Yucca Valley, Ca. – Last evening, at the Hi-Desert Water District Board meeting, Staff proposed expanding Phase One boundaries of the sewer project out to the North and South from the downtown corridor. Reaching North to grab the airport district pocket of homes including a popular watering hole called Wine & Roses Lounge and scooting South, a large section of new homes called Copper Mountain, the original Shack tract, will now be placed into the mix. A new tract with their own package treatment plant called Mesquite 55 was scooped up too. Of course, the line jagged South to include a small 2 bedroom rental property of mine sitting on the original Onaga border. What a blessing for me to have a fixed assessment placed on the property! Thanks guys!
What was once was a straight line running East and West along Onaga to mark the boundaries of Phase One, now jags in and out to take in some pockets of dense housing, supposedly to protect the aquifer, as stated in their Staff report. According to a 2010 presentation by Lew Carella of Carollo engineering, the Phases were only designed to provide the cost model to determine who will pay for the sewers.
Of real interest to me are the parcels that have been “dropped off” the phasing chart. When I asked for the reason behind that, CFO Frank Luckino told me they were vacant parcels and one segment was so rural, there would never be any pipes running out that way so they were deleted. There is a large section of property in the downtown area near the aquifer now labeled Phase Three, as are the properties on the farthest outskirts of Yucca Valley, as per Luckino and Muzik’s designation.
The hillside reserve area where Councilman George Huntington carved out his custom ranch is in the rural area removed from any and all assessments. Seated among other Sky Harbor Estates where Bill Warner, Bob Dunn and Jack Rarick reside, they will receive the benefits of clean drinking water without having to pay one nickel of any sewer assessment, ever.
A stretch of vacant land in Sky Harbor bordering La Contenta will be investigated to find out about the ownership. Luckino said this was vacant land and would not be assessed. I reminded him that 60% of Phase One is composed of vacant lots and that reason did not make sense to me. He then stated Staff needed to drop properties because of our current population numbers of 20,700, we are not rural to compete for grants. They needed to drop the number down by 700. If that is the case, why remove vacant or selected rural homes? This whole thing stinks to high heaven, if you ask me.
Another questionable area removed from any assessments are two homes on the south side of highway 62 towards the west end of town that were abandoned by unscrupulous builders carving into the steep hillside without any set-backs. Simply driving up the vertical concrete driveways to reach the garage require oxygen tanks to prevent nose bleeds. While I have an idea of possible owners, I will have to pull out my Yucca Valley project maps to check the assessor parcel number to confirm that information.
HDWD GM Ed Muzik stated these changes in boundaries were presented to the companies prior to bidding to design the collection system and would not result in any change orders. Another red flag went up when I heard this was Staff’s idea…..what is really going on here?
The HDWD Board of Directors approved the Staff recommendation with hardly any discussion on the matter thanking Mark Ban for his presentation of the colored overlays to help understand the boundary changes.
Stay tuned for the parcel numbers and list of owners exempt from sewer assessments.
HDWD Moving the Goal Posts Adding More Homes to Phase One and Deleting Others...,
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In any other venue, this would be called gerrymandering. The original Phase I was simple, deliberately to be above any hint of bias or jerrymandering. This latest “modification” shows that political pressure and insider information, is having an impact on the “decision making” at HDWD. The public should be outraged. There is NO environmental, engineering or reasonable explanation. And this is happening AFTER the Assessment District documents were drawn up, the economic and financial basis of how to fund the project.
Actually, this can be challenged, as the environmental documents do not support this decision, the entire project can now go down in flames.
Speak up Yucca Valley
I find it almost unbelievable that the HDWD is changing the boundaries so that many wealthy people are being exempted. I guess there aren’t any other areas that they could use to drop the population numbers? Soooo, they added The Copper Hills to Phase One and found they had too many properties so decided to exempt an area that is so rural that pipes would never be laid there? Sounds very suspicious when influential people live in that area. We are on a cul-de-sac in Sky Harbor that the gas company deems unnecessary to serve, but you bet we will have to connect to the sewer.
There seem to be quite a few readers on this Cactus Thorns site. Aren’t many of them from Yucca Valley? Where are the comments from people about this blatant favoritism? I will be eagerly awaiting the list of names of the exempt.
I would like to know how to raise more awareness about these insider deals being made? Other than the local newspaper and this website, where can people express their opinions regarding these new boundaries?
There was a occupy movement in yucca but do to the lack of interest they seemed to have folded, on a local level your concerns were their concerns. Too bad they were made to look like selfish people that wanted their needs to be provided by the 1%, the same 1% you are now crying about. The citizens will get the representation and governance they deserve, I hope you were supporting there cause.