Legislature Again Tackles Pesky Cross-County Annexation Issue

Although nearly a decade has passed, San Clemente Fire Marshal Gary Carmichael still vividly remembers waiting with firefighting crews for hours as a fierce blaze made its way toward the imaginary line that divides Orange and San Diego counties.

When the unruly brush fire finally reached Orange County on a windy January evening in 1976, it had grown to such proportions that 16 homes in the seaside community were destroyed and 69 others were damaged.

“That atrocity,” as he calls it, will be among examples used by City Manager James Hendrickson when he argues before a legislative committee in San Diego today that cities such as San Clemente should be allowed to annex territory in neighboring counties.

For practical and pragmatic reasons--and some say just plain greed--officials in several California cities that touch county borders are interested in annexing beyond those boundaries.

Municipal officials in cities like San Clemente, Kingsburg, Galt, Delano and Watsonville say poverty, crime and community blight are problems that spill over into their communities from developments just beyond their jurisdiction.

But across those boundaries are other local officials who predict widespread confusion over everything from tax collections to police and fire calls if such cross-county annexations are ever allowed.

“It’s just crazy,” said Patricia Gayman, Sacramento-based lobbyist for San Diego County. “How do you deliver services if you have cities across the lines of two counties?”

Besides, opponents of cross-county annexations say city officials who want to expand into other counties--especially those in San Clemente--are really much more interested in capturing new sources of tax revenue than they are in improving the quality of government on either side of the counties’ borders.

“It is purely money. It has nothing to do with anything else,” said John Sweeten, San Diego County director of intergovernmental affairs. San Clemente officials have “raised some red herrings,” he said.

In San Clemente, even zealous advocates of annexing San Diego County territory concede that money is the chief issue.

San Clemente officials use the 1976 fire as an example of the capriciousness of county lines, though a “mutual aid” agreement with Marine Corps officials at nearby Camp Pendleton, renegotiated years ago, guarantees that San Clemente firefighters will never again have to wait for a fire to cross the county line.

But this year, the San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, just south of San Clemente’s borders, will pay $27.4 million in property taxes. Of that, $11.9 million will go directly to San Diego County, while the remainder will be split between local governments and agencies within the county.

San Clemente--the closest city to the plant and the one that sends paramedics when its workers are ill or injured--will get none.

In recent negotiations, San Diego County agreed to pay San Clemente $5,000 annually for such paramedic runs. But city officials say the new contract, which took effect last week, does not begin to cover its costs.

“Our simple contention is that it seems a little bit ludicrous,” said Hendrickson, who cited more than 200 instances when San Clemente fire, police and paramedic personnel were dispatched to San Diego County during the past three years. “They (San Diego County) did not provide one whit of service” for the tax revenues they receive, Hendrickson added.

But 17 miles south of the power plant, officials in Oceanside say the area should be annexed to their city, if at all.

For years, Oceanside has been rebuffed in its efforts to annex the sprawling Camp Pendleton U.S. Marine base between the city and the Orange County border. San Clemente has long opposed Oceanside’s effort to annex the 196 square miles of U.S. government property, which includes the base, the nuclear power plant and a state park.

Although San Clemente is much closer to the nuclear power plant, which is the area’s only significant taxpayer, Oceanside Councilman Ted Marioncelli said that more than two-thirds of Marine personnel at Camp Pendleton live near Oceanside.

The area near San Clemente is mostly vacant land, said Marioncelli, who added that Oceanside would willingly compensate San Clemente “for . . . the impact on their city” if Oceanside were allowed to annex the Marine base.

Assemblyman Robert Frazee (R-Carlsbad) predicted that the rich pot of tax revenue from San Onofre will most likely preclude a bill and constitutional amendment by Sen. Rose Ann Vuich (D-Dinuba) from ever being applied in northern San Diego County.

If the proposed laws by Vuich are approved, they would allow cities such as San Clemente to expand across county boundaries. But in its current form, the bill would require the approval of both counties’ boards of supervisors.

“I don’t think that is very likely,” said Frazee, whose district includes northern San Diego County and San Clemente. “I don’t see that happening in the case of San Diego and Orange counties.”

Although he suspects that it will be an unpopular stance in Oceanside, which “would like to keep the door closed as tightly as possible,” Frazee said he will probably support Vuich’s bill unless the provision calling for concurrence is removed.

