A vote on an assessment tax proposed by the lone district in charge of wrangling mosquito populations in West Marin—the Marin/Sonoma Mosquito and Vector Control District—failed last week by a very narrow margin. The district was aiming to raise around $3.5 million, over half of which would have gone into a trust fund to pay for “other post-employment benefits,” which last year cut into the district’s reserves by $924,219. 

Without the assessment revenue, the district will have to tighten its pocketbook before a final budget can be adopted on June 10. Some trimming may have to be done through layoffs, such as one unnamed position the district has already slated for the chopping block.

“It’s a little too soon to tell what effect the failed assessment will have on services,” said Phil Smith, the district’s manager. “We certainly plan to offer the highest level of services possible, given the limited funds available.”

Prior to the April 15 mail-in election, the proposed assessment’s $12 fee—to be tacked on to the roughly $22 that property owners in the district already pay—was a charge that many officials believed would be small enough not to elicit public outcry. Others, however, including trustee Frank Egger, viewed it as asking too much from taxed-out property owners.

“We thought [staff] were asking for too much money, too soon,” said Mr. Egger, Fairfax’s representative and one of two trustees opposed to the tax from the start. “We weren’t really sure where that money was going to go.”

Weighted votes

District officials this week appeared frustrated by the election system that caused the vote to fail. By the official tally, a heavier “weighted” percentage of votes was cast in opposition to the assessment, 51.25 percent, while 48.75 percent of votes were in favor. However, the actual number of “yes” votes, in total, exceeded the number of “no” votes by a count of 35,308 to 31,358. A section of California state law called the “Right to Vote on Taxes Act”—or more commonly known as Proposition 218—states that under certain conditions, “no” votes may carry a heavier “weight” than “yes” votes for elections on assessments. 

The benefits of an assessment are twofold: the local agency that levies the fee receives revenue from the property owner, who in turn receives a higher assessed property value from that agency’s services. 

Passed in 1996, Prop 218 was meant to set tougher rules on special taxes like assessments, which local government agencies had been imposing unchecked through legal loopholes in the state’s constitution. 

By nature, special benefits assessments are a means to confer added value and desirability to an assessed property through what’s called “special services,” such as those the mosquito district provides—fewer pesky bugs in a neighborhood.

Last year, the mosquito district elected to propose the tax as a special benefits assessment rather than as a general “ad valorem levy,” which would have required only a two-thirds majority vote (not under the weighted system). 

Under Prop 218, each parcel carries one vote, but heavier weight is given to votes cast by owners of parcels estimated to have a higher value than others in the district. The added value conferred on a parcel by an assessment, according to Prop 218, is to be estimated and published in an engineering report prior to any election. 

In 2014, the district hired Fairfield-based SCI Consulting Group to draft an engineering report for the assessment in order to determine a formula for calculating which parcels in the district should receive a higher assessment and heavier weighted vote than others. That report, however, did not elaborate on a parcel-by-parcel basis, leaving many in the district to wonder where the weighted “no” votes originated.

Trustees are hoping that SCI Consulting will clarify which of the heavily weighted “no” parcels may have tipped the scale against the assessment.

“What you have is a very complicated engineering report which determines what parcels pay what,” said trustee Phil Paisley, of Ross, who serves on the district’s audit committee. “Presumably, the board could have decided to do an ad valorem tax to require a two-thirds vote at the polls.”

Mr. Paisley noted that the district has levied an ad valorem tax in the past, along with two other assessments also passed under Prop 218. An ad valorem tax this time around, Mr. Paisley said, had always been an option.

In the wake of the vote, district officials have begun pondering where future funds should be spent. 

Aside from shoring up benefits costs for its 35 full-time employees, the assessment would have allowed the district to hire additional seasonal staff to help out during the busy summer months. Now, absent the extra support, the number of trained, on-call district technicians available to treat summertime mosquito outbreaks will be limited.

Trustee Tom Bradner, of Larkspur, suggested that the district has enough reserves to cut costs without having to lay off employees. Mr. Bradner went on to wonder whether the district should continue to participate in the same “gold-plated” Kaiser health plan that Marin offers its employees. That plan is advocated by the Marin County Employees Retirement Association, which Mr. Bradley says has never invited any mosquito district trustees to the collective bargaining table.

“We’ve never sat down with whoever the negotiator for the county is with Kaiser,” Mr. Bradley said. “We’ve been following tradition, and tradition doesn’t cut it for me today.”

Around $3 million in funds earmarked for a reserve to pay for future construction could also be tapped to maintain current services, Mr. Bradley said. He said the board has never determined a plan of action for the use of these funds, nor has it examined what construction, specifically, the district may need in the coming years.

The district has pledged to continue providing baseline services, which include routine site-surveillance of mosquitoes, ticks and other pests; monitoring of transmittable diseases; and management of invasive insect species. Recently, the district learned that 60 miles away, in Hayward, dangerous yellow-fever mosquitoes have been spawning; last week, staff technicians deployed two larvicide materials—VectoBac 12AS, a larvae-killing bacteria, and Altosid 12AS, which contains a small amount of a toxic chemical known as methoprene—to combat aggressive Aedes Dorsalis mosquitoes whose larvae have spread rapidly along 780 acres of marshland in Petaluma.

“We are still very much on the job and vigilant,” Mr. Smith said. He did not specify whether any mosquito-control materials are being used in West Marin.

This year, the district is expected to draw another $463,328 from reserves to pay down pensions, all while gearing up for a predicted increase in mosquito populations throughout both counties. 

Since winter, it has been warning West Marin residents that several aggressive mosquito species are arriving months earlier than usual due to warmer weather. These mosquitoes could carry with them contagious diseases, such as West Nile virus.

Despite ominous reports issued by the district, however, these mosquitoes have yet to make any serious landfall in Point Reyes Station as of mid-May. The district is the only organization equipped to combat mosquitoes and other insect pests in Marin and Sonoma Counties, and the 66,666 ballots that were returned represented merely a third of all ballots mailed out to voters.