Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Sure, I can come in. Just a couple issues we've talked about in the past. So the CFD 2018, that's just for the public. That's the one that essentially all new development in the country, unincorporated, would automatically be pushed into the CFD 2018. And those fees, that's based on a CPI formula?

So I'm wondering, is there any avenue, you know, if, for instance, The county has a sudden surge in costs like like we've seen in the last several years we had the pandemic and then we've had this, you know, hyperinflation environment that we're in. There's basically no mechanism to, you know, look at specific it but it's it's CPI, but is Have we had a huge jump uh, in any of those years where, uh, cause I see this year's decent, you know, increase, frankly, 3.8 or something like that. I thought I saw, um, were there any years where it went up, you know, in accordance with the real inflation?

Okay, 1% to 2%. Oh, wow. It just doesn't seem like in some situations that the increases necessarily keep up with just those years or those periods. I don't want to promote overcharging or anything like that, but it just seems like in specific periods... We've had a lot of, you know, and we went through this whole budget situation recently where there was this major deficit. I just want to, are there any mechanisms to look at the current formula and how that increases?

Yeah, and I just, again, I'm just trying to wrap my head around whether we started at the right baseline. Again, I don't want to promote at all dinging people, you know, with these unexpected increases. I do think that for future development, because the county has seen costs rise so much in recent years that we may want to look at I'm not saying I support it, but we may want to look at that option that you noted, because I did have that in my notes, whether you could develop a new CFD for future development, just because I am concerned about whether the revenue is ultimately going to, over th

Yeah, and I just think with new development in particular, that would be my focus, is just having a better handle on exactly what you're saying as far as those costs, just because the cost of everything has gone up so substantially, and I'm just... It just doesn't feel like, and we've always, we're always, and I think we're going to have another, this is part of our whole revenue generation umbrella. You know, I think there's a need to generate more revenue, whether it's through economic development or whether we look at our fees and are we actually recouping in real costs? And this just falls

Okay, and it kind of leads naturally into one of these other topics. We've talked about HOAs, and I know we had a speaker come up and talk about, which I understand where he's coming from. I think we should have some options on the table at some point as we move forward. One of those options could be looking at a new CFD, but the other option to me, whether we just fully move toward the HOA model, maybe with some exceptions. And so if you are a... And I'd have to research this more. This is why we value public speakers coming up and putting in their anecdotal points. But maybe we look at HOAs

I'm almost done. I'll finish up right now. I'll finish up. I promise. I thought Anne Hall's point was reasonable about coming to the board two times. So perhaps we can look at that. I don't know what the procedural changes were when that happened or if there's legalities involved from the county council side, but just at least something. I appreciate that. If we could look into that, just if there's a reason why we're making folks go through multiple steps. I do want to clarify, I think my point was there's a lot of applications for the CFD going, not necessarily CSAs. I don't think we've expa

Yeah, you're not going to like me being, giving me the mic. So I'm really sorry. I really appreciate where Supervisor Kosmicki is going. I have spent a tremendous amount of time doing research on this, and I have actually spent hours with the Ridgemark debacle that's been created because it's an HOA, it's a CSA, it's a CFD, it's a JHAD. I'm not going to say the the other word I say that I'm not supposed to say. But there are so many issues about the decisions that have been made in the past that are affecting residents and the communication of these communities. And so I'd like to take this a

It's not an extra added cost. So I want to make this point very clear. We have Prop 13, which is coming out of the overall property tax, not an additional 218, which is an addition to their property tax that funds their services. Correct. And the problem with the 13 is the 13 is 1% with only a kind of 2% average, but I don't understand why it averages 2%. I don't understand why sometimes we can go higher annually or lower. It doesn't make sense to me, but I'm not going to get into the math of that because I think there's bigger fish to fry here. we have to understand that when we're looking at

Oh, I didn't go far enough, sorry. Okay, so we have inactive before active. Now, if we talk about inactive on Prop 13, what does that mean? Does that mean they're not getting that 1% or they're not getting any services? Because if the 1% is still going into their account.

