GARDEN GROVE : Street Lighting Tab Up for Apartments

Owners of single-family homes will pay slightly lower assessments for street lighting and park maintenance in the coming year but rates for apartments have skyrocketed and owners have lodged bitter protests.

The annual tab for homeowners with street lights in front of their homes will come to about $52.70, about 10% less than last year. Homeowners without street lights in their neighborhoods will pay slightly less.

Individual apartment units have been assessed for the first time, sending rates for that housing category spiraling. Previously, apartment owners paid a single assessment based on the parcel of land their units occupied.

Bruce Lively, an owner of a 73-unit apartment complex, said he’s being hit with a 2,000% increase.

“There’s no way to pass it on,” Lively said. “The tenants have very low incomes and we are losing about 5% of them a month because they are losing jobs.”

Lively also hinted that officials acted in their own interest, claiming that all five city councilmen and most of the city’s voters live in single-family homes.

Councilman Mark Leyes said Friday, though, that apartment owners are paying the whopping increase only “because they paid next to nothing last year.” Single-family residences have been subsidizing apartments in past years, he said.

Leyes said the assessment changes spread out costs evenly and are appropriate because most residents own single-family residences.

Apartments where there are street lights will be assessed $23.49 per unit per year; apartments without street lights will pay $20.18. Mobile homes with street lights will pay $6.35 a unit; without lights, $4.05.

The assessments, made possible by the Landscaping and Lighting Act of 1972, touch all property owners in the city.

The assessment will raise $1.9 million, about $32,354 less than lass year.

Assessments, which will be tacked onto property tax bills in November, finance lighting on arterial streets and highways, pay for the energy for traffic signals and finance park maintenance.

Apartment owners protested that they will be unable to absorb the increases because their tenants are experiencing such rocky financial times.