PLACENTIA : Schools to Consider Maintenance Fees

An overflow crowd is expected tonight for a meeting of the Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District board, which will consider charging most homeowners $17 a year to pay landscape and lighting costs on publicly used sports fields and stadiums.

If approved, the district would become the second in the county to form a maintenance assessment district. Last month, the Orange Unified School District approved such a district. The fees are under consideration in six other districts.

The state Lighting and Landscaping Act of 1972 allows public agencies to charge community residents for maintenance and upgrading of public areas. But only recently have school districts, pressed to find new sources of revenue, tried to form assessment districts. School officials argue that the public often uses school grounds and should chip in for repairs.

Under the Placentia-Yorba Linda district proposal, single-family homeowners would be charged $17 a year and owners of condominiums, townhouses and mobile homes would be assessed $12.87. In addition, businesses under a half-acre would be assessed $42.50 per parcel, and companies from a half-acre up to an acre would be charged $85 per parcel. Businesses an acre or larger would be assessed $85 per acre.

State budget cuts forced Placentia-Yorba Linda school officials to trim $9 million from the district’s 1991-92 budget, and school officials say the maintenance fee will help keep more money in the classrooms.

“We have to look at other ways to make up for our cutbacks,” Trustee Karin Freeman said. “I am pretty comfortable with this. I just want to see that it offsets our maintenance costs. We know that the public uses our fields after hours.”

Many residents fear that the assessment district will open the door to more assessments against property owners, such as fees for the purchase of property and construction of new buildings.

“It’s kind of like it will open up a can of worms,” said Norma Circle, a Yorba Linda resident who has written letters and made phone calls in opposition to the proposal. “We’re wondering when the library will form its own assessment district. After this, what other agency will form its own assessment district?”

School officials say that the fee would have to be renewed annually and could not be raised more than $1 per year.

Tonight’s public hearing starts at 8 p.m. at the District Education Center, 1301 Orangethorpe Ave., Placentia.