How to resolve AdBlock issue? The Board of Supervisors on Tuesday morning hosted protest hearings and tabulation counts for the zones of benefit for Buckingham, the Clear Lake Riviera, Riviera Heights and Riviera West.
Supervisor Rob Brown put together the plan for the zones of benefit last year and received the Board of Supervisors’ support to put it to a vote of property owners earlier this year.
Brown’s plan is for the property owners of about 5,000 lots in those four areas, plus adjacent lands, make a one-time payment of $100 per lot for properties of less than one acre, $200 for lots from one to five acres, and $300 for lots of five acres or more.
He said the main goal is to get property owners to clean up their own land, which they can do much cheaper than the county can hire contractors to do it.
If they don’t, the funding raised through the assessment would allow cleanup of certain properties that would be designated as high risk, with the property owners to repay the cleanup costs through liens assessed on their land.
Brown said Tuesday that the county is willing to loan $100,000 up front to the effort so that cleanup can start immediately, ahead of the fire season.
Proposition 218, passed by voters in 1996, is a constitutional amendment that requires that taxpayers be allowed to vote on assessments, general taxes and certain types of user fees, with a 50 percent plus one majority vote required for passage.
Based on Proposition 218’s requirements, the county sent out thousands of ballots to property owners.
Most of the ballots reported in the count on Tuesday had been returned by the board meeting, but some additional ballots came in during the hearings.
County Administrative Officer Carol Huchingson said staff had been counting the ballots and that they would take those ballots turned in during the hearings, tabulate them and return with the final count.
The board heard both support and opposition to the zones of benefit.
Longtime Clear Lake Riviera resident Tom Nixon offered his support. “We’re trying to do everything we can to mitigation the vegetation hazards that we have.”
Emily Miller, one of the adjacent property owners to the Clear Lake Riviera, protested the proposal. “I think it’s poorly written,” along with being underexplained and underdeveloped, she said.
Janet Swedburg thanked Brown for the idea. “This is not just about our property. It is about our lives.”
Riviera Heights resident Henry Berg said he thought the proposal is commendable but deeply flawed, raising issues about the legalities of going onto people’s property. He also raised issues with the envelopes bearing the ballots not being labeled as having the ballots inside, and his concern that the return postage wasn’t enough.
Huchingson would later explain that they based the handling of the ballots on Special Districts assessments that have been done in the past, and that staff had determined the postage was enough to cover the return of the one-sheet ballots.
Staff took the remaining ballots for a count and returned a short time later in the meeting. Marcy Harrison, a County Administrative Office staffer, presented the ballot counts to the board.
The counts are as follows.
Clear Lake Riviera
Total ballots returned: 1,168
Yes: 654 (56 percent)
No: 514 (44 percent)
Buckingham
Total ballots returned: 402
Yes: 250 (62 percent)
No: 152 (38 percent)
Riviera West
Total ballots returned: 266
Yes: 180 (68 percent)
No: 86 (32 percent)
Riviera Heights
Total ballots returned: 308
Yes: 170 (55 percent)
No: 138 (45 percent)
The board took no action beyond receiving the ballot count. County Counsel Anita Grant said that a resolution will be brought back to the board next week confirming the vote and tabulation results.
Later in the meeting, the board unanimously approved the second and final reading of a new ordinance regarding hazardous vegetation abatement on unimproved parcels in the unincorporated county.
The ordinance and its performance is to be reviewed in six months, Grant said.
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