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The board of the Castlewood Property Owners Association made its position clear to members attending an association meeting Tuesday evening: Vote No when Alameda County distributes ballots on taking on debt.
The association has been locked into negotiations with the county since filing suit last year contending that the county violated provisions of Proposition 218 after imposing a $7,000 debt on each property to cover a shortfall in the county service area’s operating budget.
The supervisors, at their regularly scheduled meeting Tuesday, considered a settlement with the association, but did not report any actions after the closed-door session. The association and its legal counsel already had signed off on the settlement. Shawn Wilson, chief of staff for Supervisor David Haubert, emailed that there was no reportable action taken, and the association’s lawyer did not hear back from the county legal staff.
With no announcement of action by the supervisors, it calls the county’s scheduled meeting April 3 into question. The agenda mailed to property owners includes a full financial breakdown, a description of the Prop 218 process and an open forum for questions and answers.
The draft settlement calls for the county to follow the mandated Prop 218 process, association vice-president Mike Mitchell explained Tuesday evening to homeowners. If 55% of the homeowners vote No, then the assessment is dead. If the measure is not rejected by that margin, it will take effect with each household responsible for $7,000.
Moving forward, both sides want to reform the association into either its own community service district that will elect its own officers and then contract for management services, or annex into the city of Pleasanton.
In either case, one provision that will be debated heavily is how much of the property taxes that go to the county will instead be provided to the new association. Mitchell, who presented and handled most of the questions, said the number could range from $70,000 to $500,000. Any annexation to Pleasanton likely will need to be cash-positive for the city. Audience members commented that there have been other efforts over the years to annex that have gone nowhere.
The association’s core contention is that the county mismanages the district with little regard to costs. There are rented emergency generators to provide electricity in a power outage, but they are not connected to the pumps. To turn them on, a homeowner must notify the company managing water and sewer so it can dispatch an employee to get the pumps working again.
The board said the bid for installing new stainless steel water tanks — work that had to be done — ran $1.3 million over budget.
Homeowners within the country club boundaries also know they are facing significant road repairs and there’s only about $60,000 in that fund.
Property owners are smarting because the county raised the water charge on their property tax bill for 2024-25 by 172%. The association members pay the highest water charges in the county, topping even the city of Pleasanton after its hotly debated increase.
Castlewood homeowners saw their water maintenance and operations charge soar from $1,089 to $2,958, or $338 for 330 units per year. City of Pleasanton rates, even after the hefty hikes, are $180 while Dublin San Ramon Services District clients pay $169 and Fremont area users pay $168.
Mitchell told the crowd of about 75 people that the board would make it easy to vote No by distributing exactly the information required to log votes for each property. It will be a minimum of 45 days after the county holds the informational meeting before the vote can be taken.
As members have said in the past, forming a new agency, which will require the approval of the Alameda County Local Agency Formation Commission, is a two-year project. An annexation to Pleasanton potentially could move more quickly, but the board hasn’t even reached out yet to city officials.
Editor’s note: Journalist Tim Hunt is a freelancer for the Pleasanton Weekly. Hunt and his family live in the Castlewood area and pay these taxes.
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