Citizens for Cityhood
The El Dorado Hills Citizens for Cityhood prepared a brief presentation outlining the expected benefits of becoming a city. The El Dorado Hills CSD received this presentation at their regular March 13 meeting and again at a special session with greater public involvement on April 3. While the public was allowed to comment, there was no interaction or debate with either the EDHCC or EDHCSD members. Public comment was limited to 3 minutes per person. Suffice to say that this was generally a one-way communication.
Both presentations, which are essentially the same, are published on the El Dorado Hills Community Services District Exploring Cityhood web page. In order to avoid any copyright issues, I have not made the presentations available here. You can download copies from the EDHCSD site. That web site also has a complete timeline of the current actions regarding this attempt at cityhood. Since the EDHCSD is overwhelmingly in favor of cityhood, do not expect to see any information that would challenge the current cityhood effort.
Population
The presentation notes that the EDH Census-designated population is larger than any city in El Dorado County and that our tax base funds the rest of the county. This is true, but not a compelling reason to become a city.
Representation
The presentation states that although the CSD is focused on parks and recreation, major decisions are made by the County board of Supervisors and only one Supervisor lives and represents EDH. This is misleading. Although two other supervisors do not live in EDH, their districts include a portion of EDH.
The presentation also claims that the current CSD model no longer meets local needs. However, it fails to mention any concrete examples of needs going unmet.
The presentation implies that once we have a city council making local decisions, we will always get what we want. Not always. For example, I live in Marina Village and rarely go beyond Town Center on Latrobe. I think it would be great to put a huge Amazon warehouse on the south side. More tax revenue, more jobs, my Amazon orders may be delivered faster and since I rarely use Latrobe, there is little downside to me. I would ask my council member to vote for the Amazon warehouse. This is certainly not what the local control folks have in mind.
The presentaton claims that cityhood provides local control to handle affordable housing mandates. Creation of a city also creates a new legal entity that the state can use to impose state mandates. Currently affordable housing mandates are imposed on the county which may or may not allocate a portion of the mandate in our area. Once El Dorado Hills becomes a city, the state will impose mandates to be carried out within the city limits.
Taxation
The presentation makes the point that EDH taxes fund much of the county and that EDH residents contribute more in taxes than we receive in services. While this is undoubtedly true, it is a moot point. The state of California contributes more in taxes than the state receives in services. As we will show in the PCFA, in order to be viable, the city will have to impose a sales tax or increase property taxes. Is it worth paying more in taxes so we can claim that we are receiving our fair share of tax revenue?
The cityhood group say that the cityhood effort will be abandoned if more taxes are needed. Currently, both El Dorado County cities impose additional sales taxes. Placerville has a one cent sales tax and South Lake Tahoe adds one and a half cents. Folsom voters rejected a one cent sales tax and the city is now suffering from a financial crunch. Why would the city of El Dorado Hills be different? More taxes will be needed in order to fund the city.
In fact, the cityhood proponents claim that the city will generate budget surpluses that can be used for police, parks, and recreation. As we will show in our PCFA analysis, there will be no budget surplus. In addition, the CSD FY 24-25 budget1 reported a $15 million surplus in the General Fund that supports district operations after purchasing a 55 acre parcel that was the old Executive Golf Course with no debt. It would appear that the CSD is currently in excellent financial shape without any needing any imaginary surplus tax revenue.
Bureaucracy
The presentation claims that bureaucracy will be reduced by combining County and CSD functions into one city entity. This is only partially true. There will still be many law enforcement, planning and zoning, and road projects that will require county approval and/or participation.
Local Control
This presentation states that cityhood would create the ability of the city to apply local control to limit undesirable projects and create financial independence via revenue growth in already-approved retail and housing. However, in doing so, the slide also mentions the importance of the new Costco store as a source for financial independence. Here again is another example of the dichotomy between those who see the new Costco as a revenue generator and those who oppose Costco as urban sprawl. I suspect a city council would be more inclined to approve a Costco project for the tax revenue and less likely to support those on the side of limited growth.
The Downside of Cityhood
The EDHCC presentation does an excellent job spelling out the benefits of cityhood. Unfortunately, some of these benefits are questionable and/or are overstated. The slide deck does not mention any drawbacks associated with cityhood.