And when you have fund balances, we have to go through a process whether it's a... Because a CSA, a county service area, is a special district under a LAFCO umbrella. Correct. A CFD, a community fiscal... A community facility's district, even though it has the word district, it's not a real district under LAFCO. It has no LAFCO authority. So right now, I want to stick with CSAs. I don't even want to get into the CFDs. And the reason I want to stick with the CSAs is because there's a process from conception to dissolving, and it goes through a LAFCO process. It does. And LAFCO has in 2026, acco

I don't think that's true. I don't think that's true. You can't do that. And that's the problem. I really need a legal opinion on what the process is to help you solve these inactive CSAs. And were they really inactivated properly? Because if you go back through the LAFCO process, I will tell you a lot of this stuff back prior to 2010 was a handshake. Oh, you guys don't want any more? Okay, we'll stop. But there's no documentation. we need to ensure the documentation i have gone to the recorder's office i have pulled up stacks and stacks of recordings that go back to the 60s and i will tell yo

I apologize. Don't worry. Your mind and mine are right in the same spot.

Yeah. I want to step in here because this is my next point. My next point is we're sitting on inactive. I'm still on page 11. We're sitting on inactive Prop 13 1%. We're no longer collecting that 1% for those CSAs. Is that true or not true? I'm seeing the auditor. Can you please come up? You're saying we are still collecting.

but these are inactives, if you look at this list, these are inactives that are not part of Prop 218, because there's a separate list of Prop 218 inactives, like the development I live in, and that is...

And I get that, Joe Paul. There's five of them, and they are active, and they are receiving that. But we have one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine that we're hearing are not receiving the 1% collected.

But is an apportionment going to these people? No.

Okay, they're not Prop 13. They were due to the realignment, so the heading is wrong. I get that. But they still have a fund balance, and this is the taxpayer's money. It is not our money. And we can't use it. And if we're holding it and not going through the process of dissolving them and figuring out what the legal process is through county council and LAFCO, then they should be earning interest on the money that we're holding of their taxpayer dollars. And the opposite of that is if they are in deficit. They should be paying interest on that deficit, and that deficit needs to have a payment

Totally agree. And that's step one. Step one, we need to know the legal process of dissolving them. We need a memorandum of understanding or whatever legal document needs to be done to be able to get this off of our balance sheet because we don't need to be dealing with this if they're dissolved. Right?

And there may need to be a negotiation with them and the county because we have to admit as a county, we have not done our fiduciary requirement of serving these CSAs. And we have to look at the history of the CSA and come up either with a reduction, a payoff, a payment plan. I get it because I've talked to these people. They're very, very angry people, especially the ones that didn't know. because they weren't getting like a fiscal statement and didn't know that they were in the hole. So I think there's a give and take, but I don't want to get into the weeds of those. I want to get on to, so

Well, I don't care how they collect it. We collect 1%. Let's make sure we.

That's what I wanted to ask. That was my next question.

And I'm going to take this one step further. If they weren't able to pay off, we could do a Prop 218 to get them up to paying off. And we may have to understand the history a little there. It could have been some of our fault. I don't know. Who knows? I don't want to say it's just... I think we need to have history to understand this. I don't want to blame this on residents because I don't feel residents have enough information. But when it comes to the other CSAs, if that CSA... Bonnie View gets paid out, do they still want those services? So we have to sit down with them and ask them if they

Unless they did a Prop 218 increasing their fee. Exactly. Right.

But we have to have conversations with these CSAs before we just arbitrarily say, you're no longer going to have landscape services. You're no longer going to have street sweeping. You're no longer going to have the lights on your streets. We can't arbitrarily do it. We have to have the communication. And I'd really like council to be the one to help with the process of that so that there's a little legal backing to what we're doing.

