Message to Property Owners
UPDATE JULY 8, 2026
A lot has happened since we posted 90 days ago and for the most part a worst-case scenario is playing out as we had suspected. We were approached in April by members of PRD 13A who enlisted our help (and that of other PRD's) in attempting to deal with pressure being put on them by the County to "fix" (as the County defines it) financial issues facing their PRD. PRD 13A is one of the biggest PRD's and also unfortunately is facing one of the largest funding shortfalls. We won't go into all the details of how the deficit came about but the cause is not all that different from how the shortfall we see in our PRD came about. Issues such as establishing the PRD without the means to inflate assessments to accommodate inflation, mandatory use of overpriced County contractors and high admin and project fees paid to the County for their management of the overall process all led to the funding shortfall.
The "fix" proposed by the County for PRD 13A was to force PRD members to either vote in favor of an assessment increase in an amount to sufficient to fully fund future costs, or disband the PRD, no other options. While this might seem to be a reasonable proposal, the problem was the required funding amount used by the County was based on improving the PRD roads to a condition determined by the County, a condition better than the average for all roads in the County, a condition well beyond the "rural road" level desired and requested by property members. This resulted in a mandatory increase more than ten times the current assessment level. The County then took their "fix" to the Board of Supervisors and without addressing the desires of PRD members (in fact not even acknowledging that any objections existed) got the Supervisors to approve the "all or nothing" choice being forced on PRD 13A. If you have the time and want to view the hatchet job performed on PRD 13A you can see video of the Supervisor's meeting at this link:
The relevant content starts around 1:20:00. While the Supervisors may have good intent you can see they are working with a very incomplete picture of what PRDs are and complete ignorance of the fact that DPW was paid to assist in getting them set up and that DPW has been paid by the property owners to "manage" the PRDs. In our case paid for 46 years. Draw your own conclusions.
(NOTE: In the first part of the video, they are talking about a Rancho Santa Fe PRD but Jim Desmond's comments pertain to PRD 102 as well. The rest of the video is PRD 102 specific.)
And if you want to know more about what's up at PRD 13A you can view their website here:
We can't say exactly what at this means for PRD 102 but given DPW's promise at our meeting a few months ago about plans for a big "fix" to PRD 102's financial situation, we can only assume they are setting up to force the same limited options. We can only hope the number they come up with will be reasonable and that they provide a real campaign to convince property owners to support their proposal. If the support is not there and they force dissolution of the PRD, we can rest assured that what is currently a bad situation will only become a far bigger problem.
Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.
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UPDATE: APRIL 24, 2026
Once again there has been turnover at DPW and we have another new team to interface with. Wanting to ensure that we maintain the momentum described below in the Sept. 26 update we asked for a face-to-face meeting to bring the new players up to speed, and that's where we were presented with the bad news. Contrary to what we were told last September we learned that the county has decided not to increase the assessment as they had committed.
We were told that there was a related legal ruling returned in Northern California and concerns over the precedent it established led them to implement a policy of making no adjustments to assessments without a full vote of PRD membership, even in the case where the increased amount had been fully
authorized at the time of the PRD's formation.
Following that announcement, they spent the rest of the meeting describing in vague terms a broad plan that would seek to resolve financial shortfall issues across all the PRD's in the county. The only problem was that they couldn't provide the specifics of the plan. While we agreed with their objective, we left the meeting concerned that they would be deferring short-term fixes that might provide assistance to us in favor of a grandiose scheme that would allow them to distance themselves from any blame for their role in allowing things to deteriorate to where they stand today.
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QUICK UPDATE: SEPTEMBER 26, 2025
Great news! After legal review by county attorneys, we have been told by our team at DPW they will be including an increase to the already-established assessment max in next year’s annual board letter that goes forward each June with rates for all PRDs. We will keep you apprised as things develop.
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UPDATE: AUGUST 14, 2025
Administratively a lot has happened over the past months. To kick it off we held an in-person meeting with the new DPW team the end of March which resulted in a very productive conversation. The first order of business was acquainting the DPW folks with some of the unique aspects of PRD 102's structure and history and how that has helped create the financial shortfall we now face. The ensuing discussion focused on what could be done to increase the property owner assessment to the maximum that was authorized when the PRD was established in 1980.
