Voters pass assessment to fund Sutter County levee upgrades

Voters in Sutter and Butte counties overwhelmingly passed a new property assessment to pay for a 44-mile levee upgrade supporters called critical to the region's flood safety and development.

Property holders came out in favor of the funding plan with 71 percent of the weighted vote, the Sutter Butte Flood Control Agency announced Friday. Some 13,500 voters out of 34,200 affected landowners — 39.4 percent — cast mail-in ballots in the election, which ran from May 15 to June 30.

The funding awaits final approval of the flood control agency board, which meets Wednesday in Yuba City.

"Assuming the board gives us the go-ahead, we're planning to get started with the design and environmental work immediately," said Bill Edgar, agency interim executive director. "Our goal is to complete these levees by 2015, so we're going to be aggressive on our timeline."

If the board signs off, property owners in the area bordered by the west bank of the Feather River and the Sutter Bypass, in Sutter County, and the Thermalito Afterbay in Butte County, will begin paying an annual assessment on their property tax bill this fall to help pay for enhanced levees.

The amount of the asses ment varies by what the land is used for, its location, the type and size of buildings on the land, parcel size, and the relative benefit it receives from a levee upgrade.

Agency spokeswoman Kim Floyd said for single-family homes, the amount will typically be $80 to $320 a year, with homeowners at the northern end of the affected area paying less and those in parts of Yuba City paying more.

The annual assessment won't change unless a property owner makes some improvement to the property, such as building a new structure or adding to an existing one, Floyd said.

Single-family homes constituted 39 percent of the weighted ballots sent out, followed by commercial properties with 17 percent, industrial properties with 14 percent, and institutional/government properties at 13 percent, Floyd said.

Ballots were weighted by the same factors that go into the assessment amount.

Sunsweet Inc. and the Yuba City Unified School District were the largest voters under the weighted system. Floyd said agency officials have not yet analyzed the returned ballots to see how support and opposition broke down.

Sutter County Supervisor Stan Cleveland, who supported the measure and is on the agency board, said the assessment's passage was a tribute to residents' willingness to make a financial commitment, even during a severe economic downturn.

"We've finally been able to accomplish it after what happened in 1997-98, and this was all done because of the cooperation of businesses, of community groups and elected officials getting the message that this opportunity is the best that will ever come," he said.

The 33-year assessment would raise $72.5 million of the estimated $250 million needed to shore up the affected earthen levees. State bonds would cover the remaining costs of the project, for which construction is to run from 2012 to 2014.

Floyd said the agency board will also vote Wednesday on whether to award contracts for financial oversight, and design and environmental work to tackle the levee project.

"We want to hit the ground running," she said.

Cleveland said he was particularly happy the measure passed with more than a two-thirds vote, because it gives the agency ammunition when it asks for federal money to cover the rest of the cost.

The agency announced the levee upgrade last year as a way to bolster flood protection ahead of any federally funded project, which was not expected before 2020.

Fortified levees are meant to safeguard areas north of Yuba City against the highest river level expected every 200 years, while creating a 100-year protection level to the south. Aging levees in Sutter County lost their federal certification to provide 100-year protection in 2006, leading to major hikes in flood insurance rates two years later in the south county.

The levee improvements also are intended to keep the two counties free of development blocks under Senate Bill 5 of 2007, which takes effect in 2015 and requires communities to have a 200-year flood protection level in order to issue building permits.

Trumon Cooper, a Sutter County resident who earlier encouraged the dredging of the river as a solution to flood protection concerns, said while no one can argue with a need to fix levees, he's worried another aspect of flood control hasn't been addressed.

"I don't think it's a complete package," he said, explaining dredging the Feather River is a critical component engineers and officials have ignored. "They don't take that into consideration, and they've never been on that river."

Cooper wouldn't say how he voted on the assessment, though he added, "I have no particular qualms about it passing."

WHAT'S NEXT

WEDNESDAY: The agency's board of directors will meet to acknowledge the mail-in ballot election's results and formally adopt the assessment.

THIS FALL: Property owners in the agency's region will begin seeing the assessment on their property tax bill.

2012: Work is expected to begin on upgrading Feather River levees, starting with areas where the need is most severe or where the Federal Emergency Management Agency has already mapped residents into a flood zone and caused insurance rates to skyrocket.

ONLINE: Look up your assessment amount at www.sutterbutteflood.org

CONTACT Ben van der Meer at 749-4709 or bvandermeer@appealdemocrat.com . Contact Howard Yune at 749-4708 or hyune@appealdemocrat.com .