JAMES NOONAN | Posted: Wednesday, September 14, 2011 10:01 pm
Two districts providing water and sewer service to residents at Lake Berryessa are flatly rejecting the Napa County grand jury’s assertion that the district’s are being managed illegally.
The official response comes more than two months after the grand jury released a pair of reports —one for the Napa Berryessa Resort Improvement District (NBRID), the other for the Lake Berryessa Resort Improvement District (LBRID) — challenging the legality of the Board of Supervisors’ role in managing the districts.
The supervisors — who take on the title of district director when conducting business relevant to Berryessa — should have held an election to allow district residents to serve on the board or acted simply as county supervisors managing a dependent district, the grand jury states.
Failure to do so means that the district’s resolutions, meetings and actions can face legal challenge, the jury adds.
In their response Tuesday, the Board of Supervisors — acting as district directors — defended their role in managing the two lakeside districts. The board called the crux of the grand jury’s position a “misstatement of both law and fact.”
The grand jury’s position, the response states, is based on a section of California’s Public Resource Code that describes the makeup of a citizen-based board of directors.
In issuing their findings, the grand jury overlooked the preceding sections that say a citizen-based board of directors will be formed only at the discretion of a county’s board of supervisors, the response states.
In forming the two Berryessa districts back in the 1960s, Napa’s Board of Supervisors didn’t exercise that discretion, and have still yet to do so. As such, the current form of governance is legal, according to the districts’ responses.
While brushing off many of the grand jury’s findings and recommendations, members of the district boards noted that the grand jury’s reports had already taken a toll on operations at the lake.
Director Diane Dillon said she had heard of at least one district resident who is now refusing to pay their water bill, claiming that the Board of Directors lacks legal authority to charge for service.
“It’s really unfortunate the way this process works,” Dillon said, noting that the jury has circulated its report and the district has now issued a response, but that the two sides will likely never come together to resolve the issue in the eyes of residents.
Adding to her frustration is the fact that differences in the districts’ and grand jury’s respective positions boil down to a basic reading of the state’s Public Resource Code, which Dillon said clearly supports the districts’ position.
“It wasn’t clear for me, from the grand jury’s report, that they even looked at the law,” she said.
Some residents of the lake’s southern shore — which is served by the NBRID — also seemed unhappy with the depth of the grand jury’s report.
“I was very disappointed with the grand jury’s report,” said Tracy Renee, vice chair of the six-member “transition committee” that will help oversee NBRID’s move to an independent community service district. “I just didn’t feel it was researched correctly.”
Stu Williams, chair of the transition committee, said that he felt that the grand jury failed to talk to the citizen leadership at NBRID, and if they had, might have formed different opinions of the county’s involvement.
“To the best of my knowledge, no one from the grand jury contacted the residents’ committee or the transition committee,” Williams said.
Under state law, public agencies are required to respond to grand jury findings.
Read more: http://napavalleyregister.com/news/local/county-rejects-grand-jury-s-lake-berryessa-reports/article_bc805e5a-df57-11e0-8619-001cc4c03286.html#ixzz1YSjRT4jq
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