Unhappy Neighbors Say the Fight Over New Jail Site Has Just Begun

Telephone calls poured into county government offices Thursday from residents determined to carry on the fight against putting a jail in the canyons of northeastern Orange County.

“We lost the battle, but not the war,” said Anaheim Councilman Fred Hunter, one day after the county Board of Supervisors voted, 3 to 2, to put a jail for more than 6,100 inmates in Coal/Gypsum Canyon, just south of the Riverside (91) Freeway.

“It’s sort of like a 10-round fight--and we lost the first round,” he said.

But Hunter said it was “way premature” to talk about filing a lawsuit challenging the selection of Coal/Gypsum over proposed sites at Irvine Lake and Fremont Canyon in the hills east of Orange Park Acres, and in Chiquita Canyon near San Juan Capistrano.

Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez and Don R. Roth, both of whom voted against the Coal/Gypsum site, were inundated Thursday with more than 100 phone calls from residents wanting to know how to fight the jail, according to their executive assistants. Aides said most of the callers were referred to the Anaheim and Yorba Linda city councils because the board majority had already spoken with its vote Wednesday.

Meanwhile, Board Chairman Roger R. Stanton on Thursday formally notified the director of the county Environmental Management Agency, Ernie Schneider, that final documents for the jail proposal should “preclude” adding an intake-and-release center at the new jail.

That, Stanton said, will “eliminate the possibility of inmate release at the (Coal/Gypsum) jail site.”

Residents near all four of the final sites, in objecting to the proposed medium-to-maximum security jail, had cited the potential release of up to 350 inmates a day from the jail into their communities after the convicts finished serving their sentences.

Despite Stanton’s action, Rick Violett, one of five people appointed by the Yorba Linda City Council to a jail site selection committee, said the fight against building a jail in the canyon is not over.

Just how the battle will be waged remains to be seen, but Violett said he and other angry Yorba Linda residents “will meet with our City Council next Tuesday and listen to what they have to say.”

Violett, a Fullerton real estate broker who lives in Yorba Linda, said he received phone calls late Wednesday night and early Thursday morning from residents as far from the Coal-Gypsum site as Westminster, protesting the cost of more than $600 million to complete the jail and its size--beds for 6,190 inmates.

“People are volunteering to continue the protests,” he said. “Bumper stickers, more petitions, money for lawsuits, whatever it takes, they say. Others are wanting to know how to get out of the purchase of new homes in the area.”

“You’ve got people coming out of the woodwork, upset about the whole process, who feel (the supervisors’ decision) was well orchestrated. (The protesters) feel it was a done deal going in. It was well thought out. Seven hours of testimony, and 10 minutes of comment, and a slam dunk and let’s get out of here.”

Hunter, a personal-injury attorney reached while on a case in Mariposa County Thursday, said he hopes to organize a meeting next week with officials of Yorba Linda, Anaheim, Placentia, local school districts and Corona to “make it a common cause against the jail.”

Several supervisors have said that they expected a lawsuit to be filed no matter which one of the four final sites was chosen.

But if a lawsuit challenging the county’s decision were filed and it failed in court, Hunter predicted that supervisors would find it difficult to get two-thirds of the county’s voters to approve spending the hundreds of millions of dollars needed to build the jail.

“Anaheim is the most populous city in Orange County,” Hunter said. “Just between Anaheim and Yorba Linda, I don’t see where they’re going to get the votes to raise this kind of money.”

Hunter and Violett both said they thought the vote for Coal/Gypsum was influenced by the county’s plan to close the James A. Musick branch jail near El Toro.

Closing Musick

The supervisors’ vote Wednesday also endorsed closing Musick and transferring the inmates to the canyons jail eventually. The expectation is that the county will sell the Musick site to the Irvine Co., which is developing the Irvine Spectrum industrial park nearby. In return, the company will sell the county the Gypsum Canyon site, which it owns. Adjoining Coal Canyon is held by another private landowner.

However, the Irvine Co., which owns Gypsum and Fremont canyons, as well as the Irvine Lake jail site, has opposed building a jail at any of those locations and said it would not sell.

Irvine Co. officials who dealt with the jail sites were not available for comment Thursday, company spokeswoman Judith Frutig said.

Offer Soon on the Land

But residents of Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda, as well as some county officials, said they believe that if Irvine Co. had to sell a site to the county, it would prefer to let Gypsum Canyon go.

R.A. Scott, director of the county’s General Services Agency, said the county has appraised the land and will make an offer soon to the owners.

“If the owner agrees to that, we’ve got a deal,” Scott said. “Or if the owner negotiates out something that’s mutually acceptable, we have a deal. If the owner refuses to sell at any price, then we proceed with condemnation action and the court determines the price (under eminent domain).”

Condemnation “probably would take about six months,” Scott said. He said the appraisal price would be made public later, perhaps by Aug. 12, when supervisors are expected to give final approval to Wednesday’s vote.