Suggested Alternative for Drainage Cost Sharing
Bruce Bon, 2018-05-10
The OVA Board is seeking community input, due by May 20th, on the issue of the Oakmont Golf Club (OGC) for a June 5th “informational event,” a presentation on the topic of financial support from OVA to the OGC.
I have submitted (HERE and below) both questions and suggestions for cooperation for this event, and I strongly urge those of you who have serious questions or who have win-win ideas for OVA-OGC cooperation to organize your thoughts and compose them into a form that you can submit.
Description:
OGC has suggested some sort of cost sharing for storm drainage maintenance, which is a necessity for both the golf courses and surrounding areas of Oakmont. This is reasonable, provided that the cost is shared according to some equitable formula. My proposal is to have an agreement between OGC and OVA something like the one below.
Whereas the various ponds on the golf courses are there solely as water (storm drainage alone would only require flow-through channels), the OGC will continue to maintain all ponds, including dredging every 10 years, or as necessary to maintain them as golf course features and to prevent them from becoming stinking eyesores to neighboring Oakmont homeowners. None of this cost will be borne by OVA.
Whereas storm runoff drainage is necessary both for the golf courses and for all of our community, and drainage channels (creeks, swales, underground pipes, etc) running through the golf courses must be kept open for proper drainage, OVA and OGC will share the costs of such maintenance. OVA will reimburse Oakmont’s share of these costs to OGC on an annual basis. In order to compute the proportion of costs due to be reimbursed, the following computation will be performed:
- Establish the area in acres of the total OGC property.
- Establish the area of all Oakmont properties, residential and common, plus the streets that serve them, for the watershed that drains from and through such properties and then through the golf courses.
- The fraction(proportioned)of total drainage channel costs to be reimbursed by Oakmont will be the area defined by (2) divided by the total of the areas defined by (1) and (2).
Pros:
- Costs of necessary storm channel maintenance will be shared equitably, relieving OGC of the burden of supporting drainage for Oakmont.
Cons:
- Requires finding the areas defined in (1) and (2), above, which may be challenging.
- Requires record keeping in order to compute the annual costs of drainage channel maintenance, and auditing to assure the accuracy of the cost computation. This may be challenging if some of the channel maintenance is performed by golf course staff and not easily differentiated from other maintenance duties.
Discussion:
I understand that water from Annadel and other surrounding properties may also drain through Oakmont and the golf courses, but there is no way or reason for such drainage to affect the agreement between OVA and OGC. Also, some of the maintenance of drainage channels may be undertaken by governmental agencies (city, county, state, federal). Only the costs directly paid by OGC are the subject of the agreement.
I definitely agree that the first thing we need to do is to establish what exactly the golf course is maintaining in the way off runoff areas. The only drains I see are on the edge of course property and are maintained by the City 100%. We definitely need some details from the course.
Mesa Oaks HOA has 10 storm drains which are maintained by the City of Santa Rosa. Our HOA has never been billed for servicing these drains. Unfortunately the Oakmont Golf Club has consistently denied any financial review of their expenses. A review would be required for any consideration of shared OGC/OVA expense.
I must be missing something here. Storm water that passes through Oakmont drains are maintained by the city, as they are throughout Santa Rosa. This service is funded by our taxes. Why not the golf courses? The club builder likely took responsibility for storm runoff to make possible water features that are popular with golfers. I doubt responsibility was accepted as part of a favor to Oakmont, for which the golf club now seeks remuneration.
I have no specific information about how the current arrangement took place, but have read of other golf clubs signing agreements with local governments to accept responsibility for the water in return for gaining use of it. We need more information before assuming the OVA is obligated here. club.
Steve, Lyn — good comments/questions. I don’t know the answers. My proposal is an attempt to start the process of getting more information about an issue that OGC has raised and presented as obvious, but left out critical details and not made any concrete suggestions. Their strong claim is that Oakmont has been getting a free ride for years, but they also seem to be claiming that we should be sharing the cost of cleaning out their water features (ridiculous). If the OGC panel responds with information and suggestions, perhaps of reasonable alternatives to my proposal, that will be a positive step. We definitely need more information before OVA considers any such agreement.
I suggest that you put your thoughts into questions that you can submit by the May 20 deadline.