Supervisors Flooded With Jail Opposition : ‘Not in My Backyard’ Is Rallying Cry of Cities and Citizens Against New Facility

On the screen, lilting music plays as a young girl happily kicks a ball toward a grandmotherly figure.

Cut to the back of an ominous-looking man peering toward the girl.

Cut to the girl and the ball. The music is now somber. The man’s back fills the screen. Cut to the girl. Cut to the man. Then just the ball.

“This could happen in our city,” the narrator says in tones usually reserved for the funeral of a President. “Another jail in our community will bring in criminals.”

The slide show is one example of the pressure brought to bear on the Orange County Board of Supervisors in recent months as it prepares for next Wednesday’s scheduled choice of a site for a massive jail to hold more than 6,000 inmates.

City Rallies Residents

The City of Orange paid about $635 for the slide presentation to arouse its citizens in opposition to two sites within the city’s sphere of influence--Fremont Canyon and Irvine Lake.

City officials presided at two anti-jail meetings of residents last week. Yorba Linda and Anaheim Hills residents held their own conclaves to oppose another possible site--Gypsum-Coal Canyon.

And in southern Orange County, residents near the fourth possible location, Chiquita Canyon, have held their own meetings and have bombarded supervisors with petitions of protest.

Supervisors said they have not decided which site to select, but the betting among their aides is that Supervisors Roger R. Stanton, Thomas F. Riley and Harriett M. Wieder will choose Gypsum-Coal Canyon.

But Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, whose district includes all the potential sites except Chiquita Canyon, and Supervisor Don R. Roth, whose district includes Anaheim and runs nearly to the edge of Gypsum Canyon, are thought to be against that location and may try to delay the site choice.

“I’m still astounded” by the “intensity” of the “emotional” outpourings of anti-jail forces, Riley said last week.

‘Not in My Backyard’

In addition to the thousands of mimeographed petitions sent to supervisors by residents of the various areas, Riley said, he has received a number of “very articulate handwritten letters” from people saying they wanted to be sure that any jail that is built is “not in my backyard.”

Cities near the sites also have expressed formal opposition, Riley said, complicating what is likely to be one of the supervisors’ most controversial decisions this year.

“If we are going to be successful, we have got to alienate as few people as we can, particularly public officials,” Riley said. He pointed out that the county will have to win voter approval of bonds to pay the nearly $300-million estimated cost of the land, site preparation and construction of the jail’s first phase, 2,500 beds.

The cost of the full 6,191-bed jail complex, plus a 220-acre police and fire-training facility, is estimated at more than $600 million.

Residents near the potential sites have expressed concerns about their safety in the event of inmate escapes and about the impact of a nearby jail on property values.

They also fear that thousands of car and van trips a day by jail workers, visitors, and buses taking inmates to and from courts will disrupt their neighborhoods.

Although the sites have been billed as “remote” because of their distance from existing development, areas around all four locations are marked for eventual development.

“Gypsum-Coal is not a remote location and is much too close to homes, schools and businesses,” a mimeographed protest form sent to the supervisors by hundreds of Anaheim Hills residents says.

“Should you choose to ignore the valid request to find a more remote site, I will aid and solicit funds to support your opponents in the upcoming election,” the form says.

The Irvine Co. has joined the City of Orange in opposing Fremont Canyon and Irvine Lake and plans to build hundreds or thousands of homes there some day. An organizer of Orange’s anti-jail forces said the company drew up a map of the sites for use in protest meetings.

The Irvine Co. owns the Fremont Canyon and Irvine Lake sites, as well as the Gypsum Canyon portion of the Gypsum-Coal Canyon site. Supervisors’ aides said the company is not as opposed to selling the Gypsum site to the county as it is to yielding Fremont or Irvine Lake, especially if the county eventually closes the Musick branch jail at El Toro, sells that property to the Irvine Co. and transfers the inmates to the new remote jail.

Coal Canyon is owned by a real estate company, and Chiquita Canyon is owned by the Rancho Santa Margarita Co., according to county officials.

Protesters in Orange said they were concerned not only by the remote jail but also by the county’s plans to expand the Theo Lacy branch jail in Orange from its capacity of 720 inmates to 1,736.

The supervisors, who were found in contempt of court two years ago for not heeding a 1978 federal court order to end overcrowding in the main men’s jail in downtown Santa Ana, last year chose a site near Anaheim Stadium for a 1,581-inmate jail.

The City of Anaheim is suing the county over the Anaheim site, and lawsuits challenging the site chosen for the remote jail also are likely.

The search for a remote site began six years ago. In June of 1984, after ruling out expansion of the Musick or Santa Ana jails, the supervisors narrowed the site possibilities to Gypsum and Coal canyons.

But strong opposition from area residents to putting a jail and landfill in the canyons, as then proposed, led to the formation of a new jail site selection committee of supervisors’ aides, chaired by Vasquez, who was then aide to Supervisor Bruce Nestande.

Nestande said three years ago that putting 6,000 inmates at one site would be “irresponsible . . . stupid.”

But that is what the decision has come down to, and again Gypsum-Coal Canyon is the likely site.

Nestande resigned in January, and Vasquez was appointed to succeed him.

Vasquez said Friday, “As the supervisor from the 3rd District, I appreciate the likelihood of a maximum-security facility being placed in my district, but not this way.”

Vasquez said the supervisors owed the people of the county “a viable process” to pick a jail at a really remote site, not a suburban one.

“I do not believe that these sites are truly remote sites,” Vasquez said. He said the environmental impact report “has a number of serious flaws that have not been addressed, and some of the comparisons used to reach conclusions are seriously in doubt.”

The supervisor said that the report should not have relied on statistics from areas around maximum-security state prisons filled with murderers to show that community safety would not be jeopardized by a county jail. And he dismissed a study of Wisconsin jail sites indicating that jails do not affect nearby property values.

Vasquez conceded that “there seems to be a sentiment” among the supervisors “to go with Gypsum Canyon.”

But he said the site would be within half a mile of residential developments and could release up to 350 inmates a day into the community after they complete their jail sentences.