Historically the annual assessment was based on the next year's budgeted spending limited only by the established maximum. This practice was working well up until the Board of Supervisors made a "policy decision" to freeze PRD assessments at early 2008 levels. As this was a policy choice and not a legal requirement, we hoped there would be a way to either alter the policy of obtain an exception. The meeting closed with a commitment from the DPW team to address a workaround.
On the project side of things, as we had forecast in our February update, there was no activity in FY24/25. Total spending for that period on road/culvert maintenance services was $0. DPW staff and administrative costs were $26,014.
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UPDATE: FEBRUARY 20, 2025
It's been a while since our last update, and not really much to talk about. Since we last spoke our contact points with the County DPW changed twice and new senior management came on board. Once again, we are still working to reestablish effective working communication.
On the operational side of things, we have been told that as a result of work backlog there is a good chance we will not see anything other than emergency repairs this summer, although we are still in conversation to see if we can change that and will report back if we get a different answer.
For the time being there is no active effort to address the annual assessment amount but we hope to put something together with the help of the County soon.
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UPDATE: MAY 5, 2024
Not much to report in the way of financial or assessment news, but we have been active in performing some emergency repairs and in addition were able to perform a bit of preventative maintenance work.
The biggest accomplishment of the past year was the total rebuild of a culvert at the end of North View Court. The failing culvert and resulting sinkhole required a complete dig out and reconstruction with the project costing over $70K. In addition to the culvert work we were able to find enough available funding to remove and replace a section of asphalt on Meadow Glen Way West.
All totaled in FY23/24 $127,767 was spent on road/culvert maintenance services and another $35,385 on DPW staff time and administrative expenses.
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UPDATE: NOVEMBER 28, 2023
Unfortunately, we did not meet our goal on the initial petition drive, but a lot has been going over the summer. Click here Letter to Property Owners (hiddenmeadowsprd.com) or on the tab above "LETTER TO PROPERTY OWNERS" for a complete update.
On the administrative front once again there has been a change of personnel at the Department of Public Works with most of the staff we had been working with re-assigned to new roles and a different team now supporting PRD 102. The new folks all seem knowledgeable and eager to address PRD issues but there still is a bit of a learning curve as there come up to speed on issues particular to our PRD. Of the many challenges we face, the realignment of our support at the DPW seems to be an annual affair.
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UPDATE: JULY 1, 2023
Thank you to the over 100 PRD members who have submitted their signed petition supporting the modest increase in the annual road maintenance assessment. We are more than halfway to the goal we had hoped to meet by early May in order to impact this year's tax rolls. While we didn't make that date, we are still seeing signed petitions coming in and the County has indefinitely extended the submission deadline, so we are continuing the initiative.
If you haven't already sent in your petition, please consider doing that now. If you have already sent in your petition, please talk to your neighbors and ask them to do the same.
If you or anyone you know has any questions at all about the PRD process or the assessment, please submit questions to HiddenMeadowsPRD@yahoo.com.
If anyone needs a petition form, please send your request to HiddenMeadowsPRD@yahoo.com .
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ORIGINAL POSTING: APRIL 19, 2023
By now you should have received a letter in the mail requesting your signature on a petition to increase your assessment for road maintenance. While it might seem an unusual request to have you ask to voluntarily pay more for something, the reality is at the current rates we are losing the battle to maintain our roads.
We are at a point where what funds we have are being consumed by needed repairs leaving nothing for preventative maintenance. With no preventative maintenance, repairs are needed more often and are generally more complex and of course consume even more of our limited funds. We have struggled for years to squeeze the most out of our limited dollars but the fact that we are in a downward spiral is now quite evident.
Please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the content on this website in order to better understand the decision you are being asked to make. For some basic background on the PRD, click on "News Articles" (particularly the May 2020 article), to understand our request click on "Letter to Property Owners", for some more specific answers on the increase check out the "Frequently asked Questions" tab. If you have other questions, you can email us at: HiddenMeadowsPRD@yahoo.com.