“I think the bill is needed in some other places around the state,” Frazee said.

Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach), who also represents both counties, said she is not certain whether she’ll support Vuich’s bill.

“I’d like to see how the hearing comes out and I’d like to hear the discussion,” said Bergeson, who tried to create a special service district straddling the county line in 1981, when she was still an assemblywoman.

Bergeson’s bill, intended to allow San Clemente to capture tax revenue from the military base and the nuclear power plant, died in the Senate Local Government Committee.

“I think San Clemente has raised some valid points,” Bergeson said. “Those services that are provided should be compensated. But anytime you cross county lines, it complicates matters.”

Twenty-six states, including Texas, New York and Pennsylvania, have cities that straddle county lines. But none ever has in California.

Twenty-six years ago, the 2nd District Court of Appeal ruled, in a case involving the City of Palo Alto, that such annexations would not only involve “manifest practical inconveniences” but would also be unconstitutional.

For example, cities have to be within one municipal court district, the court said. It took a statewide voter-approved constitutional amendment in 1976 to allow the sprawling City of San Diego to set up a separate court branch at San Ysidro.

Vuich, who represents Fresno and Tulare counties, said she had no idea there were similar problems around the state when she introduced her bill to help the City of Kingsburg, which is being affected by growth beyond its city limits in neighboring Tulare County.

Vuich said Fresno and Tulare County officials are negotiating a land swap, under provisions of a bill approved by the Legislature earlier this year, to make such boundary changes easier.

If those negotiations succeed, Vuich said, she may amend her bill next year to more directly address specific problems elsewhere. But despite opposition from the County Supervisors Assn. of California and other groups, Vuich said she has no intention of dropping the idea.

The situations are similar in the California cities interested in annexing across county lines, but all have their unique features:

- Watsonville, in Santa Cruz County, for years provided fire protection and other service to Pajaro, a low-income community of mostly migrant workers just across the Pajaro River in Monterey County. But when Watsonville officials raised their charges under that contract last year, Monterey County officials decided to provide those municipal services themselves.

The water service, fire and police protection have all improved since the change, said Monterey County Supervisor Mark Del Piero, who added that Vuich’s bill “will cause more antagonism between governmental agencies than can ever exist under the present system.”

- Feeling that it will benefit by sales tax revenues and new jobs, the City of Galt at the southern tip of Sacramento County is preparing to provide water and sewer services for a proposed development just south of its borders in San Joaquin County. But it is a money-losing proposition, and city officials would like to annex the San Joaquin County territory so it can provide similar services to other proposed developments.

- In Delano in northern Kern County, officials fear that development in Tulare County will siphon off its sales and property tax revenues. Since there are no Tulare County services in the area--the nearest fire department is 10 miles away--Delano officials want to annex the unincorporated area.

Since the turn of the century, when Imperial was carved out of San Diego to become the 58th county in the state, there have been very few county boundary changes in California.

In recent years, there have been only two boundary changes.

Under a special legislative authorization, Santa Clara and San Mateo counties exchanged a few square miles of territory in 1976 to conform to a natural ridgeline. In 1979, Solano County transferred 180 acres to Yolo County so that a student housing complex at the University of California, Davis would be in the same county as the rest of the school.

While some counties are divided by rivers, creeks, canyons and ridges, the border between Orange and San Diego counties is just a line drawn by surveyors in 1889, using a haphazard combination of ranch property lines and Spanish land grants as guides, historians say.

On both sides of the line, officials are at best cautiously optimistic that the Legislature can help them end the dispute, which intensified when the first of San Onofre’s three nuclear generating units opened in 1968.

Even if all the local governments involved could agree, the Marine Corps, which owns all the land involved (including property leased to the utilities for the nuclear plant and to the state for the park) isn’t interested in being annexed to any entity.

Border concerns have even been a delaying factor in the development of a golf course that was to be a gift to the area by then-President Richard Nixon. The former President, who lived in San Clemente, arranged a 50-year lease on 180 acres of government property in 1971.

But nothing has happened on the land, which is just inside San Diego County but adjacent to the existing San Clemente municipal golf course.

Because he is involved in sensitive negotiations with the military over the final plans for the golf course, Hendrickson doesn’t like to talk about the annexation. But he conceded:

“If it was all in San Clemente, it would have definitely been built by now.”