Given we’ve shared that a general improvement district’s (“GID’s”) Board of Trustees’ (“Board’s”) power to “fix, and from time to time increase or decrease…rates, tolls or charges other than special assessments” flows from NRS 318.197(1), and this NRS instructs those exactments may “includ(e)…standby service charges for services or facilities furnished,” here we examine standby service charges for services, and whether they are assessed by the District?

Although NRS 318.197 expressly uses the words “standby service charge” in describing the rates, tolls and charges a GID Board may fix, nowhere is the term defined. In fact, do a search of the entire NRS. Nowhere will you find a definition. Anywhere! Nor has the Nevada Supreme Court ever interpreted the term. Furthermore, it turns out Nevada is not the only state to have “neglected” to define the term. So again we’re relegated to searching elsewhere for the answer. And here’s what we’ve discovered.

No too many jurisdictions have addressed the question of what is a “standby service charge?” However, our neighbor to the west, California, has. And it first grappled with this question in 1977¹. And then again in 2000². These two appellate decisions observed³ that:

“The term ‘standby charge’ is not defined in (the California Constitution). Nor do the parties point out any statutory or other definition of that term. It does not appear in Black’s Law Dictionary (7th ed. 1999,) (n)or in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1986).”

Thus these courts reasoned that

“[W]here Congress borrows terms of art which are accumulated in the legal tradition and meaning of centuries of practice, it presumably knows and adopts the cluster of ideas that (a)re attached to each borrowed word in the body of learning from which it was taken, and the meaning its use will convey to the judicial mind unless otherwise instructed. In such a case, absence of contrary direction may be taken as satisfaction with widely accepted definitions, (and) not as departure from them.”⁴

Turning to those courts which have addressed this “technical term or term of art”⁵ (i.e., “standby service charges”), they defined the term to mean:

1. Some sort of monetary levy against⁶ and of direct benefit⁶ to the real property;

2. Imposed for the mere availability to access and receive some public health and sanitation⁷ service⁸;

3. Delivered⁹, or capable¹⁰ of delivery¹¹, to the real property assessed¹²;

4. Whether or not that service is actually being used⁸; and,

5. Where the real property assessed is not currently a water and/or sewer service customer. Because once property becomes an actual customer of those services, by definition, they are no longer “‘standing by’ (n)or ‘immediately available’ to be connected to the property to be benefited…(Instead,) the benefit…is in fact (actually being) provid(ed).”¹³

Therefore unlike service or facility fees, “standby service charges” don’t pay for access to nor use of facilities. Nor services. At best they can only legitimately pay for the mere availability to access services. Moreover, only public health and sanitation services (like water and sewer¹⁴)!

So does the Incline Village General Improvement District (“IVGID”) assess “standby service charges for services?” NO! What about “standby service charges for…facilities?” Here the answer is YES! Just listen to what staff tell us the kinds of charges the District’s Recreation (“RFF”) and Beach (“BFF”) actually are:

“Each year, the District establishes…annual Recreation…and Beach Facility Fee(s)…As part of the annual budget process the Board traditionally approves a resolution¹⁵ which (in part)…approves (a final) report¹⁶ contain(ing) a description of each parcel of real property receiving…services and facilities(, and) the (final) amount of the charge(s)…for such year.”¹⁷

So now you know!

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1. See Kennedy v. City of Ukiah, 69 Cal.App.3d 545, 553, 138 Cal.Rptr. 207 (1977).
2. See Keller v. Chowchilla Water Dist., 80 Cal.App.4th 1006, 1011, 96 Cal.Rptr. 246, 250-51 (2000).
3. We must defer to courts from other jurisdictions because the term “may have an accepted meaning in the area of law addressed by the statute…(Or) it may have been borrowed from another statute under which it had an accepted meaning given that in appropriate circumstances, courts will assume that “adoption of the wording of a statute from another legislative jurisdiction carries with it the previous judicial interpretations of the wording [see Carolene Products Co. v. United States, 323 U.S. 18, 26 (1944)]…Or it may have had an accepted and specialized meaning at common law [see, Community for Creative Non-Violence v. Reid, 490 U.S. 730, 739-40 (1989)]. In each of these possible situations, the accepted meaning governs and the word or phrase is considered a technical term or ‘term of art'” [see pages 7-8 of the Congressional Research Service, Larry M. Eig, Specialist in American Public Law, Statutory Interpretation: General Principles and Recent Trends (December 19, 2011)].
4. See Morissette v. United States, 342 U.S. 246, 263, 72 S.Ct. 240 (1952).
5. See Kennedy v. City of Ukiah and Keller v. Chowchilla Water Dist., supras, for example.
6. See Solvang Mun. Improvement Dist. v. Board of Supervisors, 112 Cal.App.3d 545, 552, 169 Cal.Rptr. 391 (1980).
7. See McMillan v. Texas National Resources Conservation Comm’n, 983 S.W.2d 359, 365 (1998)].
8. Primarily water and/or sewer [see State of Hawaii v. Medeiros, 89 Haw. 361, 367, 973 P.2d 736, 742 (1999); Chapman v. City of Albuquerque, 65 N.M. 228, 335 P.2d 558, 562 (1959); Graham v. City of Lakewood Village, 796 S.W.2d 800, 801 (1990); Lakeside Utilities Corp. v. Bernum, 5 Ohio.St.3d 99, 449 N.E.2d 430, 431 (1983)].
9. See State v. City of Port Orange, 650 So.2d 1, 3 (1994); Chapman, supra, at 335 P. 561.
10. In other words, standby service charges require services to actually be “standing by” or “immediately available” to be delivered to real property (see Kennedy v. City of Ukiah, supra).
11. See Chapman, supra, at 335 P. 564.
12. As opposed to “the benefit of the general public, and not for the comfort and use of individual customers (who)…have no control over the provision or use of” public recreation” [see Okeson v. City of Seattle, 150 Wn.2d 540, 78 P.3d 1279, 1285 (2003)].
13. See San Diego Cty. Water Auth. v. Metro. Water Dist., 117 Cal.App.4th 13, 27, 11 Cal.Rptr. 446, 457 (2004).
14. In other words, expressly not public recreation services.
15. For fiscal year 2025-26 that Resolution was No. 1917, and at ¶4(b) it described these fees as “standby and service charges (for)…the availability of the use of IVGID’s beaches; boat launch ramp; Championship golf course; Mountain golf course; tennis facilities; the Chateau and Aspen Grove; Diamond Peak Ski Resort, and Recreation Center.” In other words, recreation facilities and not services!
16. The report approved for fiscal year 2025-26 was labeled a “Report For Collection on the County Tax Roll of Recreation Standby and Service Charges.” And at ¶I it described the annual charges the IVGID Board had adopted “for the availability of use of the recreational facilities (therein) above described.
17. See NRS 318.201(8)-(9).