City funds informational materials in landscape maintenance district balloting through Jan. 19

City-funded “outreach and educational documents” will help owners of 1,930 East Lake Village-area homes in Yorba Linda decide if they'll pay higher fees for the upkeep of “special benefit” landscaping in three maintenance zones in balloting beginning next month.

And, based on more recent City Council action, the documents, which will cite potential service cutbacks, also will aid owners of 3,433 residences in nine other zones running red ink make similar decisions in a separate set of elections proposed for Spring 2016.

A $50,000 contract to develop informational materials for dissemination was awarded the Lew Edwards Group, a communications, government affairs and political consulting firm.

The contract fee comes from a $75,000 council-approved appropriation from the city's reserve fund to assist with the state-mandated Proposition 218 process that requires public votes on tax and fee increases.

Distribution of the Edwards Group's materials will involve mailers, fact sheets, the city website and newsletter, Power Point presentations, cable television channel 3 and outreach meetings. The city can't advocate a fee hike but can pay to develop and distribute educational materials.

“Accurate, pertinent and timely information will be essential,” Public Works Director Mike Wolfe reported to the council. He noted printing, addressing and postage for mailers will be handled by a firm separate from the Edwards Group contract.

The group's “scope of work” will cover materials for the 12 of 32 local landscaping zones with deficits. Three of the zones – with the 1,930 single-family residential parcels – are set for separate mail-in ballots due by Jan. 19.

Owners of 3,309 single-family residential properties and 124 multi-family units in the nine additional zones with deficits could vote on increases by a proposed May 17 deadline.

The exact amount of increases for these properties will be noted in a report scheduled for a Feb. 2 council meeting. Annual hikes in the three zones with a Jan. 19 ballot deadline will be $10, $384 and $536, if approved.

Each of the 12 zones will have separate ballots, so property owners could approve from zero to 12 fee increases starting with the 2016-17 property tax billings. Affected are 5,239 of the city's 21,142 single-family residential parcels and 124 of the city's 1,083 multi-family units.

The officially named Street Lighting and Landscape Maintenance Assessment District has 46 zones: a city-wide arterial street lighting zone, a non-contiguous local street lighting zone, three traffic signal zones and 32 local landscaping zones, all charging fees to property owners.

Current fees, allowing annual consumer price index increases, were adopted on an 83 percent “yes” vote in 1997. A 2008 ballot to boost the arterial street lighting fee from $1.22 to $2.53 and arterial street landscape fee from $46.07 to $88.47 lost with a 75 percent “no” vote.