California Unincorporated invited Mentone’s organizations to join and post their information and news articles on its website www.caunincorporated.com. The Chamber of Commerce favorably discussed membership and attendees at the Chamber meeting on Tuesday, March 25 learned of the membership, said attorney Joyce Caraway, who presented the opportunity.
According to California (Un)incorporated’s page “Who We Are,” approximately five million people live in unincorporated areas, like Mentone, and, not having mayors or city councils, are subject to the whims of nearby cities. California (Un)incorporated’s chair, Michael Seaman, says that the organization is interested in seeing the law changed to accommodate such communities, such its immediate goals to obtain reform of the property tax portion of vehicle license fees. Caraway provided other laws that need to be reformed, including Government Code Section 56751(a)-(d), which says that if a community applies to LAFCO to be detached from a city’s SOI [Ed.’s note: ‘sphere of influence’], and the city objects, LAFCO must terminate the detachment proceedings. This means that an unincorporated area has no choice but to continue in that SOI even if they don’t want to be, and the city has sole control over the detachment; that pits a small, unincorporated area against a city with probably much more money to spend and more clout. And the application fee is something like $5,000!”
Seaman stated that legislators are becoming interested in the website and have indicated how helpful the information posted on it has been to them. For Mentone’s part of the website he posted information from Wikipedia, and added a generic photo. The text has been updated and an actual photo of Mentone’s downtown will be substituted as soon as possible; Other information to be posted about will include details about Redlands’ takeovers of Mentone territory, “most of them in violation of applicable law,” said Caraway. The website also has a section titled “Predatory Annexations page (https://www.caunincorporated.com/predatory-annexations) where we go into detail about [also unincorporated communities] Salida and Rio Linda,” added Seaman.
California (Un)incorporated recently changed to a 501c4; it started in 2015 with five communities and now has 25 in 14 counties. Some communities with problems similar to Mentone’s include Ashland and Castro Valley (Alameda County); El Dorado Hills (El Dorado County); McKinleyville (Humboldt County); Lamont (Kern County); Stratford (Kings County); Altadena, East LA, Willowbrook, West Athens, Westmont (L.A. County); Ladera Ranch (Orange County); North Lake Tahoe (Placer County); Winchester, Homeland (Riverside County); Antelope, Arden Arcade, Rio Linda, Elverta, Orangevale and Vineyard (Sacramento County); Isla Vista, Orcutt (Santa Barbara County); Guerneville/Lower Russian River (Sonoma County) and Salida (Stanislaus County). Some of those communities are not in the SOI of nearby cities but still have similar problems to Mentone’s, stated Seaman. Experienced representatives of some of those communities have offered to assist Mentone.
Organizations who guide and support California Unincorporated are the League of California Cities, California Association of Recreation and Park Districts, California Special Districts Association, and the California Association of Local Agency Formation Commissions [Ed.’s note: aka CALAFCO].
To learn what information has been posted about Mentone, click on the word “Mentone” on the “Who We Are” page of the website, which also contains a link to Mentone Matters: click on the green tab on the right side of the Mentone page. To read old news articles click on “NEWS” on the left side. Readers may always read Mentone Matters through this website; Mentone Matters may eventually phase out its own website for cost considerations. MM