But we can't at the same time look at these. And every time that I've been on this board every year, I have gone to the former public works director and said, look, you're showing in your budget a negative opportunity. on a CSA. I want a complete fund balance to ensure that we are not taking any money out of the general fund and subsidizing these CSAs. And so that, after looking at this, it looks like there's a fund balance, but I don't know. I'm assuming there's no money that's gone into these accounts that comes anywhere from the general fund. I'm hoping that can be We have not subsidized, b

My next question, because CSA 22, which is Cielo Vista, is showing no number. And I thought there was a issue with their wastewater and the cost of the services we were providing of their wastewater. So I was looking at the bar chart. So it does. So that doesn't show on the fund balance as a negative. When you look at the Prop 218 bar chart, it's not there. So... These are the things that we need to come up with a plan on how we're going to address them. I don't want to belabor this because I think I've made my point. The problem is that if they are a 218 and they, for some reason, there is a

Yeah, I know 218 is homeowners. So I want to make sure we understand that on Prop 13, I have a feeling it is registered voters, not landowners. So that may be another issue because that means it goes on the ballot.

I don't think it was annexed. That was the problem. Yeah. And so this is that'll be Ridgemark will be a sidebar because it's way too complicated for this meeting.

They're set in stone, but we could do a 218 on top of them if they wanted us to maintain the services. So I just want to make sure that we understand we have processes we need to go through, and the Prop 218 voting process of a landowner has to be paid for by the landowners. And so the election costs, because we've done these, I've done these, you have to go through. It's not hard. It's not that expensive. We just need to get the process rolling and bring the process back because we are not going to be able to maintain the services and we're going to have to make decisions on what we're cuttin

Oh, so they only get that little percent each year? Okay. But it said varies on yours. And one of your slides, it said it was an increase on there of 2.1%. So that was CSAs, 2.875, the CSAs. So I got confused. Can they go up to 2.875 or 72? Or is it only up to 2%? I want to make sure that we're not increasing beyond what our legal capability is.

And this is a great report because it shows you the map of the CSA, it gives you the financials. It's these five that are part of Prop 13 and the AB8, AB9, whatever number. Those are the ones that don't get this level of a report and this is the level of report we need for those. Okay, real quick. I talked about the LAFCO process of the public. Oh, in these CSAs that are still there, we're the board of directors for these CSAs. Is there any ability to either form an ad hoc on some of these larger CSAs like Ridgemark where they can advise the board of some of the things? Because if we're going

A special project, not an ongoing cost? Yes.

Correct. CSA 9. Yes. And that's where this topic is coming up. We need to have a mechanism. Can they increase it and do an added assessment or...

And when it's a CSA part of Prop 13 and it's a portion, who manages the projects? Who manages the estimating of the cost of the road repairs?

Okay, just so you guys know, the HOA has been doing it. So we need to have a conversation about what the HOA is having to do because we haven't been getting those services because we can't afford the services of the county. They've been doing the estimates. My understanding, they've been hiring the contractors and they're paying it out of the CSA.

Well, we need to get this little, this needs to be untangled because I think it's a little more complicated than that.

Aren't you guys happy I stopped? I really appreciate this presentation. I really had hoped that the HOA conversation could have been a bigger part of this, but where I'm at right now is we need to not form any more CSAs. We need to fix the CSAs we have and get out of the CSA business. And if there's a process for that that's legal, great. That stopped when CFD 2018 was created. Right. But now that gets me to Supervisor Kosmicki, which is exactly, are we collecting enough funds to be able to do new projects? So this is where the focus needs to be for new development. We need to make sure that o

One last thing to piggyback. I think, you know, I talked about trying to have some options going forward. I think we've had good conversation here. But what I said earlier about CFDs, HOA, I think it would be good to have – there's certain things that you – It seems like HOAs are a natural fit for landscaping and for certain, keeping the streets clean and all that sort of stuff. And then having the option for, they also be required to, if we formed a new CFD for the police and fire services and those sorts of things, because you can't leave those services on an HOA because that's hiring privat

Mr. Chair, can I, Supervisor Kosmicki, I totally agree. The one thing I want to make sure that we recognize is Many property values, properties are not as marketable with an HOA because there are a lot of people that I've spoken to will never live in an HOA. So we need to keep that in mind that some people do not ever want to be in an HOA. How do we maintain services when you have, they're expecting us to be like cities? And I think that needs to be a conversation maybe on when we're looking at sphere of influence and when we have properties like Santana Ranch that was right up against the cit