Fallbrook Gets Boost Toward Incorporation

A bid to incorporate this rural community has gotten a big boost from leaders of the local public utility agency, who agreed to officially begin the push for cityhood.

The Fallbrook Public Utility District board on Tuesday night voted 4-1, with Trustee Merritt Dunlap dissenting, to file an incorporation petition with the Local Agency Formation Commission.

By kicking off the incorporation process, the utility district helped cityhood advocates beat a Dec. 31 deadline that threatened to scuttle the effort for home rule.

At the start of next year, a state law takes effect that relieves counties of the obligation to provide a year’s worth of free public services to newly incorporated communities. If Fallbrook’s cityhood bid had been delayed until after the New Year, it would have meant an extra $2 million in costs because of the new law, according to incorporation supporters.

Although the utility district directors agreed to initiate the incorporation, they made it clear that the vote did not mean they support the drive.

Indeed, the group approved a second resolution requiring cityhood supporters to complete a financial feasibility study and circulate a petition to determine if at least 25% of the community’s voters favor incorporation.

Roy Hiscock, a leader of the incorporation effort, said his group had planned to circulate the petition anyway and was forced to go before the utility directors only because of the new law eliminating free county help during the first year.

“It was our first big hurdle,” Hiscock said. “Now we can take our time and go on in the way we had originally planned to do things.”

Hiscock said the financial feasibility study is expected to be completed in mid-January. If the study indicates Fallbrook could afford to operate as a city, the petition drive would begin, with an eye toward an incorporation election some time in 1988, he said.

Cityhood advocates say home rule is necessary because Fallbrook is being shortchanged on county services. Moreover, they contend residents are growing weary of land-use decisions by the county that have opened the gate for a stampede of development.

Although no organized opposition to the incorporation drive has yet surfaced, foes of past cityhood efforts are beginning to gear up. They maintain Fallbrook is woefully short of the tax dollars needed to support services it would provide as a city.

In addition, they maintain home rule would spur growth, because builders would no longer have to deal with a byzantine county planning process.