As you may know, the CCSD Board has decided to move forward with imposition of the rate increase. This action is being taken in the face of the rate protest submissions and the presentation by Mr. Biddle of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayer’s Association. As a candidate for CCSD Director, if elected, I commit to seeking a Board vote to rescind the rate increase based upon the evidence that the rate protest was, in fact, successful. If a rate increase is still warranted, then the CCSD must propose a new rate increase and follow the procedures required by law.
Rich Davega
Last 5 posts by RichDavega
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Thank you Rich,
YOU HAVE MY VOTE because you are promising to rescind these unlawful rate increases! And I hope the rest of Cambria will follow suit and VOTE for you. I’ve been out of town for a month and when I got back to Cambria and saw that the CCSD REVISED their NUMBERS for the Prop. 218 Protest I just about lost my mind. No kidding .. .what have we been saying all along? Their numbers are wrong. The CCSD is finally admitting their numbers are wrong. Well guess what Cambrians? The CCSD numbers are STILL wrong. The parcel numbers are wrong, the number of duplicates is wrong, the number of disqualified protests is wrong. When I got back into town, I read in our local newspaper a comment from an incumbent CCSD director who says in the newspaper “it’s not about right or wrong” ! How convenient.
As my husband and I were discussing this morning, it is unimaginable that our precious little ‘village’ community could vote against something, volunteers could spend time and money to get out the vote, and still have a governing body THROW OUT THEIR VOTES! Then this local citizens group has to call each and every protestor so that their votes can be counted, the protestors have to take their time to go down to Rabobank to get their votes notarized, and the CCSD STILL WON’T COUNT THEM? What? What does a citizen have to do to get their message across? What is happening to our constitutional rights in this country? This was a simple vote, and should have been a simple decision. Are there too many lawyers on the board to admit defeat or something?
CCSD directors MUST recognize the success of the last Proposition 218 protest, and rescind any rate increase. The CCSD disqualified 320 protest forms and the reasons for disqualification have not been given. In addition, the CCSD illegally threw out 61 votes (for miscompared signatures) and actually accused Cambrians of committing a crime by submitting fraudulent protest forms. Volunteers from Cambrians for Fiscal Responsibility contacted as many of those 61 citizens as we could, and 30 Cambria citizens signed notarized documents, confirming their protests were valid and should not have been thrown out. These citizens include many of your elderly neighbors, your prominent local business owners, a Cambria builder, and one local realtor. Do you honestly think THEY committed a crime? This CCSD has reversed the will of the people when the people successfully voted against raising rates. I urge those people whose votes were discarded will decide to come forward to tell you their stories on this website. Remember C.F.R. only contacted the 61 citizens whose signatures were ‘miscompared’ . Can you imagine how many more notarized signatures we would submit if we had the time and manpower to try to contact the 320 protestors that were disqualified for other reasons? I suggest we would have another 200 protest forms that should have been counted at the least!
I ask that all CCSD directors rescind this rate increase so that we can go back to the financial drawing board – the place we should have been last March. There is some discussion about holding ‘another’ budget workshop to educate Cambrians on how to read a municipal budget and that is a good thing. However , I believe it is more important for Cambrians, along with the CCSD to come up with a realistic budget for the future, in light of this huge financial meltdown our country is facing.
Mary Webb
Rich, your understanding of fiscal and civic responsibility certainly gets my vote on Tuesday. Thank you for persistently and wisely raising issues that bear on well-being here in Cambria.