Editor’s note: This is the summary of the Santa Cruz County Grand Jury report on roads with information on the Special District 9D road assessment. The county Board of Supervisors and the Local Agency Formation Commission are required to respond by Sept. 3. To read the full report, see www.santacruzcountyca.gov/Portals/0/County/GrandJury/GJ2024_final/2024-1_Roads_Report.pdf
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During our investigation the Grand Jury has found that roads in the unincorporated area of Santa Cruz County are in deplorable condition.
Currently more than 63% of the local roads are in poor to failed condition. This has prompted almost daily complaints to the County Board of Supervisors and the County agencies responsible for road maintenance.
Trout Gulch
Chronic underfunding of roads and culverts has led to a deficit approaching $1 billion. For decades, the County’s strategy has been to forgo spending money on the roads that are in the worst condition and concentrate on pavement preservation on roads that are already in fair to good condition. Many unincorporated roads haven’t been resurfaced for decades.
Funding of County road maintenance is a complicated subject involving local, state and federal agencies. Most of the funds are targeted and the County has little discretion on how they are spent.
One possible source of additional funding for unincorporated roads could come from Special District 9D, created in 1988. Overseen by the Local Agency Formation Commission, it contains a road assessment fee that hasn’t been increased in 36 years.
Given the chronic underfunding of rural road maintenance, our local roads are becoming increasingly unsafe for daily travel and emergency access.
9D Spending Report Missing
The current flat assessments are $56.40 on improved properties and $28.20 on unimproved properties in the unincorporated areas of the County. CSA 9D funds account for over 25% of current funding for County road maintenance.
Cathedral
LAFCO is required to perform a periodic review of Service Districts. The last review of CSA 9D is dated Aug. 5, 2020. The report states that “the Board of Supervisors determined that the sub-zones’ service charges would vary based on the extent of benefit derived from such service provided to parcels within the sub-zones.”
LAFCO found the County has not varied the amount of the service charge since inception. The three zones that comprise 9D generate approximately $2.7 million annually.
Failure of the County to form the Special District with the inclusion of a range of assessment rates or a built-in inflationary adjustment, which was allowed at the time, has caused this important funding source to become inadequate over time.
Average inflation over this time has been 3.45% a year. If the annual inflation had been part of the formula, a rate approximately 3.76 times the current amount would now be charged.
LAFCO’s report is supposed to detail revenue and expenses for the Special District with sufficient detail for the public to understand how their taxes are being used. The Grand Jury found that there was not sufficient detail in the publicly available LAFCO or County budget reports to determine how the funding was being used.
The LAFCO report showed 100% of the funding coming from the property assessment taxes and 100% of the expenditure being used for “services and repairs,” but without any detail on what those services and repairs were.
The published budget from the County was also lacking this detail.
Residents currently are not able to determine how their CSA 9D taxes were being used except in a general way. They could not determine what roads were repaired or resurfaced in their zone or what repairs were performed.
There is no way to determine that the funds were used correctly in the zone, where the funding took place, and to confirm the funds were not commingled with general DPW funding. Comingling of funds is not allowed.
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How are Your Roads in Aptos?
Email a jpg photo, at least 1 MB, of the condition with the name of the road to Aptos Times at [email protected] so we can share with county officials.