Whispering Palms Shouts for Recognition

Most every day, Philip Keep climbs into his car and drives two miles from Whispering Palms up the winding, tree-lined road to the village of Rancho Santa Fe. He picks up his mail at the post office there. He buys his groceries there. He gasses up his car and does his banking there.

Indeed, for Keep and many other residents of this small, well-to-do golfing community in the San Dieguito River Valley, sleepy little Rancho Santa Fe is “downtown.”

“We’re part of Rancho Santa Fe,” said Keep, a spry, silver-haired retiree whose spacious home, like most around in the neighborhood, is only a chip shot from the fairway. “We get our fire protection from them, we do our shopping there, we eat at restaurants there, we belong to the library guild. It’s always been that way.”

Consequently, Keep and his neighbors were a bit miffed to learn last week that they had been left out of the proposed City of Rancho Santa Fe. But they’re not going to give up without a fight.

Civic leaders, worried that their community will be left an “island” of unincorporated county territory if Rancho Santa Fe excludes it, are launching a campaign to persuade local officials to make Whispering Palms part of the new city.

“We plan to yell and kick and scream and do whatever we have to to get them to see it our way,” said resident Bob Richards. “We belong in that city. I think once everyone sees the facts and realizes how closely tied to Rancho Santa Fe we really are, they’ll agree.”

Despite such dedication, it won’t be easy. Analysts for the Local Agency Formation Commission and incorporation proponents in Rancho Santa Fe agree that Whispering Palms does not belong in the proposed municipality, which will be reviewed by the LAFCO board of commissioners next month.

In a staff report released last week, LAFCO said that Whispering Palms was excluded from the city’s boundaries because the 300-acre area differs from Rancho Santa Fe in terms of geography, housing density and architectural style.

“Whispering Palms has flat topography, which separates it from the rolling hills of Rancho Santa Fe, and it does not have the Mediterranean home styles commonly found in the Ranch,” said Michael Ott, who wrote the LAFCO report. “The two communities share some interrelationships, but we do not feel they are strong enough to warrant inclusion of the area within the new city’s boundaries.”

The chairman of the group spearheading the cityhood drive, meanwhile, says the character of Whispering Palms is “completely different than what we have here on the Ranch.”

“They’re wonderful people and they have some nice homes down there,” said Ed Foss, chairman of the Study Committee on Home Rule, “but it’s not Rancho Santa Fe. They don’t have our citrus groves and eucalyptus trees and they are not a part of what the planners who designed this town envisioned for us. It just wouldn’t fit.”

Keep and his allies disagree and support their argument with the original subdivision map of Rancho Santa Fe, filed by the Santa Fe Land Co. in November, 1922. The subdivision, which was undertaken by the Santa Fe Railroad after a scheme to turn eucalyptus trees into railroad ties fizzled, included Whispering Palms, shown as Lot 4 on the map.

“Whispering Palms has been here in Rancho Santa Fe from the beginning, for 64 years,” said Richard Cavanaugh, a resident since 1965 and president of Newport Pacific Inc., the area’s leading developer. “To cut us out of the picture now, while including some areas that were not on the original map, is illogical.”

Moreover, Cavanaugh and others lobbying for inclusion in the city boundaries say that Whispering Palms would prove a financial asset for Rancho Santa Fe, which has a weak sales tax base and would have a relatively modest surplus of $176,000 after its first full operating year.

Cavanaugh said that property taxes plus sales tax from the Whispering Palms Lodge and a planned shopping center would ultimately pump nearly $1.5 million a year into the new city’s coffers.

“We wouldn’t be a drain, we’d be a plus,” Keep said. “They would have a real big surplus with us in the picture.”

Although it was excluded from the city boundaries, Whispering Palms does fall within the “sphere of influence” that LAFCO recommended for Rancho Santa Fe. Land within the sphere may be annexed by a city at a future date, but Cavanaugh says there is no guarantee that that would ever occur. Indeed, Rancho Santa Fe leaders favor a much smaller sphere of influence that does not encompass Whispering Palms.

“If we’re not in the city from the beginning, we’re in limbo,” said Cavanaugh. “We’d have the City of San Diego on one edge, the county on another and Rancho Santa Fe on another. We might be sitting here as a little pocket of unincorporated land forever.”

In addition, some residents worry that exclusion from the new city would eliminate Whispering Palms’ affiliation with Rancho Santa Fe, possibly harming their property values. Signs advertising homes in the community invariably mention the name Rancho Santa Fe, and Cavanaugh admits that the Ranch’s reputation as a mecca for the rich and famous is a big draw.

“The people who moved here did so because they wanted to associated with Rancho Santa Fe, which is a quality area with quality people,” Cavanaugh said. “(Being excluded) would tend to dilute that. Once you’re a city, you tend to say this is Rancho Santa Fe and that isn’t.”

Tuesday night, the Whispering Palms Community Council held a public meeting designed to rally support for its effort among residents. On Thursday, Keep and Cavanaugh will meet with LAFCO’s executive director in an effort to have the agency alter the recommended boundaries. In addition, leaders of the drive will contact LAFCO commissioners individually in the coming weeks in hopes of persuading them to support the community’s position.

Meanwhile, incorporation boosters in Rancho Santa Fe on Tuesday expressed disappointment at the boundaries recommended by LAFCO. Leaders of the cityhood drive had proposed that a 9.6-square-mile area covered by the town’s protective covenant be incorporated, but LAFCO analysts have recommended a significantly larger area.

Foss said his group would lobby LAFCO commissioners before the Dec. 3 hearing in an effort to win support for their boundaries. He said research indicates that residents would reject the wider city boundary at the polls next June.

“Everything we’ve heard so far shows that the community would turn the thing down,” Foss said. “We don’t want a big city and we don’t want to lose our character.”