Orange : Newcomers to City Find Their Timing Was Right

When Mary and F. Roger Killam moved to Orange from Fountain Valley, they did not expect the welcome they received.

Shortly after they moved into their house in the Cowan Hills development in east Orange, they heard from city officials. After reaching the 100,000 mark in population for the first time in its 97 years, the city had decided to honor a symbolic “100,000th resident” to celebrate the milestone, and the Killams had been chosen.

In an informal ceremony at the Orange City Council meeting Monday night, the Killams received certificates and plaques from Mayor James H. Beam, marking Orange’s status as the sixth city in the county to reach the 100,000 mark. The others are Anaheim, Fullerton, Garden Grove, Huntington Beach and Santa Ana.

“I really didn’t expect this tonight,” said Roger Killam, who owns a machine shop in Anaheim.

Although the citation on the certificate the Killams received said the city has changed from a small community to a major urbanized area, the city has not yet achieved metropolitan-area status, said associate city planner Jack McGee. Orange is still classified by the federal government as part of a metropolitan area that includes Anaheim, Santa Ana and Garden Grove, McGee said.

Sabine Wromar, city administrative analyst, said: “Even as we’ve grown to a fairly large-sized city, we’ve continued to retain a small-town feeling and ambiance.”

But city officials expect Orange’s population to reach 121,000 by the year 2000.

Additionally, Orange, now about 22 square miles, will grow in area. City officials said they plan eventually to absorb 30 square miles of unincorporated land to the east. But that might take up to 40 years, McGee said.

With growth will come the problems of providing service to new areas, Wromar said. “I think we are trying to plan for the problems we may encounter with the growth,” City Manager Bill Little said. “We’ll make mistakes like every other generation has made mistakes, but we hope to be in a much better position to see these problems and try to deal with them.”

For the Killams, Orange is “a beautiful place to live,” Roger Killam said. While they enjoyed their welcome, he joked, “Nobody’s yet offered to pick up my mortgage.”