Loans From Irrigation Districts To Landowners

Section 1 of the bill allows a board of directors of an irrigation district (board) to borrow money, which the irrigation district may use to make loans to landowners to be used to make improvements to private water delivery systems or for other types of projects that improve:

• Water conservation or efficiencies on landowner property; or
• Landowner delivery or drainage systems.

An obligation or contract to borrow such money is exempt from the existing requirement that a contract purporting to bind the district to pay any sum in excess of $500,000 must be ratified by a majority of all the votes cast at a general or special election. Additionally, the district cannot assess landowners to raise money to fund the loans.

In case of default in the payment of any loan installment, the county treasurer may assess upon the eligible real property a tax lien for the payment of the whole of the unpaid installment; except that, the county treasurer shall not assess a tax lien for the entire value of the landowner's portion of the irrigation loan issued by the water district.

A board may adopt rules concerning the issuance of loans to landowners.

Section 2 requires each irrigation district to include in its annual appropriation resolution all amounts payable by landowners to the irrigation district in accordance with loans issued to the landowners and indicate the amount payable by each tract within the irrigation district for which a landowner has received a loan.Section 3 requires a county assessor, in assessing land within an irrigation district, to:

• Apply the information provided in the irrigation district's annual appropriation resolution concerning loans issued to landowners; and
• Assess the additional amount payable for each tract for which the landowner has received a loan.

Section 3 states that the county treasurer will receive $5 per tract assessed for loans issued to landowners by an irrigation district, and this $5 will be assessed against each participating tract.

(Note: Italicized words indicate new material added to the original summary; dashes through words indicate deletions from the original summary.)

(Note: This summary applies to the reengrossed version of this bill as introduced in the second house.)