Local News in Brief : Saddleback Valley : Agency Decides to Keep Cityhood Issue on Ballot
Rejecting an appeal, a county agency Wednesday stood by its 6-week-old decision to place the question of cityhood for Saddleback Valley residents on the Nov. 6 ballot.
In a unanimous vote, the five-member Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission denied an appeal by Craig Scott, a representative of two citizen groups known as Citizens to Save Laguna Hills and Taxpayers Against Forced Incorporation.
The groups oppose including Laguna Hills in the valleywide cityhood plan.
Some of the groups’ members favor creating a separate city of Laguna Hills.
Earlier in the day, the County Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to postpone its own decision on the matter until Aug. 9. The supervisors held a “protest hearing” in which opponents of the cityhood plan could have automatically quashed it by providing written proof that 50% of the registered voters in the affected area oppose the plan. But only 3,000 of the needed 18,000 signatures were submitted.
The valleywide cityhood proposal envisions a boot-shaped city of 77,000 people including the communities of Laguna Hills, El Toro, Lake Forest and Aegean Hills.
Scott vowed Wednesday that his forces would defeat the Saddleback plan at the polls.
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