San Juan Capistrano : City Considers Tax of $5 a Month on Horses

Horse owners may soon be saddled with a $5-a-month hoof tax for each horse they keep at commercial stables if the recommendations of the city’s ad-hoc equestrian committee are adopted by the City Council.

The committee recently completed a seven-month study of the city’s equestrian facilities, whose capacities have been strained in recent years as horse owners in other parts of the county have moved their animals to San Juan because stables in their areas have closed due to development pressures.

To help pay for the costs of increased trail maintenance, the committee proposed levying a $5 assessment on every horse boarded at the city’s 13 commercial stables--estimated to be about 940 horses.

Other suggestions of the committee include limiting the number of horses allowed per square foot in the city as a whole, permitting future stables only in non-residential, backcountry areas and giving city residents priority in boarding their horses.

City stable owners were less than enthusiastic about the committee’s report.

“Can you believe that?” asked Jerry Harris, owner of the 230-horse Rancho Sierra Vista stable. “Those are hiking-equestrian trails--what are they going to do; tax the Boy Scouts and Cub Scouts, too? Why not a $5 tax on everyone who uses the bike trails? It seems absurd to single out the equestrian community.”

But City Councilman Lawrence Buchheim, a member of the ad-hoc committee, said the report “is not anti-horse at all.”

“We’re trying to enhance the horse situation to make it more palatable to some of the people who live in closer proximity to them,” Buchheim said.

The fee would be unpopular, he said, but necessary “so horses and people can live together. Everybody is not enamored by horses.”

The report will be considered by the city’s equestrian and planning commissions before it comes before the City Council, probably in two months, Buchheim said.