Makeshift Group Scuttled Cityhood

It took 9 years and nearly $200,000 for a group of south county residents to bring about a cityhood vote for Saddleback Valley’s sprawling and diverse subdivisions.

But a hastily organized opposition group, armed with only about $30,000, managed to defeat the incorporation measure Tuesday by an almost 2-1 margin.

“We outwitted them on every turn,” Melody Carruth, co-chairman of the anti-cityhood Citizens to Save Laguna Hills group, said Wednesday, “even though we didn’t have one-quarter of a million dollars.”

The wide margin of defeat for Measure R, which would have created the county’s 29th municipality out of a boot-shaped area of 77,000 residents, surprised both opponents and proponents.

The campaign had been so vigorously fought in recent months--with dueling flyers bombarding valley homes--that nearly everyone expected a close contest.

“I think people recognized that this was a bad plan,” said Allan Songstad Jr., one of the anti-cityhood leaders who was bleary-eyed Wednesday after the all-night election party he threw at his Nellie Gail Ranch home.

Songstad said one of the chief problems with the valleywide plan was that it tried to unite five diverse communities into one city. Laguna Hills, for example, is an established community, he said, but El Toro is still forming.

Songstad and his allies mobilized against the incorporation plan about a year ago after cityhood proponents managed to bring their proposal before the county even though they did not submit the required petitions from residents.

The cityhood leaders instead enlisted a fringe water district to sponsor their incorporation.

That was the cityhood faction’s first mistake, said Carruth, who along with Songstad helped introduce a rival, Laguna Hills-only cityhood plan.

The next mistake by Saddleback city forces, Carruth said, was in relying ordinately on campaign donations from developers, while her group raised money mainly from local residents. The cityhood proponents raised most of their $200,000 from developers.

“Rather than going to special-interest groups, we went to the people who live in the community,” Carruth said, adding that her group’s grass-roots effort in knocking on doors and circulating flyers helped turn the tide.

Thomas M. Whaling, a Lake Forest lawyer who helped organize the valleywide incorporation effort, said he believes that the election failed because the cityhood group was unable to get residents to focus on a single issue. In the waning days of the campaign, the cityhood proponents tried to use the remote prospect of a county jail being built in south county as a rallying issue, but he said it was too late.

For the future, there is talk of further incorporation proposals in the valley, which includes the unincorporated communities of Laguna Hills, Aegean Hills, El Toro, Lake Forest and Portola Hills.

Next on the agenda is the proposed city of Laguna Hills, which will come under review before the county Local Agency Formation Commission on Dec. 7.

LAFCO had said it would hear the Laguna Hills proposal only if Measure R lost because the two cityhood proposals contain overlapping boundaries.

The 7,000-resident community of Aegean Hills is also expected to renew its bid to become annexed by adjoining Mission Viejo. LAFCO had rejected that effort too, pending the valleywide election.

While no firm plan is in store for El Toro, Lake Forest and Portola Hills, some residents fear that the new city of Mission Viejo or Irvine will eventually make annexation moves in those directions.

“I think what might happen now is the area will be piecemealed into various cities,” Whaling said.

Whaling said the valleywide city could be proposed again in 2 years. But he added Wednesday that he and other cityhood leaders are too exhausted from this campaign even to begin thinking of another.

Dale White, chairwoman of the Yes! for Cityhood committee, quietly left town with her husband Wednesday for what a friend said would be “a long weekend.” The committee’s telephone was also disconnected.

But Songstad, still savoring his group’s hard-fought victory, arrived at his Irvine law office Wednesday morning to find a bottle of champagne on his desk.

Times staff writer Mariann Hansen contributed to this report.