In the coming days, City of Santa Clarita officials plan to deliver ballots outlining a proposed over 500 percent increase to streetlight maintenance fees.

Approximately 34,000 property owners in the Streetlight Maintenance District (SMD) “Zone A” are expected to be given the opportunity to vote on a streetlight maintenance fee increase from $12.38 to $81.71.

In the last two weeks, property owners to be affected by the change received an informational notice from the City of Santa Clarita about the upcoming delivery of their ballot, according to officials.

“This informational notice is not required by law, but we feel it’s important to make sure our residents have the ability to anticipate the upcoming ballot and take action on it,” said Special Districts Manager Kevin Tonoian. “When they receive the ballot, they also receive a self-addressed return envelope, as required by law. We’ve also made the envelopes’ postage prepaid, which is not state law, but was our own decision for the sake of transparency, to encourage maximum participation and achieve the highest ballot return rate we can get.”

These fees pay for the maintenance, repair and monitoring of street lights by Southern California Edison, who the City of Santa Clarita contracts to perform these services.

The increase in fees would equalize the fee paid by homeowners in “Zone A” with the fee paid by homeowners outside of Zone A, who are slated to pay $81.71 for this year’s fee.

This change would bring Santa Clarita’s Streetlight Maintenance District into accord with a state law, which indicates that lighting assessments may be determined by any formula or method which fairly distributes costs among all lots or parcels.

“Zone A” is not concentrated in one specific area of the city, but rather, consists of all the parcels sprinkled throughout the city that pay a pre-Proposition 218 assessment, according to Tonoian.

Proposition 218, the “Right to Vote on Taxes Act,” was passed by California voters in 1998, and amended the California constitution to require voter approval for local tax levies, as well as assessment and property-related fee reform.

For the past 20 years, property owners in SMD Zone A have had their annual assessment rate for streetlight maintenance remain frozen at $12.38, the maximum rate allowed by Los Angeles County at the time the original district parcels were transferred from Los Angeles County to the City’s jurisdiction.

All subsequent annexations and new developments have been assigned to Street Lighting Zone B, which maintains a higher assessment rate than Zone A, and does account for annual inflation, whereas Zone A’s assessment rate does not.

As streetlight maintenance costs have increased in the last 20 years and assessment revenue from Zone A has remained frozen, a funding gap developed which has been subsidized with general property tax revenue in the meantime, officials said.

“Roughly 25,000 parcels are not paying the full cost of services and are being subsidized, creating an annual funding gap of $2.8 million that is made up by using general property taxes,” Tonoian said.

While the over 500 percent increase may seem sudden to some property owners, Carrie Lujan, communications manager for the City of Santa Clarita, notes that the effort to equalize the burden of streetlight maintenance costs among property owners has been ongoing for the last two decades.

“We haven’t been waiting 20 years, we’ve been doing this over time. We passed 98 different ballot measures in the last 20 years, two of which were within the last year,” said Lujan. “All of those votes have been successful. We believe the property owners really value the services they receive and want to pay a fair rate.”

Delivery of the ballots began Monday, and is scheduled to be completed within the next several days.

The ballots must be returned by the close of the public hearing on the fee change, scheduled to take place at the Santa Clarita City Council meeting planned for Jan. 22, 2019, according to Tonoian.

Once that public hearing closes, ballots may no longer be accepted, and the following day ballots are set to be opened and tallied. The results are scheduled to be announced at the city council meeting on Feb. 12, and if approved, the change will take effect for the upcoming 2019-2020 budget year.

“This ballot process, by and large, if successful, will equalize streetlight rates among property owners in the city,” Tonoian said.

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