MENDOCINO CO., 11/14/26 — The corner lot where Highway 175 meets Highway 101 in Hopland has had no buildings for more than a decade. The Hopland Band of Pomo Indians was billed $735 a month for sewer service there anyway.
The tribe got the charge dropped with a letter. It told the Hopland Public Utility District that a state constitutional limit on property fees bars charging for sewer service the site can’t use. The district’s lawyer saw a gray area in that law and suggested the district stop the charge, General Manager Jared Walker told the board.
The board agreed in September. It did so without a motion or a roll-call vote, according to the district’s draft minutes and its recording of the meeting. Asked whether the board would take a formal vote, Walker wrote in a Nov. 13 email to the Mendocino Voice, “I do not believe so.” The decision went to the tribe “at the Board’s direction to staff,” he wrote.
What the tribe asked for
The tribe’s letter, dated Aug. 3 and signed by Julian Maldonado as tribal chairman, says the lot at 13491 S. Highway 101 was billed $774.20 a month. Of that, $39.20 was for a water meter and $735 was for seven sewer units. District staff called the sewer charge a “reserved connection” fee, the letter says. It adds up to more than $8,800 a year, the letter says, for a “service the parcel does not and cannot use.”
Walker gave a different count. He wrote that the $735 was for 9.8 sewer units at $75 each, the district’s rate from November 2025 to July 2026. His Sept. 22 email to the tribe refers to seven units.
The letter says the buildings came down more than a decade ago, and the sewer line was cut and capped. At the board’s Aug. 17 meeting, people at the table recalled a gas station, a car wash and a laundromat on the corner.
The tribe gave two reasons the charge had to end. The letter says the United States took the lot into trust for the tribe in January 2024, and it argues that trust land can’t be assessed by state or local government. It also cites Proposition 218, which California voters added to the state constitution in 1996. The letter quotes it as barring a fee for a property service unless the service “is actually used by, or immediately available to, the owner.”
The letter says that second argument also covers the years before the lot went into trust.
How the board decided
The board first took up the letter Aug. 17. Walker told directors how the district usually answers an owner who wants to stop paying: the connections are treated as abandoned, and the owner pays new connection fees when during new construction. He said the district’s wastewater plant has limited connections, and the district can’t tie up service needed for future growth. The board voted 4-0 to set the letter aside until its lawyer had read it.
On Sept. 21, Walker reported back. He said the lawyer described a “squishy gray area” in Proposition 218 because the sewer lines on the lot aren’t readily available to use. The lawyer suggested the district stop the monthly sewer charge, Walker said. The water charge stays, he said, because the meter is in place.
Walker declined to release the lawyer’s advice. “All correspondence for legal matters is attorney-client privilege and is confidential,” he wrote.
One person at the table asked, “Do you want us to make a motion on that?”
Someone answered that it should be just direction to staff. The recording doesn’t make clear who spoke.
Three of the board’s four seated directors were there. The draft minutes record a “Director Consensus to direct staff to send a letter” saying the tribe won’t be charged going forward. The board hasn’t approved those minutes. They were put off to the next meeting, Kristine Lawler said in response to a Public Records Act request. Lawler is the Ukiah city clerk and serves as the district’s clerk.
Someone at the table asked whether the tribe would get its money back if it turned the connection in. The answer was no. The tribe’s letter gives up any claim to what it has paid since January 2024.
What the district told the tribe
Walker emailed Maldonado the next morning. “The Board agreed to your request,” says the email, which the Voice obtained through the records request. It says the seven sewer units “will remain vested” to the tribe, with no added fees “unless and until” they’re put back in service.
The tribe’s letter says it intends to build on the lot. Walker told the board he had heard of plans for a gas station.
The $735 a month comes to $8,820 a year. The district budgeted $385,000 in sewer charges for fiscal year 2027, according to its October meeting packet.
Asked how many other accounts pay a sewer charge on a parcel with no active connection, Walker wrote that the district has nine reserved sewer connections, billed at the current rate of $86.25 a month. That comes to $9,315 a year.
Maldonado hasn’t answered questions the Voice emailed Nov. 5.
The board canceled its Nov. 16 meeting, according to the district’s online meeting calendar. Its next meeting is set for Dec. 21.