EDHCSD at odds with [El Dorado County] grand jury

El Dorado Hills Community Services District board members accused the El Dorado County Grand Jury of subpar performance in a draft of its formal response to an investigation regarding the CSD’s management of Landscape and Lighting Assessment Districts.

“…the district expresses its dismay at the slipshod manner in which the grand jury conducted and concluded its investigation,” the 16-page letter reads. The term “strategically forced ignorance” is being suggested as a possible edit. “Both the oral testimony and the documentation provided by the district demonstrated the inaccuracy of many of the inquiries made by the grand jury during its investigation.”

Released June 30, the grand jury report focused on calculation of assessment amounts, the appeals process, rental income credits and possible conflicts of interest between the CSD and LLADs.

“This is a work of fiction,” declared board member Sean Hansen, calling the report “obnoxious and egregiously wrong.” Though the CSD disagrees with 10 of the report’s 13 findings, Hansen admits two are interesting. “For example, LLADs sharing in revenue for field rental programming … it’s a good idea,” he conceded.

The other finding the CSD approved of involved the impact of outsourced contract services on LLAD assessments to which the letter noted could be in the favor of the LLAD members. The CSD agreed all information concerning LLADs is not consolidated on the CSD’s webpage for LLADs.

Hansen took exception to the jury’s reference to conflicts of interest. “This definition by the grand jury is fiction,” he reiterated. “They made it up. There’s a disagreement, not a conflict of interest.”

In addition, the letter attests to the destruction of records relating to the investigation less than a month following the issuance of the report. “Most distressing of all, however, is the admission by the current grand jury foreperson, Marisa Nickles, in an email to District General Manager Kevin Loewen dated July 17, that ‘[a]ll records related to the 2021-22 grand jury investigations have been destroyed,’” the letter revealed.

“What the statute says is that a request can be made for all non-privileged materials on which the grand jury relied in rendering its report,” noted CSD legal counsel David Tyra, who pointed out that there is no prohibition in the code against the destruction of records. “The time period from the date of the report to the recognition in communication to GM Loewen that stated that the records had been destroyed — that was a less than 30-day time period. That seemed odd.”

Board member Noelle Mattock voiced concerns regarding the report’s disputation of standard practices used by districts across the state.

“It’s not just a cavalier brush at us,” she insisted. “Every other district within the county uses the same process. Every other district throughout the state is using this process … we are doing what 99% of the rest of special districts and others do.

“If we’re being called out for errors in the county’s data then every other special district needs to be called out that’s doing these assessment districts as well,” she continued. “So everybody else is failing.”

As to the inaccuracies filed by the CSD, Loewen referred to hours spent verifying the county tax roll given to the assessment engineer, citing outdated information. “The hard part is we don’t know what the mechanism is for us to change the county’s information,” he said. “Not to say we live and die by it but that’s what we utilize, assuming that it’s accurate. We pay for it. Nonetheless, if there’s an error we’ll always rectify it with the homeowner or we’ll have to absorb it.”

Although several recommendations were rejected, more than half were approved and either already implemented or on track for a future date, including defined calculations, improvement lists, boundary maps, rental income credits and added financial transparency.

Loewen has also promised to revive the advisory committee, which failed from lack of community participation in 2018.

“I really respect and appreciate the hard work that the grand jury does,” said Hansen. “Like us, it’s a volunteer position. I thank you all for the hard work that you put into this. But there’s a lot of big issues in this report.”

Final edits to the draft letter were tabled to a special meeting, tentatively set for 5 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 14. The meeting will be posted on the CSD website and the public is welcome to attend.

Village Life
Sel Richard
September 15, 2022