Acton Residents to Consider Merits of Cityhood

The Acton Chamber of Commerce tonight will ask town residents whether they favor launching a drive to incorporate the small, yet growing, rural community.

A committee created by the chamber in May to study the feasibility of incorporation will present its findings at 7:30 p.m. in the Acton Community Center.

The committee was formed at the urging of chamber President Steve Miller, who said residents and businesses had complained that Acton does not have enough control over its affairs. The 30-square-mile community is governed by the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors from offices 46 miles away, Miller said.

Townspeople have discussed incorporation informally in the past, but tonight’s meeting will be the first time residents have been asked to decide whether Acton should try for cityhood, said Larry Smith, a locksmith and member of the chamber’s board of directors.

“Now we want to get feedback from the people of the town,” Smith said. “We’re not trying to force anything on anybody.”

“We’re just being a clearinghouse now for information,” said Lynn Witt, chairman of the chamber’s incorporation feasibility committee. “We’re not advocating any position.”

If residents decide to pursue incorporation, Witt said, it will be a community project, not an effort spearheaded by the chamber.

Ruth Benell, executive director of the county’s Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), which oversees incorporations and annexations, has said she doubts Acton has a tax base large enough to support basic city services, such as police and fire protection.

Smith said chamber members agree that incorporation is unlikely in the near future.

“We’re looking 10 to 15 years down the road,” he said.

Witt said the committee also will discuss the possibility of lobbying the supervisors to enact ordinances to strengthen design and development standards in the community. The goal, he said, is the same as incorporation.

Acton residents, reacting against growth, want to preserve their community’s Western, small-town flavor. “That’s the bottom line,” Witt said.

The town still retains a rural character but is no longer a place where everyone knows everyone else by name. California 14, the Antelope Valley Freeway, took care of that when it was completed in the mid-1970s, opening up the area to development.

In 1970, the town had 2,686 residents, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Today, the chamber estimates, the town has 7,500 residents.

For LAFCO to seriously consider an incorporation proposal, cityhood supporters first would have to submit to Benell an application signed by 25% of the area’s registered voters.

Miller said in a June interview that collecting signatures would be easy because most Acton residents want to have total control over local planning and zoning and other matters, such as building inspection, animal control and law enforcement. Only cityhood would make that possible, he said.