If you live and vote in Shelter Cove or the Trinidad area, your June 2026 ballot will come with the question of raising local property taxes.

Shelter Cove’s Resort Improvement District is seeking capital for big water infrastructure replacement projects, while the Trinidad Union School District is looking for voters to sign off on bonds to fund a spread of upgrades and repairs.

Measure A: Shelter Cove Wants to Replace 60-Year-Old Infrastructure

Shelter Cove’s Resort Improvement District No. 1 — the entity tasked with providing utilities and emergency services to the far-flung community on the Lost Coast — is asking for property owners to agree to a $60 per-year increase on the special utilities, improvement and operations tax. The tax, at $80 since 1981, would total $140 annually if approved.

Funds are needed, District General Manager Christopher Christianson tells the Outpost, because of two huge projects they want to take on.

District engineers previously estimated replacing the cove’s water treatment plant will cost $6.4 million, and the replacement of four water storage tanks will cost $3.3 million. Three of these tanks broke during the Dec. 2024 earthquake as they lack seismic features, but were repaired.

Christianson said the District is maintaining the infrastructure, but wants to be proactive with replacement.

“They started with the District in 1965, so it’s time. This kind of infrastructure lasts 40 to 50 years. We’re over 60 now,” he said.

Christianson said, when applying for loans or grants for replacement, they’ve found the District often needs to match up to 25% of funds to qualify, hence the need for funding.

He said the only methods to boost revenue are property taxes and utility rate increases. But the district just came off a five year rate increase. And while Shelter Cove has just around 650 utility customers, there’s about 3,850 property owners.

“If we can spread out the costs over that bigger pool, it’s less of an impact on the ratepayers,” he said.

The District estimates, if Measure A is approved, the tax will generate an additional $231,000 on top of the existing $308,000 revenue — totaling $539,000 annually.

The last two attempts to increase this particular tax, in 1993 and 1994, failed to meet the required two-thirds majority. This time around, the district is asking for a more modest increase. But Christianson says the election could still be a nail biter, like a 2017 fire tax measure that passed by a single vote.

Two-thirds of the funds would legally be required to pay for capital improvements to the utility systems, while the remaining one-third could be used for operating the systems. There is no sunset to the tax.

There’s some other projects the district wants to tackle — like upgrades to the generator plant, repairs to water and sewer mains, backhoe replacement, and upgrades to the wastewater treatment infrastructure, for example.

“We’ve been in the red for a few years now, budget-wise, so [we’re] trying to help our budgets and not impact the ratepayers as much as a rate increase would,” said Christianson.

People registered to vote in Shelter Cove will weigh in on Measure A in the June 2 election.

For the full ordinance, click here.

To read an argument in support, click here.

Measure B: School Repair Bonds an ‘Investment in the Future of Trinidad’

The Trinidad Union School District, which operates a TK-8 with 166 registered students, has been discussing the idea to issue school bonds for the past few months to pay for a spread of repairs and upgrades.

The district is asking for voter approval to issue up to $4 million in general obligation bonds. This will spell out an average annual tax rate of about $30 per $100,000 of assessed property value within the district, a tax that would end in 2059-2060.

The infrastructure repairs, said Superintendent and Principal Alyse Nichols, come down to fixing infrastructure and making the building more secure, modern and dry.

“We’ve got classrooms that leak whenever it rains. Our windows are beginning to fail, our fence around our kindergarten classroom needs to be replaced,” she told the Outpost. Bathrooms also need to be updated for accessibility, technology needs to be updated and furnaces need to be replaced, she said.

Some buildings are about 50 years old. The last time the District issued a bond was 15 years ago, an effort that updated classrooms and brought the school a multipurpose room and an aftercare facility.

Nichols said the district has a facilities fund, but it’s mostly used for smaller repairs.

“We go after bonds because the repairs are just so expensive that we don’t have millions of dollars in our reserves that we can put towards the infrastructure projects that we need,” she said. The tax is estimated to generate an average revenue of $265,000 a year, according to the measure.

55% of voters need to support the measure to pass. With a recent District survey finding high approval, Nichols is hopeful it will go through.

“I like to think of it as a central point in the community. And any investment we do there is going to impact the whole town, and it’s also going to impact our kids. So it’s an investment in the future of Trinidad,” she said.

The school has students hailing from McKinleyville north to Orick.

According to the measure, the total debt service including the principal and interest that would be required to be repaid if all the bonds are issued and sold is estimated at $12,650,000. The tax, used to pay off the bonds and the interest, would begin in 2028-29, if approved.

The school board would establish an Independent Citizens’ Oversight Committee to oversee the measure. The funds can’t be used for teacher or administrator salaries.

Those in the Trinidad Union School District — which includes a stretch of land including Westhaven and Trinidad — will weigh in on the measure come June.

For the ordinance, click here.

To read an argument in support, click here.