Situation

Briefly, here's the gist of what's going on.

Prior to 1996, cities could do whatever they wanted in gouging money from property owners. The City did so. When Proposition 218 passed in 1996, the City was in a dilemma. It could change the street lighting assessment methodology to comply with the new law or it could try to convince voters to place a special tax (2/3 vote) on themselves. The City did neither. The earlier street lighting assessment was grand-fathered in by the new law. It's been in place for 30 years, unchanged.

Now, the City wants to gouge property owners again. They need to pretend that property owners get a special benefit from street lighting over and above the benefit to the general public. The City comes up with a point system to account for proportionality (constitutional requirement) for allocating the cost among property owners. The City has to separate the property owner benefit from the general public benefit (constitutional requirement). It presumes that all benefits (100%) fall to the property owners. Then the City comes up with a method to determine public benefit, but can ONLY find benefit based on street traffic. The result is a fraudulent 11% public benefit, sticking the property owners with almost the entire bill, without proving that they get any benefit at all.

Friday, April 24, 2026

New: Media Page

New: Media Page

We now have a page that shows media coverage of the street lighting assessment tax.

A group of links we just found to today, will be added very shortly.

You can help add to the list, if you find something relevant.

Check it out here;

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