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Consultant Guy lays out Prop 218 assessment plan, timeline and $45 million planning estimate
Summary
A consultant identified as Guy told the Los Lagos Community Services District the Prop 218 construction assessment process ties costs to parcel benefit, recommended hiring an assessment engineer and suggested the earliest district‑level owner vote could be Q1 2027; he used a $45 million planning estimate and stressed several funding dependencies.
Guy, the presenter at the Los Lagos Community Services District meeting, gave a detailed workshop on how a construction assessment under Proposition 218 would be structured and when the district might realistically hold a property‑owner vote. He explained construction assessments are typically a one‑time allocation tied to parcel benefit and often financed over 30 years, while operations and maintenance charges are recurring rates. "Assessment for construction ... it's a onetime allocation of a cost to each parcel," he said.
Guy detailed how an assessment engineer allocates project components to individual parcels using durable attributes such as lot size and zoning rather than changeable features. He walked the board through example parcel weightings and explained the Prop 218 protest‑based process, saying, "This is a protest based vote. Protests have to outweigh the positive votes." He flagged key inputs that will change the result — the design reserve percentage, final cost, and whether grants or loans materialize — and recommended hiring a specialized assessment engineer to produce a defensible allocation.
On planning numbers, staff and the presenter used a working project estimate of about $45,000,000 for discussion and showed a rough split by flow: Stantec's flow number of roughly 133,800 gallons per day for the district produces a residential portion of about 65,000 gpd and a nonresidential portion of about 68,000 gpd under the 215 gpd per residential assumption. Guy cautioned the board these are assumptions to be refined by the engineer, and that the district should expect contingency reserves at each design phase.
The presentation included a month‑by‑month schedule showing 30%, 60% and 90% design milestones, environmental work and the county property‑tax timing needed to get assessments onto the tax roll. Staff said 30% design is on target for March and that, depending on funding and design outcomes, the earliest feasible Prop 218 hearing could be in the first quarter of 2027. The board directed staff to pursue funding options to hire an assessment engineer and to prepare a short RFP that reflects the board’s leaning toward parcel size and zoning as allocation factors.
