Reply #196: Salida exists in its present form because the Stanislaus supes lacked the cojones to say no

[tularetom]

In the 80s and 90s when the City of Modesto started to get wise to the fact that letting developers do whatever they wanted was a stupid idea, the developers just moved outside the city limits, bought cheap land in Salida and began throwing up subdivisions to build houses to sell to commuters to the Bay Area, one hour away.

The county was warned many times that allowing residential development outside of cities without normal municipal services was a dumb idea and it would come back to bite them in the ass. But they wanted the commercial sales tax generating development that often follows residential so they jumped in with both feet. They got a few car dealers to relocate out of the city onto North McHenry Avenue. But most of the commercial development has remained inside the city limits so the hoped for sales tax has not been realized.

Under various CA statutes, the county could have if they wanted, forced developers to form lighting and drainage maintenance districts as a condition of approving their final subdivision maps. These provide for an annual assessment on each parcel to be collected with the property taxes. Unlike the existing lighting district in Salida, there is no vote by property owners as to the formation of these districts. The costs of providing the services are simply spread over the lots annually and there it is. IIRC there is no annual public hearing required. The district is there to see at the time the homeowner buys the property. If he doesn't like it tough shit.

Stanislaus County after listening to the developers whine about how forcing them to form maintenance district would drive growth elsewhere (like that's a bad thing), folded like a cheap umbrella and rescinded the district requirement. So if the county now has to pay when these residents snivel about the lights being out it's their own fault.

This is unfortunate for you as a county resident. The only solution is to get some supervisors with actual spines. It's a problem everywhere in the valley, but believe me, Stanislaus County is one of the worst.