Understanding the Role of Special Districts

That kind of goes to my next question.

I think you just, you partially answered it, Kyle, is, you know, once a district is established, how does the funding stream work and a funding mechanism work for that specific district? Bill, I don't know if you want to maybe chime in on this one on FID specifically or any of you want to discuss how that process works, you know, generally, especially as the community may grow, needs may change, there might be capital improvements that need to be made.

for a special district?

Yeah, I'll chime in.

Historically and today, our landowners pay assessments, essentially taxes, and that's outside of a few extra dollars from grants from state or federal programs.

That is what funds our district is those assessments.

And prior, you know, just building off what Kyle was saying, there's something in California known as Proposition 218.

And so, in prior to, I think, up into the early 2000s, or I'm sorry, the late 90s, our board of directors, our elected body could raise assessments, not with maybe some engagement with the local populace.

But once that law passed, now we have to go through a very organized fashion.

We have to hire a local or a licensed engineer.

They have to prepare an engineer's report.

Then we have to go to the public and let them know what our plans are, how we're gonna increase our rates if we're going to, what's built into those rates, and essentially we're asking the taxpayer to vote on whether or not to increase their taxes.

And so we've had three successful Prop 218 campaigns It takes a lot of time, a lot of effort, but in the end, I think it forces us to be very organized and thoughtful in what it is, what our plans are, and we are very transparent with our constituency doing that.

Thank you.