Hidden Meadows residents and guests travelling northward on Mountain Meadow at Vista Montanoso have probably noticed the above sign, but I don’t think too many have bothered to ponder, “okay if not the county, who does do the maintenance?”. Well, for the few who might have been curious, the answer is the combined owners of those properties outside the county-maintained area, via an association called a Permanent Road Division. 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.
Mountain Meadow PRD was established in 1980 as County Service Area 102. At the time of the PRD’s inception, the county performed an analysis of projected road maintenance costs. Those costs were then apportioned to the properties within the PRD using a methodology that assigns what are called equivalent benefit units (EBUs) to each parcel as a way to measure the relative benefit to be received. In PRD 102 factors such as the size of the parcel and whether it is improved determine EBU’s. The majority (61%) of the 462 parcels are assigned two EBU’s, 22% are assigned one, 15% three and 1% four. The initial calculation resulted in an assessment of $122 per benefit unit.
In 1993 the homes of Rimrock were added to the County Service Area providing them access to their community via Meadow Glen Way West. In June of 2000, the name was changed to PRD 102 when the San Diego County Board of Supervisors approved the establishment of a Countywide PRD in accordance with state law and the allowable maximum for the assessment was set at $150 per EBU.
PRD 102 maintains nineteen private roads in Hidden Meadow totaling 6.24 miles which makes it one of the largest PRD’s in the county. The PRD starts at Vista Montanoso / Rocky Ridge and covers most paved roads north of that. (If you want to see the map of the actual roads included you can go to the San Diego County Department of Public Works map website and click on Mountain Meadow PRD 102 PRD Maps (sandiegocounty.gov) Currently property owners in PRD 102 receive an annual tax assessment of $75 per EBU as approved in 2003. The average assessment is $144.27 which funds an annual operating budget of just over $60,000, about $10,000 per mile of road. Spending is prioritized first for emergency repairs, then general repairs, and lastly preventative maintenance.
San Diego County staff evaluates and recommends all project maintenance plans and associated costs and ensures that all work done is consistent with sound construction practices. County staff presents their recommendations to a “PRD Committee” comprised of volunteer property owners who review and comment on the yearly plan and work with county staff on the plan’s implementation. District funds are handled as public monies. This means that the County must follow purchasing and contracting requirements of the County Purchasing Department which calls for a competitive bid process. Any road work funded by the District must be done by State Licensed and insured contractors, and the work product must be inspected by the County.
Next month: Past and current projects and what residents can do to help..
Last month in the Hidden Meadows News I talked about what a Permanent Road Division is and told a little of the history of the Mountain Meadow PRD (PRD 102). This month, as promised, we will look at some of the activity that has taken place over the last fiscal year (since July 1, 2019). During that time, the PRD has spent over $115,000 in direct costs on multiple projects covering the range from emergency fixes to preventative maintenance.
Most of the work was completed in September 2019 and comprised three major projects and a series of smaller ones. The largest 2019 PRD project by far was a complete resurfacing of Canyon Country Lane west of Mountain Meadow, work which served two purposes. First it delivered a long-term solution to some significant problems with the road, but secondly it served as a test case to help understand the cost/benefit of going with a high-end solution. The original project was budgeted at $26,000 but while the project was in process it was decided to almost double the road area being replaced resulting in a $22,000 increase bringing the total cost of $48,000 for approximately 700 feet of roadway. Included in that total was an additional 400 feet of new berm installed to help direct runoff on the west end of the project.
A different approach from a full resurface was tried on another couple of projects, one on Vista Montanoso/Rocky Ridge Road and one on Oat Hill Road. In these cases, the roads themselves were not in as bad of a shape and the projects were of more a small fix and preventative maintenance nature, so a “slurry seal” was applied to the roadway. More durable than the common seal coat, a slurry seal is a mixture of water, asphalt emulsion, aggregate (very small crushed rock), and additives that is supposed to provide a new wear surface with a life of five to eight years. Unfortunately, the early results from this test are not all that exciting, but we are optimistic and will see how things develop as the treatment ages. All together approximately 3,500 feet of roadway was treated, at a cost of $8,900.
