Battle With Water District Could Ripple Across State

A militia armed only with a ballot measure and led by a man who converses with Joshua trees is waging war against the local water district.

The landlocked Morongo Basin Militia and Yacht Club says water bills in this desert town are too high. It has spearheaded an initiative on the November ballot that would reduce or eliminate taxes, assessments and fees collected by the Hi-Desert Water District. Measure U would keep the district from charging for everything from maintaining wells to setting up new accounts.

Water board members say the initiative would bankrupt the district; proponents say it would just make the board more accountable.

In a town named after a plant that can live on less than a quarter-inch of rain a year, which is all it usually gets, it’s hard to imagine what could cause more of a ruckus than water.

Two militia members have filed assault and battery charges against a neighboring water district’s board member--a 79-year-old woman who they say hit them with her cane. In her district, a measure identical to Yucca Valley’s has also qualified for a place on the ballot.

If the initiatives pass, water rights experts say, they could unleash a flood of water district challenges in California communities.

This is one of the first times Proposition 218 has been used against a water district. The 2-year-old proposition, a grandchild of California’s tax-slashing Proposition 13, gives voters the right to reject special assessments--including taxes on utilities that users pay as part of their monthly bills.

Under Proposition 218, placing an initiative on the ballot requires petition signatures equal to 5% of the voter turnout in the last governor’s race. A regular initiative requires 10% of all registered voters.

In Yucca Valley, that meant fewer than 300 signatures were needed for the measure to qualify.

“We now have laws made by people standing outside of Wal-Mart with clipboards” said Bob Armstrong, president of the Hi-Desert Water District’s board of directors and owner of the town’s two Del Taco restaurants.

A Message From ‘Admiral Mendoza’

The Morongo Basin Militia and Yacht Club, which pushed to get the initiative on the ballot, was started in 1994 with the stated intent of keeping an eye on government and citizen rights. Although it claims a membership of 1,200, the informal meetings at Brigitte’s German Restaurant usually draw a dozen or so members to drink dark ale and analyze the system.

Militia leader Ramon Mendoza--an artist and photographer who dreams of opening a human awareness bed-and-breakfast time-share--said his first act of political activism was trying to defend Joshua trees when they were being razed to make way for a Wal-Mart.

Mendoza makes no secret of his talking to Joshua tees--he says he also communicates with rocks and birds of the desert. He says all things speak if one slows down to listen.

Mendoza, who signs his many correspondences to state and county officials as “Admiral Mendoza,” said it took just a week to gather the signatures to qualify the initiative.

Dorothy Schmultzer, 79, was among those who signed. She said her water bills hover around $40 a month--even when she tells her husband, Len, not to hose off the porch or water their three trees.

“When you have to squeeze a dime to keep a tree alive, then I don’t think it’s our country anymore,” Schmultzer said. “My husband fought in World War II, and I think we deserve a tree to sit under when we’re old and sick.”

New Prosperity Could Be Threatened

Business leaders in Yucca Valley see the measure as a threat to emerging prosperity in this town of 19,000--it has a new Hollywood Video store, new coffeehouse and new patio furniture shop.

For most of the last decade, neighborhoods here have been dotted with boarded-up houses that wouldn’t sell. News coverage of the 1992 Landers earthquake showing Gov. Pete Wilson standing in front of a crumpled Yucca Valley bowling alley didn’t boost property values.

“Everything dumped on this little town: the recession, a water shortage, the earthquake,” Armstrong said. “But we worked hard and finally have something to offer. Now this. We’re in the Mojave Desert. If you bankrupt the water district, don’t even think about building new houses, new businesses. It kills this community.”

The typical home water bill in Yucca Valley is about $15 higher than in several other High Desert districts--but much of that amount goes to debt service on a new pipeline.

The district says the initiative would cut its income 61% and bankrupt it within 14 months; initiative backers say the loss would be only 21%.

Michele Staples, a water rights lawyer who represents the district and others in Southern California, said the initiative will have ramifications elsewhere. “If this passes, it will be looked at by a lot of other communities,” she said.

Just north of Yucca Valley, in the Bighorn Desert View Water District, the same initiative is already on the ballot.

The Bighorn district at first refused to put the initiative on the ballot, saying it was too ambiguous.

That decision was challenged in a lawsuit filed by initiative proponent Tom Bulone and the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Assn.

A San Bernardino County judge ruled in favor of the initiative’s proponents. “It is not up to government to insulate voters from their own ignorance or use procedural issues to thwart the will of the people,” the judge wrote.

Beth Osborne, a member of the Bighorn district’s board of directors, offered her own interpretation: “The judge said if the voters are stupid it’s their own fault.”

Osborne is the white-haired, 79-year-old widow accused of using her cane to strike two people involved with the Yucca Valley initiative.

Ed Montgomery, 48, said Osborne approached him outside a senior center where he was gathering signatures. “She said we were radicals, libertarians, and she hit me with her cane,” he said.

Hawk Marcelli, 42, said he was handing out bumper stickers at the senior center when Osborne struck him too.

Osborne denies touching Montgomery and said she only tapped Marcelli to get his attention. “I’ve never hit anybody in my life, and now police are coming to my door and everywhere I go in town people are saying, ‘I didn’t do it. Don’t hit me,’ ” she said.

Meanwhile, initiative backer Bulone, a witness to the second incident, is angry that the San Bernardino County district attorney didn’t prosecute Osborne.

“She is interfering with our ability to petition, a process which makes government responsible to the people,” he said.

Although some consider Mendoza and the militia a bit offbeat, the initiative appears to be gaining support.

Chuck Bryant, general manager of the Hi-Desert Water District, says Proposition 218 has given a small group a lot of power. And, he says, “this could pass.”