Commentary : New Cities to Face Old Problems

Despite rapid population growth in the unincorporated area, no new cities have been formed in Orange County since Irvine voted to incorporate in 1971. This is probably due to the time and effort that residents must invest in attempts to incorporate or pursue annexation, as well as to the fear of new fees and assessments.

Why, then, are at least three unincorporated communities, Laguna Niguel, Mission Viejo and Dana Point, now willing to consider incorporation? And why have residents of South Laguna and parts of Lake Forest asked to be annexed to existing cities? The answer, in my opinion, is that many residents believe that the Board of Supervisors is not concerned with the effects of rapid development on the quality of life in the unincorporated areas. These residents have apparently decided that the only way left to protect their neighborhoods is to wrest control of land-use from the supervisors.

Is such action warranted or is the judgment that the board responds more to developers than to citizens too harsh? I believe that a reasonable person could infer from recent history that the political institutions of Orange County have become extensions of the development community.

The litany of actions by the board to further the interests of developers at the cost of residents is long. Some have led to criminal indictments and to rumors of graft and corruption. Others have been enumerated by recent grand juries and respected organizations such as the League of Women Voters. They include such citizen-angering behaviors as discourtesy to those who testify against new development at public hearings.

At the top of the list, however, is the board’s continued approval of new development despite the fact that the road system of southern Orange County is inadequate for existing development. No plan, moreover, is in place to provide the road capacity needed to reduce current levels of congestion.

A study commissioned by the county in the late 1970s reported that the then-existing General Plan would require an investment of $15 billion for a road system that would leave the average trip in the year 2000 taking longer than that of 1978.

It is, of course, impossible for the county to raise $15 billion in the next 13 years for road improvements. What has been the response of the board? The General Plan has been amended several times since 1979 to allow yet more development. Citizens are intuitively aware of this behavior and in a recent poll attributed the current levels of congestion primarily to too-rapid development.

While history provides examples of why several communities may want to control land-use in their neighborhoods, city control of growth has not been without controversy. One need only consider past or pending growth in Irvine, Tustin, Costa Mesa and Orange to realize that cities can quickly overburden the region’s infrastructure.

The creation of yet more cities can also make the implementation of regional improvements more difficult. Cities are inevitably parochial in their behavior and tend to avoid the difficult task of coordinating efforts with other jurisdictions.

Residents should, moreover, be aware that incorporation may increase the cost of services now provided by the county. These costs are considerable and the revenue to pay for them is uncertain in the wake of California’s tax reforms. Proposition 13 left local government in a radically changed situation that is only now being understood. New residential development rarely provides sufficient revenue to pay for services that suburban homeowners expect. And these homeowners often resist the commercial development that makes up the revenue shortfall.

Rather than planning communities that function well from a land-use perspective, local officials are resorting to land development that balances the city’s books but may not be attractive or functional. Reduced landscaping, fewer amenities that require maintenance, higher densities and an excess of retail zoning are the most obvious signs of fiscal as opposed to functional planning.

The politics of new cities may not be any more genteel than those of the county. The issues faced by newly incorporated cities will be very divisive. Each new city will, for example, have to set an expenditure limit with which future city councils must comply. These limits, made necessary by the Gann Initiative that was passed overwhelmingly in the late ‘70s, will determine the level of service that residents enjoy into the foreseeable future.

The very issue of growth that spawned new cities will, moreover, continue to vex them. The probability of an immediate consensus on the level and pace of growth is low. The same developers that influence the county supervisors so heavily will turn their lobbying efforts on the part-time council members.

The enemy will no longer be supervisors whom we have never met, but our neighbors with whom we share parks, churches and grocery stores.

On balance, then, will the citizens of Orange County be better off if a larger proportion of the county’s land area is controlled by city rather than county government? My answer is yes, although it is based as much on instinct as on analysis. I, like many other county residents, have come to the conclusion that escaping from a Board of Supervisors so obviously controlled by the development industry is worth whatever risks come with incorporation or annexation.