Included in the late summer work were multiple smaller dig outs (asphalt removal and replacement) throughout the PRD, the largest near the end of Mountain Meadow Road and another on Meadow Mesa Lane, near the intersection of Meadow Glen Way West. In addition, over the course of the winter there were numerous culvert openings, tree removals and drain clear-outs performed by county crews and in some cases quick to react residents.
Most recently, in fact as this column is being written, a crew hired by the county is finishing up emergency sinkhole repair on Mountain Lilac Road. It appears that some local ground squirrels chose to establish their tunnel network adjacent to an existing drainage pipe that ran under the road. The combined disruption of the squirrel tunnels and pipe coupled with the heavy downpours we saw this winter, provided the perfect opportunity for subsurface drainage to undermine the road. It was a quick fix (if you happen to have a medium duty Bobcat) and $11,500 later residents no longer must swerve to avoid the orange cone in the middle of the road.
While the PRD works to deliver maximum results from a not so maximum budget, we also need to thank property owners who willingly partner in the achievement of that goal. One of the biggest ways that property owners can help is by keeping their vegetation and trees cleared away from roadways. Because the roads in the Mountain Meadow PRD are often quite narrow, vegetation and tree limbs overgrowing the road can create difficult traffic conditions and restrict driver visibility. Providing adequate visibility is one of the greatest traffic safety measures that can be provided for motorists. If this work is left to the PRD it takes limited resources away from taking care of roads and forces us to work through the county’s far less cost effective vendors, not to mention the resulting poor aesthetics of their trimming methods.
Also, of great help are any property owner attempts to control or channel property runoff into existing drains and culverts and most importantly in a manner that avoids undermining the critical roadway edge. And lastly, please report any potential roadway issues as soon as they become apparent as preventative maintenance is pretty much always cheaper than an emergency repair.
(Editor’s Note: PRD 102 is responsible for the maintenance of nineteen private roads in Hidden Meadows totaling 6.24 miles, starting at Vista Montanoso / Rocky Ridge, and covering most paved roads to the north. For more background on the Hidden Meadows PRD see the May 2020 edition of Hidden Meadows News.)
With the onset of winter and end of the preventative maintenance season, it seems like a good time to talk about work that has been completed in the PRD since our last column appeared in the June 2020 edition of the Hidden Meadows News.
With post-rainy season repairs wrapped up in the springtime, attention turned to pro-active maintenance. Working with our limited budget and input from county advisors, we determined the priority project for last summer would address long-term deterioration on North View Lane. It was decided to apply a “slurry seal” to the roadway. More durable than the common seal coat, a slurry seal is a mixture of water, asphalt emulsion, aggregate (very small crushed rock), and additives that is supposed to provide a new wear surface with a life of five to eight years.
All together, one-half mile of North View Lane was treated, the entire length of the road from Mountain Meadow up to North View Court, for a total cost of just over $20,000. This work, added to projects completed in 2019 on Vista Montanoso/Rocky Road and Oat Hill Road, brings the total treated with slurry seal to just about 1.25 miles or about 20% of the PRD’s area of responsibility.
Money spent on preventative treatment is always a good investment and we try to allocate a portion of each year’s budget to PM. Unfortunately required repairs often leave few funds available for other work. With slurry seal costs currently around $40K per mile we would need to spend half of our annual budget on preventative maintenance to treat all PRD roads every eight years, an amount difficult to count on being available. Hopefully, next spring when we prepare the 2021 spending plan, the weather will have been kind to us, and repair needs won’t be that great. However, this winter we are already closely monitoring a couple of situations reported by property owners that may contend for our limited resources. We will be keeping our fingers crossed.
As always, we would like to thank property owners who willingly partner with the PRD and assist in making the limited budget dollars last. Things like keeping vegetation and trees cleared away from roadways and channeling property runoff into existing drains and culverts help minimize needed road repair and reduce PRD spending.
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