The Discovery Bay Community Services District (CSD) board will review how some of the town’s business gets done – and how it gets paid for.

CSD Treasurer Dave Dove has asked for an agenda item to review the town’s role as an advisory body to the county Board of Supervisors. The CSD is charged primarily with managing sewer, water, landscaping and recreation services, but because the CSD’s formation in 1998 was accompanied by the dissolution of the town’s municipal advisory council (MAC), the CSD was also charged with providing the County Board of Supervisors (BOS) recommendations on other community concerns normally outside the purview of the CSD.

One of the things the board will look at is how to pay for expenses incurred while performing advisory council (AC) duties. The CSD’s funding comes from tax dollars, and according to state law, those dollars can be used only for the services they were originally intended: sewer, water, landscaping and recreation.

The AC duties are therefore an unfunded mandate. Up to this point, the CSD Board has blended its duties with expenses for AC functions being absorbed by the CSD.

A sampling of the town’s past CSD meeting agendas plus monthly billing statements from Neumiller & Beardslee, the town’s attorneys, shows that nearly half of a typical CSD meeting is spent on AC business. With legal fees coming in at around $215 per hour, that adds up to about $8,300 per year spent for legal services during AC discussions at board meetings alone. Other AC expenses include attorney fees for outside meetings, such as recent P-6 district discussions and talks about a re-organization of the county’s various advisory bodies. Also, some of the town’s clerical wages go toward performing AC functions.

Some of those expenses are covered by money from the Keller Canyon Mitigation Fund. Recently reduced from $5,000 to $3,000 per year, the no-strings-attached funding was established to offset impacts on ratepayers whose trash ends up in the Pittsburg facility. Discovery Bay’s trash no longer goes to Keller Canyon, although District V Supervisor Federal Glover has nonetheless kept Discovery Bay on the distribution list so far.

The $3,000 per year isn’t enough to fund all the AC functions as they stand currently, but Dove wants to make sure as much is collected as possible. So far this year, he said, the town has requested just $600 in expenses from the fund.

CSD President Ray Tetreault agrees that the question of how the AC is paid for, along with possible town funding options, should be explored. “I’m going to explore whatever avenues there are to fund this,” he said. “We don’t want to be outside of the law now that we’re aware of it.”

Dove didn’t want to offer possible solutions to the situation, preferring instead that the entire board discuss it before making suggestions. “Personally, I’m hoping everybody (the CSD board members) will be on board with this and want to solve the problem,” he said. “When we bring it to the agenda, we’ll find out.”

CSD Director David Piepho said the combining of CSD and AC functions is neither an issue nor a problem. “There is no MAC,” he said in a recent e-mail. “It (the CSD) has ALL advisory powers as mandated by LAFCO … I feel like this has been made clear several times now.”

Even if that’s the case, Dove said he would prefer an examination of the issue. “It’s the public’s money,” he said, “and they need to know it’s being spent properly. At the end of the day, I want to make sure it doesn’t turn into something where the CSD has to defend itself in court.”

Resident Don Flint also believes the issue should be looked at. “The issue isn’t just the time and attention that has been diverted from these core (CSD) issues but also the money that has gone to pay for staff, including the CSD attorney for participation in (AC functions),” he said in an e-mail to the Press. “It appears that ratepayer funds that have been used to fund MAC-type activities violate the state constitution (Prop. 218). If Discovery Bay needs (AC) representation, and I believe we do, then we should implement it properly as every other community in the state seems to have done.”