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 that this NRS instructs those exactments may “includ(e)…standby service charges for services or facilities furnished,” here we examine what are “standby service charges?” And whether they legitimately pay the costs the District incurs to furnish recreation services or facilities. Although NRS 318.197 expressly uses the words “standby service charge,” 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. And it turns out Nevada is not the only state to have “neglected” to define the term. So we’re relegated to searching elsewhere for the answer. And here’s what we’ve discovered.

Our neighbor to the west, California, first grappled with this issue in 1977¹. And then again in 2000². These two appellate courts observed³:

“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) or in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (1986).”

Therefore, they 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, not as departure from them.”⁴

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

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

2. Imposed for the mere availability to access and receive some public health and sanitation⁷ service (primarily water and/or sewer⁸;

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

4. Whether or not those services are actually being used⁷;

5. Where the real property assessed is not currently a water and/or sewer service customer¹³.

Therefore we see that legitimate “standby service charges” don’t pay for access and use of facilities. Nor services. At best, they can only pay for the availability to access services. Moreover, only public health and sanitation services (like water and sewer) to boot¹⁴!

Conclusion: What’s clear from the above authorities is that legitimate “standby service” charges neither pay for persons‘ access and use of District owned public recreation facilities, nor the availability to access and use those facilities. Rather, they pay for a real property’s availability to access and use public health and sanitation services. We make this point because, as we’ve demonstrated elsewhere, staff and past Boards have described the Recreation (“RFF”) and Beach (“BFF”) Facility Fees¹⁵ as “standby and service charges…for the availability (to persons) of use of the recreational facilities (therein) described.”¹⁶ Calling the RFF/BFF “standby and service charges…for (persons’)…availability of use of the District’s public recreation facilities” is a complete misnomer.

And 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 (September 24, 2014)].
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. See Medeiros, supra, at 89 Haw. 367, 973 P.2d 742; 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. Because once a 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)”⁶ [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, not recreation services.
15. See page 232 of the packet of materials prepared by staff in anticipation of the Board’s May 26, 2022 meeting (“the 5/26/2022 Board packet“).
16. See ¶I at page 234 of the 5/26/2022 Board packet.