County holds meeting on roads

On the evening of November 4th, Monterey County Resource Management’s Special Districts staff held a community outreach meeting at the golf course clubhouse with property owners in the Quail community regarding the future of our residential road maintenance. Since the passage of Proposition 13, counties get only a miniscule amount of tax monies back from the State for road maintenance. Since that time, we have relied on County Service Area (CSA) funds for our maintenance needs. Unfortunately, CSAs were not intended, nor funded, for full road maintenance and those funds are not adequate for full maintenance.

Our CSA is funded by a very small percentage of our property tax that is designated for our community exclusively. The focus of the outreach meeting was to give us information. The county has contracted with an engineering firm to study our maintenance needs, set priorities and inform us of the cost to bring our roads to acceptable levels. That study is due to be completed in June of 2020. Monterey County does not have the funds to improve the quality of residential roads. Having a CSA in place give us some control over the future of our roads. When the engineers study is released, property owners will have the opportunity to vote, via Proposition 218, to an across the board increase in their financial contribution toward road maintenance. The result of that vote will be completely within the control of the property owners at Quail.