Leader of a taxpayer revolt vows to fight on.
By P.G. O’Malley/Special to The Malibu Times
Accused by KABC talk show host Doug McIntyre of sneaking through a benefit assessment district in the Santa Monica Mountains, Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy Executive Director Joe Edmiston insists everything was on the up and up.
“When people object to the outcome, they won’t tell you to your face,” Edmiston said. “Nobody can argue about saving open space, so they criticize the process.”
Edmiston maintains the confusing notification to Los Angeles city residents of a new tax to buy land in the mountains resulted from legislation passed after Proposition 218 required any new taxes be approved by whoever would benefit from them.
“We did everything the way the law specifies,” Edmiston said.
Property owners who live in the two districts (east to Griffith park and west to the Calabasas border), which are being taxed, recently received notice that $40 for “fire prevention” had been added to their Los Angeles County property tax bill and a separate notification from the conservancy’s joint powers agency, the Mountains Recreation Conservation Authority (MRCA), that they could opt to pay the assessment, the purpose of which was to purchase open space, in one lump sum.
MRCA Public Affairs Director Dash Stolarz insisted the confusion about the differing descriptions resulted from a mistake in the county assessor’s office, where someone entered the information incorrectly on tax statements. But longtime conservancy critic Pat Bell, who, with McIntyre, objects to the new assessment, insists the county was just following MRCA directions.
“They just type in what they get,” Bell said.
Edmiston claims MRCA was required by law to notify property owners of the lump sum option, and it was just bad timing that its letter followed county tax bills in the mail. He also reported that a second MRCA letter is on its way, asking property owners how they want to pay. None of the lump sum checks have been cashed, Edmiston said, and will be returned if people who paid both bills decide to opt for the long-term payment option- and vice versa.
McIntyre called the mail-in ballot (approved by 68 percent and 77 percent in the two districts, but with only 22 percent of residents returning ballots) “below the radar” and said he may seek to have the results overturned.
“The ballot itself was confusing and the voter information packet was nothing more than a sales tool,” McIntyre said.
But Edmiston insists state law mandates the mail-in ballot, and he himself is so frustrated with the process he may author a bill to allow voters the option of casting any assessment district votes in person.
Michael Tunick, past president of the Briar Summit Homeowners Association, which represents residents in Laurel Canyon, says McIntyre misunderstands the process. It was homeowners, said Tunick, who took the idea of an assessment district to both the Mountains Restoration Trust and MRCA because they were concerned about losing open space in the mountains.
McIntyre has also charged that besides being unreadable, the tax ballot looked “like junk mail,” and many residents missed it because it was sent during July when they were out of town. But both Edmiston and Tunick point out that two notices were mailed to residents prior to the ballot, that homeowner associations widely debated the issue and both the Los Angeles Times and Daily News published articles on the issue.
“There’s only so much you can inform the public,” Tunick said.
Edmiston also said the Los Angeles City Council had to pass on the assessment before the MRCA could send out its material, including the two advance ballot notifications.
Sounding genuinely concerned that McIntyre might challenge the results of the election, Edmiston said he worried it would take another year to work through a second legal challenge while the costs of buying property keeps going up.
But McIntyre isn’t buying it.
“This was an election that by design disenfranchised voters. The grand slam would be to replace Joe Edmiston and disband the MRCA.”
McIntyre admits the whole issue might have “just faded away” had Edmiston not called his talk show the night he brought it up. Edmiston agreed, calling his 2 a.m. call-in a mistake. “It was kind of foolish for me to call and try to straighten things out,” Edmiston said. “His show is entertainment, not a place to set people straight.”