Norco Residents Fight New Home Development

Residents opposed to plans for new homes on 80 acres of government-surplus property submitted petitions to the city clerk Friday, demanding that the City Council block the development or put the issue to a citywide vote.

The combatants are the same as those in another petition drive that began in June, 1984, and ended in the state Supreme Court last December.

The would-be developer is Deane Financial Inc., a Corona-based company that already is building homes along the Santa Ana River bluffs of northern Norco, the subject of the 1984 zoning battle.

And a prominent backer of the petition drive is Louis deBottari, a former city councilman who tried to force a vote on the bluffs’ zoning by suing the city.

His lawsuit failed, as a Superior Court judge and a three-judge panel of the 4th District Court of Appeal found the 1984 petitions procedurally flawed. Opponents had tried to force a vote on the tract’s zoning, when they should first have tried to change its designation in the city’s general land-use plan.

The California Supreme Court declined to hear the case, letting the lower court decisions stand.

This time, deBottari said, the petition drive’s organizers have learned from their previous mistake. They are asking the council to reverse a unanimous May 7 vote and change the designation of 80 acres of U.S. Navy land from agricultural/residential back to open space.

Escrow Extended

Opponents of the development submitted 103 petitions, said Shirley Russell, acting city clerk. She has 30 days to verify that the petitions bear at least 874 valid signatures--10% of the city’s 8,731 registered voters.

The opponents submitted about 1,100 signatures, deBottari said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. General Services Administration has extended the escrow period on the $1.48-million land sale by 60 days, said Bob Hardesty, a business associate of the owners of Deane Financial.

The 80-acre parcel is next to homes built on lots of at least 20,000 square feet, Norco’s traditional standard for residential lots.

“We don’t want smaller zoning,” Bill Deane, president of Deane Financial, said earlier this year. Deane Financial is drawing up plans to build about 135 homes on the property.

But area residents don’t want to allow the long-vacant land to be developed. City officials, on the other hand, are eager for a tax windfall--up to $2 million annually, according to City Manager John Donlevy--that would come from developing the previously untaxable government land.

The petition signatures will likely be checked by next week, Donlevy said, allowing the council to take the matter up at its June 18 meeting.

If the signatures are valid and the council declines to reverse itself, the matter would then be put to a citywide vote in the November general election, Donlevy explained.