Orange County Planners OK Pact With Aliso Viejo

Despite protests from slow-growth activists, the Orange County Planning Commission on Tuesday unanimously approved a development agreement for a 20,000-home planned community in the southern part of the county.

The Laguna Greenbelt environmentalist group filed written objections to the planners’ agreement authorizing the Aliso Viejo plan, contending that the accord is intended to circumvent the countywide slow-growth initiative that supporters are trying to get on the June ballot.

In 43 pages of arguments, the slow-growth group contended that the 20-year agreement, which will now be considered by the Board of Supervisors, strips the public of its right to determine land-use policy through local controls.

“They’re giving away the store,” said Belinda Blacketer, co-author of the slow-growth ballot measure and the lawyer who drafted the written objections. “The agreement is just a sham designed to get around the initiative and give the developer everything he wants.”

But Orange County Planning Commission Chairman Tom Moody strongly disagreed and said he was “shocked” that critics of the agreement failed to attend the public hearing Tuesday after filing their written protests.

Moody said had to “wrestle” with the question of whether the agreement “thwarts the democratic process” but concluded that approval of Aliso Viejo “is a dead issue. . . . It was heard by this commission some time ago. It came before the board some time ago, and before the courts, and it was upheld.”

In 1979, the Board of Supervisors approved the planned community of Aliso Viejo, which covers 6,623 acres east of Laguna Canyon Road, northeast of Laguna Beach, northwest of Crown Valley Parkway and southwest of Laguna Niguel and the San Diego Freeway. In 1985, an appellate court ruled against Village Laguna, a citizens group that tried to block the project and called the county’s environmental impact report inadequate.

The agreement approved by the commission Tuesday would lock the developer, the Aliso Viejo Co., into a specific schedule for building roads and other public improvements. In exchange, the county promised that it will not try to exact further concessions on road construction and other public facilities before the area is “built out” in 20 years.

‘Better Transportation’

Moody said the agreement would allow the county to obtain a “better transportation system before we could have gotten it otherwise.”

Similar agreements were approved last year for projects in Laguna Niguel and Mission Viejo.

Agreements involving Coto de Caza, Dove Canyon and Rancho Santa Margarita had also been scheduled to be taken up by the planners Tuesday, but they were pulled from the agenda after slow-growth advocates complained that insufficient public notice had been given.

Blacketer said she and other slow-growth advocates could not attend Tuesday’s public hearing because of scheduling conflicts. Also, she said, “there was little point in going--the outcome was never in doubt.”

In the 43 pages of objections filed with the commission late Monday, Blacketer attacked the Aliso Viejo agreement by contending that the county was not gaining any public facilities or land-use concessions that it could not have obtained from the developer through existing planning regulations.

Blacketer also said state law requires the county to derive some public benefit from a development agreement that would otherwise be impossible to win.

Lawsuit Considered

She acknowledged in an interview that slow-growth advocates are considering a lawsuit to stop implementation of the agreements.

The agreement approved Tuesday requires the Aliso Viejo Co. to pay for four lanes of the planned San Joaquin Hills freeway, which may become a toll road. But Blacketer argued that the Board of Supervisors already has the power to require the company to pay for the lanes under conditions imposed when the Aliso Viejo project was approved in 1979.

County officials admitted that Blacketer is correct about the 1979 approval. But they insisted that, under the new agreement, the Aliso Viejo Co. will pay a larger share of highway construction costs than would be required under state law.

“What we get out of this is a long list of road improvement projects built much faster than we could otherwise expect,” said Michael Ruane, a member of the county planning staff.

Under the new agreement, Ruane said the Aliso Viejo Co. must pay for its part of the San Joaquin Hills project “up front,” during the first four years of the 20-year life of the agreement--something that the county could not otherwise require.

Among the road projects that the company must pay for is the $3-million completion of Alicia Parkway near the Chet Holifield Federal Building. The road project is “off site”--not part of the company’s planned community.

Assessment Districts

Blacketer, however, argued that existing state and county regulations allow the county to require developer contributions to such projects by creating assessment districts or other financing plans and that the 20-year agreement violates board directives that supposedly limit the term to 10 years.

County officials said they needed a 20-year term to allow for company repayment of bonds to pay for advance construction of some public facilities.

Ruane acknowledged that the agreement would exempt the Aliso Viejo Co. from almost all future changes in the county’s General Plan. The slow-growth measure, known as the Sensible Growth and Traffic Control Initiative, would amend the General Plan.

Proponents of the ballot measure face a Feb. 9 deadline for submitting nearly 66,000 signatures of registered voters to qualify the initiative for the June ballot.

The measure makes approval of major construction projects conditional on the capacity of local roads and public facilities to handle increased demand.