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Previously:

• Harbor District Sues Fire Protection District Over Missing Ballots in June Benefit Assessment Vote

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Six months after the Crescent City Harbor District filed a lawsuit against the Crescent Fire Protection District, stating it didn’t receive the ballots necessary to participate in last summer’s benefit assessment vote, both parties will try to negotiate a settlement.

The settlement negotiation is at the request of both the fire district and the judge overseeing the lawsuit, Harbormaster Tim Petrick told commissioners Tuesday. But the Harbor District doesn’t need to settle, he said.

“We need to hear them out so the judge knows we’ve done our part,” Petrick told commissioners before they appointed Brian Stone and Gerhard Weber to an ad-hoc committee that would participate in the negotiation. “Obviously our stance so far has been that the settlement of (the lawsuit) would be re-running the vote so it’s fair, and I think the ad-hoc can bring that message to them as well.”

In its lawsuit, the Crescent City Harbor District states it never received the nine ballots it was entitled to in order to participate in the Fire Protection District’s benefit assessment vote.

Commissioners didn’t realize that until right before the June 14 deadline to submit them, Petrick told the Wild Rivers Outpost in September, after it filed the lawsuit.

According to Petrick, commissioners had contacted the Fire Protection District after the deadline and found out the ballots had been returned to sender. But when the Fire Protection District sent harbor staff a list of images of the returned ballots, Petrick said the return to sender label was dated 14 days after the election.

“This means our ballots were missing for approximately 53 days prior to being marked return to sender,” Petrick told the Outpost in September.

Harbor commissioners had voted against the Crescent Fire Protection Districts first unsuccessful efforts at a benefit assessment in October 2020, according to Petrick.

Representing the Crescent Fire Protection District in the settlement negotiation will be directors Joe Gregorio and Jim Nelson, according to Fire Chief Bill Gillespie.

“It’s a starting point to see if there’s any way to come to terms or to gain a perspective on where each party is at with this,” Gillespie told the Outpost.

When asked about the settlement the Harbor District would like to see — re-running the benefit assessment vote — Gillespie said he couldn’t say one way or the other if that would happen.

“We’ve done it twice now and at a fairly substantial cost both times to go through with it,” he said, referring to the benefit assessment attempts. “It’s obviously something we can hear their perspective on it and figure that side of it out.”

The new benefit assessment of $74 for a single-family property took effect this fiscal year and replaces an $18 assessment that ended on Dec. 31, 2021. Coupled with a $24 assessment from 1987, property taxes going toward the fire district from single-family residential homes would be $98 per year.

The new benefit assessment vote capped parcel assessments at $1,000, which applied primarily to large commercial and multi-unit residential properties.

The Crescent Fire Protection District had claimed a narrow victory of $17.80 over those that voted against the benefit assessment following a June 28 recount. The value in favor of the benefit assessment came out at $72,503.80 over an even $72,486 opposed to the assessment.

The results were almost the opposite of what it had been following an initial ballot tabulation on June 15. According to the Crescent Fire Protection District, based on the June 15, 2021 count, the value of the opposing benefit assessment outweighed the yes value by $19.20.

On Tuesday, former county supervisor Roger Gitlin told Harbor Commissioners there are efforts in the community to repeal the benefit assessment.

However, Gillespie told the Outpost that he hadn’t seen anything official regarding a potential repeal.

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