Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Workshop Planning topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Los Olivos schedules May 14 workshop to explain options, costs and financing ahead of possible vote
Summary
Staff set a May 14 workshop to present collection/treatment options, enlarged cost tables, per-parcel assessments and financing choices including state loans, grants and discussion of a potential Prop 218 property-owner vote; staff emphasized need for a project description and shovel-ready materials to pursue grants.
General Manager Guy Savage told the board on April 9 that the district will host a May 14 workshop to cover collection options, treatment/disposal alternatives, cost breakdowns and financing mechanisms. The workshop will include regulators and is intended to be an interactive Q&A session to prepare the community for later decisions.
Savage walked the board through the capital and operating estimates used for planning: collection capital estimates ranged from about $22 million (full effluent) to $28 million (full gravity); a hybrid collection option stood near $25.5 million. A local gravity-fed solution combined with local treatment was presented as roughly $53 million total; the Solvang connection alternative was shown as lower in some configurations because it avoids building a full treatment plant.
Staff provided illustrative parcel-level amortizations based on a 30-year loan at roughly 5%: rough per-parcel capital-cost examples showed a gravity collection allocation near $75,000 per parcel, effluent about $58,000, and a hybrid about $68,000 (staff emphasized these figures assume every parcel is treated identically and that assessment engineering would refine them). Annualized homeowner costs were presented as a rough measure to help people understand scale and tradeoffs.
On financing: staff said the district will explore state loan programs (30- and 40-year options), grants (the district should be shovel-ready to compete), and referenced Proposition 218 as the legal process for property-owner assessments; staff noted an assessment engineer will develop a refined benefit-based apportionment. Board members urged compiling grant and financing options into a single, accessible slide deck for the workshop.
