Voter support critical for levee project

New taxes are seldom embraced, but landowners' support of an assessment district to collect funds for levee improvements is crucial, officials are saying.

The Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency presented the Yuba City City Council with a progress report Tuesday to discuss the status, options and tentative timeline for levee restoration. One of the strongest points echoed by council and agency members alike was the need for passing the Proposition 218 benefit assessment vote in May.

The next six months will be the most critical, said City Councilman Tej Maan. Local governments and agencies must push to educate residents about how the assessment district will benefit them.

"No matter how we ask for the money, they say, 'It's a tax on us and what do we get for it?'" Maan said. The benefit is possibly shrinking flood insurance premiums, said Bill Edgar, interim director of the flood control agency. Residents' insurance rates have risen and are scheduled to rise exponentially in some areas over the next few years.

But by investing in an assessment district that would collect taxes to increase the security of the levees, those insurance figures have the potential to decrease in the future.

"We've got to get the message out and it's got to be clear and it's got to be simple," Edgar said. "Spend a little money now and get insurance down later."

The Early Implementation Project the agency is pushing for would provide the greatest public safety improvements as soon as possible, gain a share of state bond dollars and reduce the period communities will be under Federal Emergency Management Agency insurance mandates and building restrictions, said Dave Peterson, the Folsom engineer leading the study. It would restore — not improve — the levees to their 1957 profile through seepage and stability berms or cutoff walls.

That restoration of about 24 miles of the Feather River's west levee, from Yuba City to the Thermalito Afterbay near Oroville, would provide protection against the peak flood expected over 200 years, Peterson said. The existing timeline plans for completion of the Early Implementation Project in the fall of 2014.

Looking at the schedule, Councilman Kash Gill asked if it was the best-case scenario. The region learned with the Star Bend levee improvements in south Sutter County that there can be significant delays, he said.

Landowners' support of a benefit assessment district can minimize those delays but they need to understand what they are voting on, Gill said.

"If we are going to go to the wishing well, we need to go one time with the right figures," he said. "If we don't get this passed at the right time, everything in Yuba City comes to a screeching halt."

Levees are the top priority for Yuba City, so officials want to do anything to push the taxes through to expedite the process, Gill said.

The flood control agency will hear more about the Early Implementation Project, public outreach process for the assessment district and election planning for the Prop. 218 vote at its next meeting, at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Contact Appeal-Democrat reporter Ashley Gebb at 749-4724 or agebb@appealdemocrat.com.