City Levies for Landscaping, Lighting Backed

City officials breathed a $2.2-million sigh of relief Tuesday night after property owners in the city agreed to continue paying for lighting and landscaping assessments.

In Thousand Oaks’ first-ever assessment vote, 18,907 of a possible 46,100 mail-in ballots were returned. The ballots were weighted by the dollar amount of a person’s assessment. Thus, the landscaping assessment passed by a $554,173 to $313,408 margin. The lighting assessment was approved by a count of $65,174 to $22,440.

Despite the affirmative votes, the city did not take steps to actually levy the landscaping assessment because of confusion about which landscaping zones a few homes belong to. Once that is clarified, the council will vote at next week’s meeting to levy the assessments.

“The votes certainly indicate that there is a significant degree of public confidence that we’re going in the right direction,” said Councilman Andy Fox, “. . . to maintain that level of confidence, we have to make sure we’re absolutely correct.”

The results were revealed during a public hearing Tuesday night at which a dozen residents protested that their assessments were too high or unfair. They invoked images of the Boston Tea Party and used rhyming verse to make their points.

A chief opponent of the landscaping assessment, Wes Macdonald, said there would be another chapter to the assessment story.

“It’s not over,” he said after the ballots were counted. “I won’t tip my hand, but it’s not over.”

The assessments date to 1979, when public approval of such taxes was not required. Residents are charged about $2 million a year for landscaping assessments and another $200,000 for lighting.

Under Proposition 218, passed in 1996, property owners got a chance to vote on the assessments for the first time. A simple majority vote was enough to keep the current assessment districts in place.

The landscaping assessment only covers about a third of the property owners in Thousand Oaks, which irritated some activists. But city officials said they didn’t dare attempt to spread the burden among all property owners because such a new tax would require an even tougher two-thirds approval.

Going into the meeting, city officials were optimistic that both taxes would be maintained because of the link between opulent greenery and high property values and the tie between street lighting and public safety.

In addition to the assessment dollars, the city’s general fund covers $1.6 million a year for landscaping around town and $500,000 for lights.

Depending on a property owner’s proximity to, and the amount of, landscaping, those assessments cost $25 to $238 a year. The amount to be assessed for lighting will be up to $8 per home. Prior to Proposition 218, everyone paid a flat $139 a year, no matter how green, or brown, the surrounding area was.

Earlier this year, the City Council agreed to use a $218,000 chunk of general fund money to lessen the financial burden on homeowners who live in the highest-cost zones. Without council intervention, a handful of those homes would have faced assessments of up to $1,700.