formed before the passage of Proposition 218 would not be affected by the measure this fiscal year, because there are no plans to raise assessments.

“We’re not in nearly as bad a shape as these other cities,” said Stan Kleinman, interim finance director. Oxnard’s existing districts include about two dozen for landscape maintenance. Property owners in those districts pay about $357,000 annually for landscaping near housing developments, road medians and other public areas. In six other districts, owners of commercial and industrial property pay about $7.3 million annually on debt from bonds issued to improve streets, sewage and other infrastructure. Those six districts are exempt from the new state law.

Property owners in three new development areas recently voted by mail to create assessment districts to pay for landscaping. And the owners of a new affordable-housing complex are expected to approve an assessment district.

“If at any point in the future we want to raise assessments, we’ll go through the Prop. 218 procedure,” City Atty. Gary Gillig said. “Oxnard does not plan any lawsuits. We’ll comply.”

* On the county side, a handful of assessment districts for flood control, road maintenance, street sweeping and weed abatement--worth $10.5 million--are in the clear until charges are increased.

“We have very few” assessments, said County Counsel James McBride. “Unlike some other cities and counties, we have used assessment districts very, very sparingly.”

* The bedroom community of Port Hueneme, which has always had to seek creative ways to raise revenue due to its small sales-tax base, has lost about $315,000 a year because of Proposition 218.

The loss occurred because the city used a portion of the money from a flood control assessment district that last year brought in about $460,000 to subsidize the city’s parks maintenance budget. Officials will cut capital expenditures and tap into municipal reserves to make up the difference.

* Balloting occurred recently in Ojai’s only affected assessment district, which raises $85,000 to cover maintenance of the downtown shopping arcade and surrounding areas. Of the eligible property owners returning ballots, 77.9% favored keeping the assessment.

* Fillmore officials have conducted two votes as a result of Proposition 218, one for property owners in a storm-drain-assessment district, which raises $4,354, and another for property owners benefiting from a landscaping and lighting district, which brings in $38,790.

The assessment passed in both districts. However, in three tracts in the landscaping and lighting district, the vote failed and in another there was a tie, so landscaping maintenance and lighting will be affected in those particular areas.

* Municipal officials in the agricultural community of Santa Paula do not believe Proposition 218 will affect the city to a large degree. Utility charges are being reviewed to ensure they comply with the law.

Folmar is a staff writer. Staff writer Hilary E. MacGregor and correspondents Scott Steepleton, Dawn Hobbs, Coll Metcalfe, Chris Chi and Nick Green contributed to this report.