Cities Would Pay Tab if Measure A Passes, Foes Say

In tones reminiscent of the Blue and Gray, opponents of the slow-growth initiative have raised the specter that south county residents could fare better from the countywide ballot measure than their brothers and sisters north of the Costa Mesa Freeway.

Opponents of Measure A on Wednesday publicly portrayed Orange County’s 27 cities--located mostly in the north--as victims of a rebellious civil war waged by malcontents in the south who live in unincorporated areas that are directly affected by the initiative.

“Eighty-three percent of Orange County’s residents live in cities,” said Lynn Wessell, campaign manager at Citizens for Traffic Solutions, the key anti-initiative group.

“Measure A proposes to put flood control, sheriff, fire, paramedic and park services into the unincorporated area, where 17% of the county’s residents live.

“We believe this is unfair to the large majority of those who live in the cities and may see some county services diverted to the unincorporated area to pay for these projects,” Wessell added. “In other words, the people in the cities will be picking up the bill.”

Fullerton Mayor Richard Ackerman and Costa Mesa Councilman Orville Amburgey joined Wessell at a news conference at the Hall of Administration in Santa Ana, where they claimed that the Citizens’ Sensible Growth and Traffic Control Initiative would place severe economic pressure on the Board of Supervisors.

They said this would result in shifting flood control, park and other types of funds now shared with the cities in order to pay for public facilities that may be needed under the initiative.

The group also argued that the initiative, listed as Measure A on the June 7 ballot, would delay completion of three planned tollways in south Orange County--tollways that would benefit “65% of the people in the county.”

They said the delay could be at least 10 years.

Pro-initiative leader Tom Rogers, who lurked in the shadows while watching the news conference, immediately blasted the opposition as having been “out in the sun too long.”

“Deceit and lies are the heart of their campaign,” Rogers charged. “You heard them--they didn’t have any answers. I’m not surprised that some city officials have joined their side. They’re the ones that caused the problem, so they’re circling the wagons.”

Veteran campaign consultants such as Harvey Englander of Newport Beach said the news conference was apparently part of an overall strategy aimed at appealing to north county residents, where “No on A” sentiment is strongest.

“They have to get north county residents out to vote against the initiative, or else they’re going to lose,” Englander predicted.

All registered voters in the county are eligible to vote on the initiative even though Measure A would become law only for the areas controlled by the county. Under state law, city residents are also political constituents of the county in matters that affect the election of county officials and the amendment of key policies.

Traffic and urban planning experts have said that residents in north Orange County may not see any visible changes if the slow-growth initiative is approved, but that they could see traffic in their own neighborhoods get worse compared to neighborhoods in the unincorporated areas to the south.

However, the experts have cautioned that they do not know what financial effects the initiative would have on cities without making risky assumptions about how much construction activity will be lost because of the ballot measure.

“Measure A would earmark an inordinate amount of money to the unincorporated areas to the detriment of cities in Orange County,” Ackerman said Wednesday. “If the measure passes, traffic would be worse in north Orange County as well as (in the) central and southern areas. For us in the north, the initiative would delay construction of the Eastern Corridor for many years, making traffic worse on the 55 (Costa Mesa) and 91 (Riverside) freeways and possibly the 57 (Orange Freeway).”

Ackerman argued that the tollways will be delayed because they are to be partly financed by developer fees, and the initiative may slow development and hence collection of the fees.

The tollways are planned to relieve traffic on the Santa Ana, Costa Mesa and Riverside freeways, as well as on several major arterials in the Orange, Irvine, Tustin and Santa Ana areas.

Citizens for Traffic Solutions estimated that 65% of the county’s residents live in neighborhoods that would experience a reduction in traffic if the corridors are built.

About 86.4% of the registered voters live in the cities, but not all of them would benefit, the group said.

Slow-growth advocates argue that the tollways are in jeopardy even without the initiative, because development fees and tolls will not cover their entire cost and the shortfall has not been eliminated.

Although the Transportation Corridor Agencies, which oversee the tollway projects, say that the construction costs will be between $1.3 billion and $1.7 billion, the figures do not include the cost of repaying interest on the revenue bonds that will be used to finance the projects. When interest costs are added, the total price of the tollways reaches an estimated $3 billion.

Tolls cannot make up the difference in cost because state law precludes use of them to repay the revenue bonds. And when interest on the bonds is added to the actual construction costs, developer fees account for only about 24% of the total bill, slow-growth proponents say.

The highways will end up being much smaller--four lanes wide instead of eight to 10--and hence will never carry enough traffic to provide the traffic relief actually needed, according to Measure A’s backers.

Indeed, Belinda Blacketer, a lawyer and prime supporter of the initiative, argued that the highways will end up serving only the new construction projects that have been approved for the south county--about 65,000 new houses to be built over the next five to seven years.

“The argument that the tollways will provide relief to residents elsewhere is built on a house of cards,” Blacketer said recently. “It collapses of its own weight.”

The Santa Margarita Co., developers of the Rancho Santa Margarita planned community, has mounted a major advertising campaign aimed at attracting companies to its business park, through which the Foothill tollway has been tentatively routed.

The company has been touting the tollways as “Corridors of Commerce.” But a company spokesman said Wednesday that the effects of delaying or curtailing the highway program in the area are unknown.

Transportation Corridor Agency officials said recently that the tollways could be delayed if the initiative passes, but they were uncertain as to how long.

The main problem, said agency spokeswoman Susan Marzec, is that the initiative could cause uncertainty about the viability of developers’ projects. In turn, Marzec said, that could make it difficult for the TCA to obtain a good interest rate on bond financing for the corridors.

“If the cost goes up too much, then construction has to be done in smaller phases over a longer time, and traffic relief will be slower in coming,” she said.

The 60 miles of planned tollways would extend from the Riverside Freeway near the Riverside County border south to the Santa Ana Freeway, along the foothills near Santiago Canyon Road to Interstate 5 near San Clemente, and from the business complex near John Wayne Airport to San Juan Capistrano through the Laguna Hills.

Meanwhile, Ackerman on Wednesday listed the county’s estimated cost of implementing the initiative, assuming the required improvements are triggered.

He said the county estimated that the initiative would cost $98 million for parks, $625,000 to $2 million for fire and paramedic services, $6.5 million for sheriff’s services, and $219 million to $1.3 billion to complete the county’s flood control system.

However, Ackerman acknowledged that these figures were speculative and did not apply directly to cities.

He charged that the costs were so high that the county would look to the cities for a bailout, which it does now to obtain some public services. However, most of the money distributed to cities by the county for joint public works projects actually comes from the state. Under state law, each city is supposed to get its fair share.

Ackerman acknowledged that the initiative, by its own wording, is superseded by state law. He said it would probably take a court ruling to resolve the issue.

Amburgey, Costa Mesa’s vice mayor, said he did not object to the traffic standards contained in the initiative and thought that his city would have no trouble meeting them. But he said he was convinced that the flood control standards would be “impossible to achieve.”

However, Rogers said the initiative’s flood control provisions have been widely misinterpreted and mean only that a new development must manage or retain floodwaters that would otherwise worsen downstream flow to existing development.

HOW THE TOLL ROADS AFFECT THE CITIES--A study by Citizens for Traffic Solutions, the group opposing the slow-growth ballot initiative, identified 14 cities (in shaded areas) that would experience some traffic relief if three planned tollways are built on schedule in south Orange County and 13 cities (in unshaded areas) that would be unaffected. The gruop contends that the tollways will help relieve bottlenecks on the Riverside, Costa Mesa and Santa Ana freeways and their adjacent arterials.