SAN FERNANDO : Inequity in Bills for Street Lights Targeted

San Fernando residents who pay a larger share of taxes to maintain the city’s $267,000 street-lighting system than their neighbors will get some relief next year, officials said.

The tax break won’t come a minute too soon for Maria Ladas, 73, and other residents who own corner properties. Under the city’s current street light assessment system, their properties are taxed up to four times more than properties located on other parts of the street, because corner lots front two streets instead of one.

Ladas, who lives at Griswold and De Haven streets, has wrangled with the city over the assessment system since 1992, when she became aware of the disparity between her bill and her neighbors’.

“I have a street light in the front of my house and one behind the garage,” said Ladas, who has lived at her current address for the last 40 years. “Did I ask the city to put in those lights? Were those lights built just for me? No. They are there to benefit the public, just like the sidewalk and the street is. So, why do I pay more?”

Ladas’ current annual street light bill is $103. Her neighbors down the street pay about $26 annually, she said, because they do not have lights near their yards.

“It’s a basic inequity,” agreed Councilman Raul Godinez.

In November, 1994, the City Council began studying the issue with the goal of developing a better assessment system. Although the study was supposed to take 60 days to complete, it has yet to be presented to the public.

City officials said they needed more time to complete the study because of the difficulty of analyzing three alternative assessment formulas.

The proposed new formulas are: assessing corner properties based on half of their frontage instead of all of it; setting a rate for multifamily homes that would be higher than the rate charged for single-family homes, or establishing a flat rate throughout the entire city with set rates for single-family homes, apartment buildings, commercial and industrial properties.

“In any one of those methodologies, the corner lots would pay less,” said Mike Drake, the city’s public works director. Drake added that the city will submit a new tax assessment program to the county assessor’s office by Aug. 15.

The city will hold a public work session to discuss the new assessment proposals at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at City Hall.