Lakeside Resident Gearing Up to Start Cityhood Campaign

Roy Cook says the last thing Lakeside needs to become is a city. He likes the horses plodding down the main street. He doesn’t like sidewalks. And he doesn’t like all that growth and clustered housing.

So, Cook says, it’s time for Lakeside to become exactly that--a city. He has begun campaigning to that end with the hope that Lakeside will follow the likes of Encinitas and Solana Beach and, like the North County community of Fallbrook, which is currently debating the same issue, consider cityhood as the best way to preserve countryhood.

The 75-year-old Cook, a retired landscape architect, moved to Lakeside 37 years ago because “I wanted to live in the country. But it’s not that anymore. People are moving in, houses are being built and it seems everyone is moving out this way. We’ve got to keep Lakeside as original as we can, and I think we can best do that by becoming a city,” so local government can make land-use decisions now being made by the county Board of Supervisors.

And so it is that Cook is the prime mover and shaker in a petition drive that is expected to get under way in earnest after the holidays, to collect 9,000 signatures--only 5,750 are actually needed--to force the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission to study the notion of cityhood for Lakeside.

He figures the petition drive will take at least six months, and he said he expects to run into opposition as the campaign takes shape.

“But let ‘em go ahead and bicker about it. All I want to do is put it up for a vote.”

Lakeside, population about 37,000, is nestled in the hills and valleys along California 67 and the San Diego River--a home, says Cook, to working stiffs and honest people. There are more pickups than Porsches in town, and a fierce sense of community pride is reflected in support for the Lakeside Rodeo Assn. and El Capitan High School.

Bass in Reservoir

One of the community’s most noted assets is the bass in the San Vicente Reservoir. Horse trails snake throughout the community. Housing ranges from low-cost, high-density apartments to low-density, high-cost ranch-style spreads.

The best of these positive virtues, Cook maintains, can best be preserved by incorporation. But not everyone agrees, and they raise the concern that a City Council might just as easily increase housing density as reduce it.

“We like our area the way it is,” said Lakeside resident Wilma Carroll. “We don’t want a sewer line coming through because it induces growth. And we like our (one-house-per) acre zoning” that is predominant in the area.

If LAFCO deems incorporation feasible and county supervisors place the issue on the ballot, voters could go to the polls in 1989. If voters approve, Lakeside would become the county’s 19th or 20th city, depending on what happens in Fallbrook in the meantime.

To help speed the process, Cook and his committee, the Lakeside Committee for Cityhood, commissioned a study on the economic feasibility of incorporation. Cook said local residents paid $7,500 for the initial study, conducted by Oceanside-based Christensen & Wallace Inc.

Fred Christensen said the study indicated that cityhood is economically feasible for Lakeside.

He said county statistics showed that the county spent over $4 million on Lakeside during fiscal year 1985-1986; and if Lakeside were incorporated, the funding it would have received from its share of the sales and property taxes would be over $5 million.

Some Lakeside residents believe the report overestimates sources of income, and the Riverview and Lakeside water districts each put up $4,000 to hire a consultant to prepare a verification study, the results of which are expected soon.

Larry Barlow, president of the Riverview Water District, said: “It’s a very fiery topic. The problem is that the original verification study was funded by an unknown group of individuals . . . . We wanted to validate that study, or invalidate it, to lay the groundwork for future analysis in Lakeside from an objective and known source.”

Lakeside Water District General Manager Bob Cook, unrelated to Roy Cook, said that although the water districts are neutral, “There are many skeptics. But it’s hard to argue without any facts or information. It’s premature to say whether Lakeside should incorporate or not incorporate.”

Lakeside resident Mary Allison said: “I don’t think we have the tax base to support a city. But that’s why I’m waiting for this study to come out, before I make up my mind.”

Others have already become territorial, countering the actions of the Lakeside Committee for Cityhood by seeking to exclude their area of Lakeside from potential incorporation.

Carroll is leading a petition drive to exclude the Eucalyptus Hills area from any incorporation. So far, 500 signatures have been gathered. She said 750 people live in the area, and “We won’t stop until we get them all.”

Roy Cook said he is determined to get the issue of cityhood before the people.

“I was the first one to get involved in it and will probably be the last,” he said. “I’ve got to see this through. I’m a fighter. I’ve got to see the people get a vote on it.

“The issue comes back to the people . . . . Do they want to be here on their own or run by the county?”

The trend throughout the state is to incorporate, said Dana Smith, a LAFCO staff analyst. She said communities have decided they need to have more control over land use.

“Statewide, communities are not satisfied with their county board of supervisors, who are detached from the smaller communities,” Smith said. “That was the single biggest reason for the Encinitas and Solana Beach incorporations in 1986.”

Christensen, who supervised Lakeside’s initial study, said the passage of Proposition 13 (the 1978 property tax-slashing initiative) has prompted more unincorporated areas throughout the state toward incorporation, since residents were guaranteed there would not be new city property taxes to finance the new layer of government.

He said communities want control over local issues, they want to manage land use and they want to acquire territory to prevent land from being annexed to other cities. Christensen calls the latter a “defensive incorporation.”

“Counties have had significant fiscal problems, and so what’s happening is local services, like police and roads, are not at the level people would like to see,” he said. “And there’s no money to make them better.”