November Vote Set on Whether to Form City of Mission Viejo

Mission Viejo residents will get to vote in November on whether to make their 21-year-old community a full-fledged city, Orange County’s Local Agency Formation Commission decided unanimously Wednesday.

If the proposal to incorporate is approved, the south county community

will, on March 31, become the first new city in Orange County since Irvine incorporated in 1971.

The community, with a 1986 population of 64,000, would also be the first of several fast-growing south county communities to successfully seek self-government instead of relying on the Board of Supervisors for their needs.

In April, 1988, south county residents are scheduled to vote on whether to create a new city of Laguna Niguel as well as a coastal city comprised of Dana Point, Capistrano Beach and possibly several small coastal communities north of Dana Point.

In approving Mission Viejo’s effort, commissioners Wednesday rejected a competing proposal to create a sprawling Saddleback Valley city that would have included El Toro, Laguna Hills, Aegean Hills and Lake Forest, as well as Mission Viejo.

Proponents of a Mission Viejo city argued that creating such a huge city would compound the problems of incorporation.

“You don’t create a city like ‘Shake and Bake.’ You don’t just shake it out,” said attorney Chris Keenan, a director of the Mission Viejo Community Services District, which began the incorporation drive in February.

Rather, Keenan said, starting a city requires “a slow, methodical approach.”

He noted that before the incorporation effort, Mission Viejo residents had created a community services district whose boundaries will define the new city, just north of San Juan Capistrano and Laguna Niguel and east of the San Diego Freeway.

Since January, 1986, that district, sometimes described as a junior city, has worked with a budget of about $3.5 million to handle such local services as street sweeping and park maintenance. A new city of Mission Viejo would have significantly greater revenue than that, said officials with the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO). According to a consultant’s study, if the new city had existed in 1985-86, it would have had revenue of $17.6 million, costs of $11.3 million and reserves of $6.3 million.

But proponents of a Saddleback Valley city, including the Saddleback Valley Chamber of Commerce, said such a large city would be financially more viable than Mission Viejo alone.

Also, said Richard Anderson, chairman of the valley city drive, “it is a disservice to carve the valley up in two districts.”

He noted that valley residents live in the same area and send their children to the same schools.

Anderson and other large-city proponents said they had found it difficult to contest Mission Viejo’s incorporation drive because they were unable to gather 17,000 signatures necessary for a formal challenge on the November ballot.

Accusing commissioners of having “made up your minds in advance,” valley city supporter Thomas Whaley threatened to sue them if they rejected the larger proposal.

The commissioners listened to the large-city proponents quietly at first, but finally Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, who is also a Lafco commissioner, had had enough. “You’re trying to lay off on us your irresponsibility for not getting in writing your desires to do what you’re talking about,” he told Herb Hayes, an advocate of the large city.

“I’ve heard about this possibility of a valley city almost as many years as I’ve been a supervisor. We have before us one application for cityhood. (Mission Viejo’s). I suppose you could still work toward an annexation process, but sir, I don’t think it’s fair for you to talk about a valley city when I have no evidence before me.”

Hayes replied that he had attended every meeting on Mission Viejo’s incorporation. “I stood up and proposed to them that we join forces in the valley, and I was rebuffed at every turn. We are not Johnny-come-latelys.”

But Mission Viejo activists said the valley city activists were not only Johnny-come-latelys, but also party poopers. “Most of us as teen-agers have had the experience of planning a party” and having uninvited guests show up, Mission Viejo advocate Helen Monroe said.

“The citizens of Mission Viejo determined the guest list . . . and set an election, and then some of the people who were uninvited decided they would do everything in their power to throw up roadblocks.”

As the meeting ended, valley city proponent Anderson said he believed that Lafco officials had made “a very, very glaring, serious mistake.”

The supervisors are expected to put the issue of Mission Viejo’s election on the November ballot at its July 22 meeting, Lafco officials said.