Mosquito District seeks tax increase

A local governmental agency tasked with controlling mosquito-borne disease is asking property owners for additional tax revenue to pay for essential services. But some critics, including one of the agency’s board members, worried that the tax increase will instead go toward the agency’s pension fund.

Notice of the proposed property tax assessment by the Marin-Sonoma Mosquito and Vector Control District began arriving in the mailboxes of more than 200,000 Sonoma and Marin property owners in late February.

The assessment would vary by property type and amount to $12.86 per year for a single-family home to $7.70 for a condominium or townhouse. The proposed rates are slightly lower for owners of apartment buildings, and bottom out at 3 cents per acre for owners of property with open space. The new assessment would be on top of a $12 assessment that was approved in 1996.

In January, the 23-member board voted to approve the assessment ballot with two trustees, both from Marin County, voting against the measure.

Trustee Frank Egger, who represents Fairfax, explained his reasoning for voting “no” on authorizing a special ballot for the assessment.

“It’s a 59 percent increase in the tax rate,” Egger said. “It puts a brand new assessment on top of the existing one. Obviously the district needs money to pay down its unfunded pension and post-employment benefits, but there are other ways of doing it.”

Egger added that he was against using public funds to pay for the ballot measure, and he said that the four-page flier that was sent out with the ballot amounted to “fear tactics.”

The flier featured close-up photos of a mosquito, a family of rats and a tick, and it made reference to the agency having to cut services if the assessment was not passed.

Phil Smith, general manager with the MSMVCD, acknowledged that the district’s pension fund was presently underfunded. A November 2014 audit report to the board stated that the organization’s pension with the Marin County Employee Retirement Association is about 78 percent funded. But Smith added that funding pensions was not what was behind the tax proposal.

He explained that in 2013 trustees began a 10-year financial planning process after experiencing decreased property tax revenues during the recession.

“What the analysis revealed, in a nutshell, was that revenues had been pretty stagnant overall,” he said.

The district’s finances come from property taxes, a $10 per home charge know as an “ad valorem” tax and a benefits assessment, which was capped at a maximum of $12 per property when it was approved in 1996.

“The benefits assessment is a small add-on to the property taxes – it’s not actually a property tax,” Smith said. “It is calculated by a specialized civil engineer who looks at the special benefits the district provides to properties and the property owners and apportions them to each type of property.”

Petaluma resident Steve Ayala, who has been Petaluma’s representative on the MSMVCD since 1993, said he voted in favor of authorizing the ballot initiative because the district needs the revenue to continue its programs such as providing mosquito-eating fish, monitoring ticks and inspecting homes for rodents.

“Well, it’s come to the point where we’ve reached the cap,” he said. “We can’t increase the budget in spite of cost increases and expenses. Pensions for the past few years have scared everyone. No one realized that it would be such a problem. ... The pensions really caught us by surprise, as it did everybody. We’re trying to deal with it.”

Ayala added that pensions were not the driving factor behind the assessment.

“Whether pensions had any role in this assessment, the answer has always has been no,” he said. “But in the back of my mind I think that if we’re not stressed for current expenses, as we are with extra payments toward pensions, then we’re ahead of the game.”

(Contact Alex Horvath at argus@arguscourier.com).