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El Dorado Hills Community Services District General Manager Stephanie McGann Jantzen hopes to establish a 25-person working group to help overhaul the controversial process used to assess property owners for landscaping and lighting services, she said last week.
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The group would include one representative from each of El Dorado Hills’ 25 landscaping and lighting assessment districts, or LLADs. Members would research and recommend a new method for calculating how much property owners pay for landscaping, lighting and other services.
El Dorado Hills already had a citizen-led LLAD advisory committee, but the panel has just three members. That level of participation is not enough, according to committee member Ben Glickman.
“This endeavor is only going to work if this working group gets the diverse views from the community,” he said in an interview. “And we haven’t had that on the citizens advisory committee.”
“I’m hoping that the more people that are in the room and can talk about these issues and better understand these issues, the more people will understand that there is no silver bullet solution,” he said. “Like everything in government, every solution is a trade-off.”
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Jantzen outlined the proposal Thursday during a meeting of the Community Services District’s Administration and Finance Subcommittee. She said she planned to present the proposal to the district’s board of directors in September.
The directors instructed Jantzen earlier this month to develop a plan to overhaul the assessment process after board members raised concerns about how the district calculates the charges.
For resident Bob Williams, the move represented a shift. He said that the board has historically ignored perspectives from certain developments, including Heritage, where he lives.
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“So many of us who were excluded basically stepped back and said well, ‘why do we even bother’?
In 2022, Williams helped lead a group of residents to introduce and pass ballot measures that repealed three of El Dorado Hills’ LLADs. The district is currently engaged in litigation against the county auditor-controller, who refused to place the assessments on the tax roles following the election.
“Our district remains committed to providing essential services to all of our lighting and landscaping assessment districts, including the three effected one,” Jantzen said in an interview. “Without the revenue from those three LLADs, I am concerned about providing the level of service that our community expects.”
Bob Williams said that history made last week’s proposal a welcome change.
“The parties are beginning to want to talk to one another, rather than having to be in court,” he said in an interview. “It’s good progress.”
At the subcommittee meeting, he asked Directors Noelle Mattock and Heidi Hannaman to “give general manager Jantzen an opportunity to pull together a working group, including those of us that may be considered adversaries on LLAD matters.”
“We have to start from somewhere, and conversations never hurt anybody,” he said.
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