Annexation by Corona Pushed Despite Community Opposition

Despite opposition from a majority of residents, a county commission has voted unanimously to advance a plan to have the unincorporated community of Coronita annexed to the surrounding City of Corona.

Members of Riverside County’s Local Agency Formation Commission indicated Thursday that they want to put the annexation to a vote of Coronita’s residents to settle the long-debated issue once and for all.

But residents like Richard Bacon--who submitted a letter of opposition signed by 991 of the neighborhood’s 1,200 to 1,300 registered voters--believe that the majority has already spoken.

Extending the process, opponents claim, serves only to make them repeat their door-to-door campaign to obtain signatures opposing the annexation. If they document the opposition of more than half the neighborhood’s voters at a “protest hearing” before the Corona City Council in May, the proposal would in effect be killed.

“That’s what’s going to happen,” predicted James D. Wheaton, Corona’s city manager. “Let’s face that here and now. . . . Considerably more than a majority of those people (already) indicated opposition to annexation.”

Corona had requested the annexation because the Local Agency Formation Commission required it as a condition of another annexation. The county agency, charged with regulating the borders of cities and services districts, wanted to avoid leaving the roughly triangular enclave as an “island,” surrounded by Corona’s expanding territory.

The community is south of the Riverside Freeway, around Serfas Club Drive, west of developed areas of Corona but flanked on the south and east by the city’s planned Sierra del Oro development.

“We just want to be left alone,” said Larry Anderson of Coronita. “That’s probably the call for our community: Leave us alone.”