Frequently Asked Questions

---

 A PRD is a district formed under California State Law by area property owners for the purpose of maintaining and/or improving their private roads. The cost of the work is paid for through assessments or special taxes placed on the tax rolls.  (see May 2020 article on "News Articles" tab for more detail)

Besides the obvious fact that the PRD is responsible for ensuring that you have safe access to your property it also greatly simplifies what you need to do to fulfill your legal obligation to maintain the roads you use.

Short answer: Yes.

Per CA Civ Code § 845 (2019) 845. (a) The owner of any easement in the nature of a private right-of-way, or of any land to which any such easement is attached, shall maintain it in repair.  Be careful how you read that. Whoever owns the roadway easement has a duty to maintain it, not necessarily the owner of the property burdened by the easement.

For an interesting article on this subject take a look at     Jim Porter: Private road maintenance – who pays? | SierraSun.com         The article is a few years old, but the law hasn't changed.

That's a good question and one that doesn't seem to have a good answer. The county makes what is essentially an arbitrary decision in delineating what roads will be included in the "County Maintained Road System". If you aren't listed as being "in the system", they will not spend any of their money on your road. More than a few have argued with the policy, no one has made any progress on the issue.

Recently a property owner asked why $225K per year wasn't enough to maintain our roads. The answer was, well yes, $225K should be enough, but unfortunately our gross annual budget is only $62K. Of that $62K approximately $17K goes for things like insurance, project management and administration leaving about $45K available for actual repair and maintenance. With only $45K to spread over 6 miles of roadway, recent work has mainly been focused on repair necessary to allow for safe access. Take a look at the Hidden Meadows news article from June 2020 (on the News Articles tab) for some details on what things actually cost.

Issues with the financial situation have been apparent for some time and have been a constant focus of attention. Back in April of 2017 we incurred the expense of a formal vote for an increase. Unfortunately, the increase was defeated, seemingly from a lack of interest with limited voter turnout. We were beginning another attempt in late 2019 when Covid pretty much put an end to community outreach, and we were restarting that effort in 2021 when we received what we felt at the time to be a breath of hope from outside.

At the June 30, 2021 County Bord of Supervisor's Meeting, supervisor Desmond publicly raised the issue of ongoing underfunding with the County's PRD's (see video of the proceeding's here     Board of Supervisors Meeting (granicus.com)      fast forward to 30:50 in the video to see Councilman Desmond's remarks) and directed the DPW to examine the issue and report back in six months. At that time, it seemed like the situation was finally going to get some needed attention from the County.

Unfortunately, now almost two years later we still haven't heard back from the DPW on their "six month" project and have decided to take matters back into our own hands with this petition drive. We chose the petition approach in part because the County told us it would be at least a year before they could support a vote, not to mention a $20K charge. The whole thing is a real long shot attempt, but we couldn't sit by any longer and do nothing.

All funds used for printing, mailing, banner and this website were donated. No PRD money was used anywhere in this petition drive.

You are correct in that the communication avoids saying the increase will fix all our long-term problems, because it most likely won't. But what it might do is buy us some time.

One issue (of many) is that we are keeping up with repairs but not doing enough preventative maintenance. Hopefully the increase will give us a little passing power that we can use to get ahead of problems ... a culvert inspection is a lot cheaper than a culvert repair.

We are certainly not the only PRD in this situation and had some hope we might get some relief back in June of 2021. Supervisor Desmond got wind of the issue and told the DPW to look into it and report back in six months. Now, almost two years later we are still waiting for the results. Hopefully something will come of it, but we couldn't wait any longer so started this initiative.

So, for now the best plan we can come up with is to hopefully sell this increase and then use the funds as judiciously as possible to avoid major catastrophes for as long as possible. In the meantime, maybe we get some help from the County (not likely) or a couple of dry winters (more likely), that will allow us to put off doing this again for a while. 

Click on "102 - Mountain Meadow" on the county website    PRD Maps (sandiegocounty.gov)        for the map of roads maintained by PRD 102. Note from the map, only those roads or portions of roads outlined in red are covered by PRD maintenance.

With input from the PRD committee, the County makes the actual determination as to what work will be scheduled. First priority is always safety issues and secondly, problems that could become safety issues. In recent times they haven't been able to get past first and second priority items.

When PRD 102 was first established in 1980 the environment was far simpler than it is today. At that time a small number of property owners got together to create a cooperative solution that benefitted all. For cost allocation they took a pretty simple approach (consistent with other road maintenance agreements) that worked well at the time. Since then, the PRD has become much larger and more complex and that has created new issues with costs. Unfortunately, the county, and the rules established back in 1980, are simply not flexible and will not accommodate ANY changes. 

Having said that, it is important to note that there is a lot more to the cost equation than how far you drive. Yes, mileage is a consideration but so is number of drivers, number of trips, weight of vehicles, number of Amazon and UPS deliveries, commute?, school?, etc., etc. and of course, once you have all that, you'll need the milage police to enforce everything. There are some benefits to simple.