Border Guard : After 22 Years as Calm Referee Between Battling Cities in County’s Turf Wars, LAFCO’s Executive Officer to Leave Post

Dick Turner is clearly suspicious of a reporter’s questions and he regards them cautiously with a puzzled expression on his face that suggests, “What could you possibly want from me?”

And his answers--the just-what-you-asked-me-and-no-more variety, doled out in a soft Midwestern twang--reveal a man unaccustomed to being in the limelight and one uncomfortable with such attention.

Later though, once he gets to reminiscing in earnest about his 22 years as a referee in Orange County’s turf wars, Turner becomes increasingly animated.

“We stopped them from doing this,” he says at one point, grabbing a map of the county and pointing to three narrow fingers of Garden Grove that stretch down into Westminster and Santa Ana.

“The cities used to do that just for spite,” he says, chuckling and shaking his head. “Just to try to stop another city from growing in one direction or the other.”

Anecdotes about this municipal annexation or that one then begin to pour from Turner as he discusses his job and his plans to leave it.

Last month, Turner announced that he will resign his $56,000-a-year job as executive director of the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission, the five-member panel that must approve or disapprove all boundary changes in the county involving cities and special districts, as well as set limits on their growth. He plans to leave as soon as a replacement can be found, possibly in early May.

His announcement prompted speculation in the media that the decision was linked to the recent resignations from the commission of two county supervisors. It also prompted speculation that a sudden spate of controversial south county cityhood proposals had left both the commissioners and their chief staff member disenchanted.

And there were hints from county officials that Turner may have been miffed by a Dec. 2 commission decision to give a disputed coastal strip to the proposed city of Dana Point, rather than the proposed city of Laguna Niguel. It was a decision contrary to Turner’s own recommendation as executive director.

Turner discounts such speculation.

He is leaving the commission’s staff, he said, solely because it’s a natural time for him to go.

“I’ve been in county government for 29 years. I’m 59 years old. I’d just like to do something else,” he said.

That’s not to say, he acknowledged, that the commission’s workload hasn’t ballooned or that no controversy exists.

The commission, which for more than a decade had been a fairly obscure government agency, recently has been catapulted into the public eye by a flurry of boundary-change activity in the growing south county.

Plans to create as many as four new cities in that area have already been made, or are being discussed--some not very amicably.

In the past year, the commission has been criticized for approving the annexation of a large portion of South Laguna to the city of Laguna Beach, and for the ruling in favor of Dana Point in the dispute with Laguna Niguel over another coastal strip.

Amid the furor, neighboring Mission Viejo has become a city, and commissioners now must determine its sphere of influence, or the extent to which it can expand its boundaries.

In its 24-year history, the commission has presided over only one other municipal incorporation--of the city of Irvine. Panel members were not involved in the creation of Yorba Linda in 1967, because that cityhood drive began before the commission was created, and eventually was settled in court.

Local agency formation commissions were created by the Legislature in 1963 to bring order to boundary-setting procedures in 57 of California’s 58 counties. San Francisco County alone was excluded from the process because it consists of a single city.

Before Orange County’s formation commission began operating in 1964, local boundary changes were made largely by cities acting on their own, sometimes in what Turner described as a capricious manner. The only authority the old county Boundary Commis sion had was to approve or disapprove legal descriptions of those changes.

LAFCO, by contrast, has the authority to examine proposed boundary changes and formations of cities, including holding public hearings on the plans. It then has the authority to reject any proposal that it decides is not in the best interest of the residents involved or long-range growth plans.

Until recently, most of the commission’s work involved annexations of unincorporated county areas to cities, mostly in northern Orange County, and boundaries of water, library and sanitation districts.

Make Recommendations

The executive director of the commission and an assistant, when one is on the payroll, prepare reports for the commissioners and recommend a course of action.

The commission is made up of a member of the public, two representatives of city councils and two county supervisors. Current members are chairman Donald A. Holt Jr., a former Placentia City Council member who is the public member; Evelyn Hart, a Newport Beach City Council member; Phillip R. Schwartze, a San Juan Capistrano City Council member; County Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, and County Supervisor Don R. Roth.

Vasquez and Roth, the newest members of the Board of Supervisors, replaced Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, who resigned in November, and Supervisor Roger R. Stanton, who resigned two months later. Neither Vasquez nor Roth wanted the commission appointments, which were made by board chairman Harriett M. Wieder.

At the time of his resignation, Riley said he had grown tired of the disputes, especially the tug-of-war between the proposed cities of Dana Point and Laguna Niguel over the coastal communities of Three Arch Bay, Monarch Bay and the Salt Creek Beach area. The commission ultimately decided Dana Point would get the coastal strip, after a majority of area voters indicated their preference for Dana Point in an advisory election.

Stanton said he resigned because the commission consumed too much of his time.

Turner agreed that the workload of LAFCO and its staff can be burdensome, and that commissioners sometimes have to make unpopular decisions.

“One good thing in my case,” Turner said, “is I’m not in a popularity contest.”

Those who have worked with Turner agree. One of his greatest strengths, many say, may well be his ability to do his job without getting caught up in the emotions of any issue.

“He studiously applied the state regulations and followed the law,” said Don Saltarelli, a former mayor of Tustin who sat on the commission for 13 years before resigning last year.

Saltarelli praised that objectivity, and added that Turner ran his office as one of the most efficient in county government, never with more than two secretaries, a draftsman and an assistant.

“He’s the finest executive officer we could have had,” Saltarelli said. “He’s very well thought of throughout the county and (among) other LAFCOs.”

