RANCHO CUCAMONGA – The rates in the city’s largest landscape maintenance district was a key topic for City Council candidates at a recent forum.
Some in the district are opposed to the idea of a potential new election to determine whether to raise landscaping fees after residents voted to reject the idea of a $38 increase last year.
But city officials are initiating a $40,000 outreach effort, using funds from the landscape district, because only 30 percent participated in the election, and some residents said they weren’t aware of the consequences if significant service reductions are made to the area.
A survey next spring would determine whether or not to hold another election.
LMD 2 is an L-shaped area bounded by Etiwanda Avenue on the east, the 210 Freeway on the north, the halfway line between Milliken and Haven avenues on the west, and south above Base Line Road and Church Street in the eastern part of the district.
Officials may consider either a rate increase or a service level reduction because maintenance costs have risen substantially. Rates have not changed since 1993, officials said.
The city recently presented preliminary ideas such as increasing the annual rate by about $38 or decommissioning care for 1.5 million square feet of turf.
“That issue was brought back to the council in a council workshop because people in that community were uninformed about what was going on,” said Mayor Pro Tem Sam Spagnolo,
“so it was brought to the city to be opened up for discussion.
“That vote was done by the people and some of them had decided they wanted a second chance like other landscape maintenance districts had done. We’re governed by Proposition 218 and there’s nothing that we can do to sway a vote either way. We can’t have any input into that.”
Councilman Chuck Buquet’s term expires this year. Buquet was appointed to fill Mayor Dennis Michael’s council seat after the mayoral election of 2010.
“I’m telling you right now I will not support tax increases for city operations during my term on the City Council. Proposition 218 requires that any LMD rate increase is something voted on by the property owners, and I will respect that process,” said Buquet, who also said he supports more drought-tolerant landscaping for the area. “The city is trying to make sure and be as responsive as they can and inform the residents of the need for us to deal with the financial structural deficit that, quite frankly, the council should have been dealing with 16 years while I was off the council.
“You can’t roll over the same rate and not expect it to catch up with you later on.”
Other candidates said they were opposed to the idea of the city using resources after, they said, the 2011 election already decided the issue.
“The people understood it and it’s a free country and if they chose not to vote or they chose to vote and it ended up the city didn’t get it their own way and they won’t let it go,” said candidate Jim Moffatt, a local coffee shop owner who has run for council several times and for mayor in 2010. “Now they want to spend another $40,000 to send out another survey and get their money. It’s a waste of money.”
Candidate Anthony Rice, a small business owner, agreed.
“I pretty much agree with what Mr. Moffatt said,” Rice said. “I do agree that it’s a waste of city resources to redo the vote when the people have already voted no on it. What’s even the bigger waste of resources is putting palm trees in the center of roads, putting huge irrigation systems down the center of these roads, or down the sides of freeways, where it’s watering the streets and it’s wasting water.
“We need to take a look at the way we do landscaping in the city and the way to do it is only do native landscaping.”
Candidate Erick Jimenez suggested future developers should completely pay for landscaping through developer fees and also suggested the use of native landscaping that doesn’t require a lot of water.
“The election was the election, and you can’t go back and overturn the election results,” said Jimenez. “I think the big lesson coming out of this is development – and I know the city is 85 percent already developed and there’s about 15 percent left – but the big lesson out of this is that future development has to be sound. It has to be responsible.
“We have to make sure it’s completely paid for through developer fees and that we use native landscaping, something that is not going to use a lot of water.”
Candidate Marc Steinorth, who ran for mayor in 2010, said the decommissioning of turf would be problematic for the city.
“There were a lot of workshops that were held by city management. I believe our current city manager was the person conducting most of those and that’s with the public,” Steinorth said. “30 percent of the public voted no, and that is an issue because we’ve had elections with a lot lower turnout and some of them are elected officers and we haven’t decided, ‘hey by the way, it’s a very low turnout, let’s go back and re-elect those people.’ So it seems kind of odd that we would have that approach for a landscape maintenance district. Now having said that, I understand we want to make sure our neighborhood looks really good, and for me this is almost really a safety issue.”
The forum was held at the James Brulte Senior Center on Tuesday night.
Contact Neil via email, by phone at 909-483-9356, on Twitter @RanchoNow or on Facebook.
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