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.