William Little, city manager of Orange, described Turner as an “absolutely fair gentleman.”

“He’s been able to keep very neutral in terms of working within the law and not getting his staff involved in disputes.”

LAFCO chairman Holt said Turner’s neutrality and attention to technical issues was perfect for an executive director and staff member. But he added that commissioners sometimes had to go beyond that.

“If there was a variance (between Turner and the commissioners), it was that the commissioners had to be more sensitive to input from the public,” Holt said.

Holt cited the decision to give the Monarch Beach area coastal strip to Dana Point as an example. Turner had recommended that it be included as part of the proposed city of Laguna Niguel, a position he still holds.

“I wasn’t so interested in the popularity of it,” Turner said, referring to the advisory vote of area residents. “I just felt that over the years, the way Laguna Niguel developed, (the coastal area) was in the boundaries of their planned community.”

In deciding which way proposed annexations should go, Turner said, he relies solely on what he referred to as a “logical extension of a boundary” and whether or not the annexing area can provide the necessary community services to the residents involved.

In his reports to the commissioners, Turner said he takes into account the sentiments of the public. But he added that such sentiments are not the overriding concern in his mind.

Giving the coastal strip to Laguna Niguel, he explained, would have been a logical extension of that community’s boundaries to the coast. Losing the argument, however, had nothing to do with his decision to resign, he insisted.

Holt declined to reveal what Turner gave as his reason for quitting LAFCO, saying that because it was a personnel matter, he could not discuss it publicly.

The commissioners hope to find a replacement for Turner by early May, but Holt said Turner’s expertise would be “sorely missed.”

Studied Cartography

Turner began earning that expertise in high school in his hometown of Coshocton, Ohio, when he took up cartography, the study of map-making.

He later attended the University of Denver, where he got a degree in urban geography and political science. After his undergraduate work, he returned to his home state and worked for two years with the Ohio Geological Survey at Ohio State University.

In 1953, he and his wife, Shirley, a Long Beach native, moved to Long Beach, and Turner got a job with an aerial photography firm that had contracts with the Orange County government.

In 1959, he heard about a job opening in the county’s Planning Department, applied for the post and got it.

“Back then, you could drive from Long Beach to Garden Grove and not see much of anything in terms of development,” Turner said. “But it looked like Orange County was the area that was going to grow.”

The county’s population was about 250,000 when he, his wife and daughter, Janet, moved in 1960 into a three-bedroom home in Orange. It has grown to more than 2.2 million today.

One of Turner’s duties with the Planning Department was to represent the planning director on the old Boundary Commission.

That panel was abolished with the formation of LAFCO, and Turner was asked to be the commission’s part-time executive director in 1966. He took over the post full time three years later.

Through it all, Turner has maintained a kind of homespun air about him that Wieder, chairman of the County Board of Supervisors, described as a “calm in the face of a storm.”

His office, in the old Crocker Bank building on North Main Street in Santa Ana, sports four framed scenes of the Old West that he picked up one day at a Wells Fargo Bank, because, he says, “I thought they were nice.”

In his spare time, he golfs at Meadowlark Country Club’s course in Huntington Beach, or anywhere else he can pick up a game, or attends gatherings of his men’s club.

Once a replacement for him is found and his resignation takes effect, he said, he wouldn’t mind doing some free-lance consulting work for government or private concerns.

The one thing he would hate to see after he leaves LAFCO, however, is for the south county’s remaining unincorporated areas to be carved up into a lot of little cities, he said.

“If there are going to be new cities, I would hope there would be no more than three or four,” Turner said. “If you look at the western part of the north county, you’ll see that a lot of those little cities now can’t support themselves. They just can’t bring in the revenue.”

INCORPORATED ORANGE COUNTY THEN AND NOW

The incorporated area of Orange County has more than doubled since 1960, from 207.8 square miles to 478.4 square miles. (County total is 798.5 square miles) The increase includes five cities incorporated after 1960, plus annexations to several of the older 22 cities. The Local Agency Formation Commission, created in 1963, presided over the incorporation of Irvine in 1971 and Mission Viejo in 1988, as well as several annexations to other cities. Incorporation of Yorba Linda, although finalized in 1967, began before LAFCO was created.

1960

Date City 1878 Anaheim 1886 Santa Ana 1888 Orange 1904 Fullerton 1906 Newport Beach 1909 Huntington Beach 1915 Seal Beach 1917 Brea 1925 La Habra 1926 Placentia 1927 Laguna Beach 1927 Tustin 1928 San Clemente 1953 Buena Park 1953 Costa Mesa 1955 La Palma 1956 Cypress 1956 Garden Grove 1956 Stanton 1957 Fountain Valley 1957 Westminster 1960 Los Alamitos

1988

Date City 1961 San Juan Capistrano 1962 Villa Park 1967 Yorba Linda 1971 Irvine 1988 Mission Viejo

Source: Orange County Environmental Management Agency--Surveyor/Boundary Unit.

RICHARD TURNER

NAME: Richard Thomas Turner

TITLE: Executive director of the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission (has announced his resignation, to take effect when replacement is found)

DATE OF BIRTH: Dec. 21, 1928

PLACE OF BIRTH: Coshocton, Ohio

EDUCATION: Degree in urban planning-political science from the University of Denver, 1951; graduate work at Ohio State University

FAMILY: wife Shirley; daughter Janet

RESIDENCE: city of Orange

MOVED TO ORANGE COUNTY: 1960

OTHER COUNTY POSITIONS: County planner; Planning Department representative to the county’s old Boundary Commission.