The Silly Season!!
By Steve Ferry, Contributing Writer. Aug 25, 2026
Here we go again on the day after Labor Day watching as campaigns go into full blast advocacy. I happen to be a devotee of Local Politics and so this letter is to inform you about all the issues facing our only local government agency, the El Dorado Hills Community Services District (CSD).
These are the questions that all of out candidates must answer and you the voter should do your best to understand. Because an issue is listed first does not mean it is the most important. You may determine which issue is most important to you. Also, please note that much of this is my opinions on subjects.
The Village J, Lot H Park at the corner of Serrano Parkway and Bass Lake Road, kitty-corner from the Safeway center. This should have been built prior to 2020 but the Board of Directors at that time made the decision to not take delivery of a fully developed 12.525 acre park. Instead, the then Board of Directors gave the developer the opportunity to deliver the land, owed to the CSD under state law, without any improvements saving the developer about $804,000 per acre or $10,070,000. This transaction was generated by the El Dorado County General Counsel and the EDHCSD General Counsel.
Zuri Alliance, is a company created simultaneously with the signing of a contract for services with the EDHCSD. The present contract was for Zuri to provide vetted subcontractors to the CSD in return for $2,500,000 per year. Zuri came under a lot of pressure as well as the CSD. Zuri resigned effective December 2026 but their contract only provided a 30 day grace.
Almost a year ago I asked the Executive Director of the Promise Foundation, a CSD sponsored non-profit, to provide the CSD with their latest set of books. He said he would do that but the CSD to date has received nothing. We did receive an anonymous letter with documents showing the dissolution of the EDH Promise Foundation with a total Fund Balance of $339,949. The CSD put up the original cash, (est) $25,000.00 and I would like to know the rest of this story.
EDHCSD has had three Master Plan strategy meetings with an average of ten (10) people in attendance each session (remember there are 55,000 residents in EDH and the cost of this Plan is $260,000.00). We should see a progress report by the contractor soon but this does not speak well about the residents of our district. This level of participation will increase the seated board of directors impact on the future of EDH.
Let’s talk Cityhood. Four years ago I ran on two issues, Cityhood and the reduction in lawsuits. We are about halfway into the cityhood process needing the Comprehensive Feasibility Analysis to tell the populace that the City of El Dorado Hills has the financial capability to run our new city. The county is reticent about EDH Cityhood because they bet their future on EDH always being the financial “go to” for EDC. The county could plant 83% of its required housing in EDH and not suffer the development going into the areas east of Bass Lake Road. EDC took away the ability for the CSD to pick the land for its parks and gave it to the county Planning Department (think developer chatting it up while going over their tentative map with the Planning Department.)
Lawsuits have plagued the CSD for many years. We settled the Austin Case for $5,700,000.00 then the El Dorado County (Harn Case) and we still have more to go. The primary one for me is the QRS case. Three HOA’s (Promontory, Blackstone, & Heritage) were approved by the CSD to vote themselves out of the LLAD obligation which they did. After they had voted, the issue came back to the CSD for certification of the vote. The Board refused to certify and the lawsuit started. Recently, I told the Board of Directors and the Public, in General Session, that I do not support these lawsuits.
We now have a failure of staff to understand the water issues on our new Bicycle Park on Bass Lake Road. The people of EDH should have had a Community Park 20 years ago but now we cannot even build a Bicycle Park. This needs to change and hopefully it has with the addition of a new Planning Director. El Dorado County has a Parks division but they don’t have any money to even build the remainder of the El Dorado Trail. Notice the county has built the trail all around Placerville but nothing in El Dorado Hills. When does EDH enter the 21st Century? When it becomes a city, hopefully.
Community Financial Districts (CFD’S) are the preferred way to finance the maintenance of our parks. Presently we are using Lighting, Landscape, Assessment Districts (LLAD’s) for this purpose and that is not working. I agendized item to close out CFD 2019-01 leaving only the projects already being served by that CFD and requiring a new CFD be instituted with any new projects. It failed on a 3-2 vote. Why did I ask for that? The Undeveloped Property owners, developers, are paying nothing for their Undeveloped properties which, in my opinion, is not right. The CSD owns the Bicycle Park, and has costs of Maintenance, Weed Abatement, Insurance, Inspections by CSD staff, and Security. The Benefit to the new construction on Bass Lake is quantifiable. The developers should be paying their fair share but there is no Undeveloped Property tax in CFD 2018-01 and therefore the CSD General Fund (the taxpayer) pays these bills. It’s an easy fix but we need three (3) votes and we only had two.
The Getz decision is one that every Director should understand. It’s fairly simple, the Appeals Court ruled that developers must pay for their Undeveloped Property. The cost may be a part of the HOA dues as ruled on by that court. It may also be allocated to CFD’s that are created to pay for the “cost of maintenance” of the land being developed by the CSD into a park that serves the new and yet undeveloped community.
Bass Lake Park, a Kevin Loewen dream or an EDH dream? This observation is just my opinion of what I have heard, overheard, and extrapolate to give us insight into this Park. The park will be 200+ acres and includes the 12.525 acres previously mentioned. Bass Lake is a 95 acre part of that 200 acres. I remember being at a meeting at the Bridlewood Canyon Community Room where people threw out their ideas of what should happen to the land. That was about ten years ago. We are all ten years older and a 12 year old then is off to college and life’s other pursuits. This is one reason that the CSD is creating a new Master Plan but with only 10-12 folks showing up it will be difficult to say that what gets approved there is really the communities wish. Just think about the CSD issuing a $100,000,000 bond to build a park after giving away $10,000,000 to a developer that would have built a part of the park. The Taxpayer comes to the rescue again for bad public policy.
My last issue for this missive is the annexation of Serrano parcels into the CSD. For twenty five years the CSD reported to the Department of Real Estate that we had done the annexations even though we had not. This issue was brought to us by Dean Getz seven times. General Manager Kevin Loewen finally sent a letter to DRE that was just an apology. None of the required annexations have ever been done. The CSD needs to fix that.
Folks, these are a few of the issues confronting El Dorado Hills residents at this time. We need to have real discussions about our future and only .0218% of the population weighing in at the Master Plan meetings is not acceptable. That will put the EDHCSD Board of Directors in the drivers seat as to how El Dorado Hills turns out
