Placentia : City Will Reconstitute Groups That Faded Away

When the City of Placentia wanted to build a city hall, a library and a police department in the early 1970s, it followed the usual route of creating an authority, or group, to oversee the acquisition of land, construction and financing.

But after the Placentia Civic Center Authority, created May 22, 1972, by an agreement between the city and the Placentia Library District, issued $2.5 million in bonds to finance the center, the group ignored another of its responsibilities: holding regular meetings.

Members of the authority, which still owes $1.9 million to First Interstate Bank, have not met since 1973. And members of another group, the Placentia Park Corp., which owes $170,000 of an original $447,000 to the Bank of America, have not met since March 6, 1968, Placentia Finance Director Frank Dunnavant said Wednesday.

City officials realized the oversight a few weeks ago, Dunnavant said, and now are working to appoint new members to the two groups, “It hasn’t been a deliberate thing, just an oversight. No one was carrying the ball,” Dunnavant said.

However, one Placentia resident, Ruth Ellis, said the groups are “required by law to have a meeting every year, even if they meet and adjourn.” She also noted that the authorities have the right to recall, or pay off, the bonds early.

Dunnavant said both groups completed what they were “set up to do.” The minimum once-a-year meetings mandated by their bylaws would have made no difference, Dunnavant said. His department files annual reports on both bonds to county, state and federal agencies, he said, and the bond payments are made every October and April.

Placentia resident Ina Gibbons also questioned the disintegration of the groups geared to oversee the projects. “If the committees had fulfilled their obligations, why didn’t they abolish them?”

In response to the residents’ concerns, Dunnavant said, “I don’t think there’s anything to hide . . . . Apparently, what happened is that people just disappeared and it fell between the cracks.”