Norco to Review Plan That Could Triple Size, Block Jurupa Cityhood

Norco city officials this evening will review a plan that could eventually triple the city’s size by designating nearby land, expected to become a prime industrial area, for possible annexation.

A consultant’s report, completed for Norco last week, says that maintaining the area’s rural, equestrian-oriented life style “may well depend upon the addition . . . of (an) industrial base” that is expected to grow as nearby dairy farms give way to development.

Without the tax base that such industrial land could generate, “the cost of providing services may outpace the revenues” from the city’s residential and limited commercial development, the study says.

Trouble for Cityhood Drive

But any effort to extend Norco’s sphere of influence could spell trouble for a separate cityhood drive among residents in eight unincorporated, semi-rural communities in northwestern Riverside County.

A group calling itself the Jurupa Study Committee has campaigned for more than a year to create a city of Jurupa from the communities of Jurupa Hills, Mira Loma, Glen Avon, Pedley, Rubidoux, Sunnyslope, Indian Hills and Agua Manza.

But the committee’s efforts to bring cityhood to a vote suffered a major setback Monday when the Riverside County registrar of voters determined that its petitions fell 372 signatures short of the number required to put the incorporation proposal to voters. The Jurupa study committee needed 6,922 signatures on incorporation petitions, but the county registrar certified only 6,550 as valid.

Meanwhile, Norco’s consultant has recommended that the City Council attempt to add 11 square miles to its “sphere of influence”--a legal term that means designating an area, for planning purposes, for probable annexation to the city. The city already has an existing 14-square-mile sphere of influence.

The area would include Interstate 15, now under construction, which will run north from Norco and link the Riverside and Pomona freeways. The transportation corridor is expected to open rural farming areas to industrial development.

The same 11-square-mile area was to have been a key part of the proposed city. One of the driving forces behind the cityhood proposal was to prevent such piecemeal annexation of their communities to the neighboring cities of Norco and Riverside.

Annexation Issue Undecided

Although the city’s consultant, Christensen & Wallace Inc. of Oceanside, originally recommended immediate annexation of the existing sphere of influence, as well as the 11-square-mile area, city officials prefer to move more slowly.

“We don’t know whether we want to annex that area into our boundaries,” Norco City Manager Ronald Cano said.

Before any decision to annex, Cano said, Norco first must “work with the property owners” to determine how the area will develop.

”. . .Only after we do that should we even entertain the idea of annexation,” he said.

Any proposal to expand a city’s sphere of influence must be approved by Riverside County’s Local Agency Formation Commission, which has authority over city and district boundary changes. Such approvals are far from automatic, said Mischelle Zimmerman, LAFC’s executive officer.

She said a local services district, which provides sewer, water and lighting in unincorporated areas northeast of Norco, is seeking to annex much of the area already within the city’s sphere of influence. Such service districts can exercise many of the same powers, except land-use planning, that cities do.

So approval “is complicated by the fact that the Jurupa Community Services District has a proposal pending to . . . annex three-quarters of Norco’s existing sphere of influence” as well as by the cityhood drive in the unincorporated area, Zimmerman said.

Norco City Council members and planning commissioners will meet at 5:30 p.m. today at the Parks and Recreation Department offices on Corydon Drive to discuss the consultant’s report and recommendations.