A New City Takes Stock : Mission Viejo Mayor Checks Off First-Year Achievements

It may be that most people in Mission Viejo don’t know the mayor’s name. But that doesn’t bother Norman P. Murray.

On Monday, Mayor Murray marked Mission Viejo’s first year of existence with an upbeat year-end report to the City Council that outlined in general terms what the new government has done. It was Mission Viejo’s first State of the City address.

And it painted a rosy picture, noting that the city has moved cautiously in contracting for police, fire and sanitation services and projecting that it will finish fiscal 1988-89 with a $10.6-million budget surplus.

The successes and failures of the city of Mission Viejo, incorporated when voters approved a measure on the November, 1987, ballot, are being watched closely by those who will decide the fate of the portions of south Orange County that remain unincorporated as well as by those who live in Mission Viejo itself.

“We feel we have a lot of analogies with Mission Viejo,” said Bruce Rasner, chairman of a group seeking to incorporate Laguna Niguel. “They had a community services district and a community advisory council” before incorporation “just as we do. We were both functioning as junior cities.”

List of Accomplishments

During its first year, according to the mayor’s State of the City report, the city council has, among other things:

- Staffed most of the city’s government offices, including those of the city manager and city clerk, and created a Planning Commission and a Parks and Recreation Commission

- Decided to continue providing municipal services such as police and fire protection through contracts with bodies such as the Orange County Sheriff’s Deparment and the Orange County Fire Department.

- Requested that the Local Agency Formation Commission permit the annexation of Aegean Hills to Mission Viejo.

- Challenged a development agreement between the Board of Supervisors and the Mission Viejo Co. that city officials believe could prevent them from being able to regulate the city’s growth.

- Authorized the Public Works Department to conduct a wide-ranging study of traffic in the city.

“The main thing is to get organized with talented management people and just to move ahead very carefully with contract services,” the mayor said in an interview Monday. “This year--1988--has been used mostly in getting organized. . . . There is a lot of work to be done.”

Uncertainty About Final Boundaries

Despite Murray’s cheerful report, it is not yet clear how useful a prototype Mission Viejo will be for other south county communities expected to pursue incorporation over the next few years.

There is, in fact, still a great deal of uncertainty about where municipal boundaries are likely to be in south county in the early part of the 21st Century. Although county officials expect some planned communities such as Aliso Viejo and Rancho Santa Margarita to eventually be ready to incorporate, there is no overall county plan that specifies which communities should become cities when.

The stated goal of the county Local Agency Formation Commission, which acts on cityhood matters, is to avoid leaving islands of unincorporated residential areas amid a sea of cities. Yet county officials concede that there are some areas, primarily in the foothills and canyons, in which government by county administration and local citizen advisory committees and community service districts is expected to last well into the next century.

South county, long a region with its own identity, appears to be becoming increasingly independent and distinct from other areas of the county, according to Mark Baldassare, a pollster and professor of social ecology at UC Irvine.

“Demographically, the south county is becoming a separate economic entity. It has the highest median income of $49,000 a year. . . . So it has become sort of an upper middle class enclave. . . .

“It appears to be creating a separate existence from the rest of the county, with two out of three residents of the south county saying they are commuting to south county jobs, a much higher proportion” of people commuting to local jobs than in other regions of the county.

In fact, some south county residents say they do not want to be part of a city because they fear that a new city would eventually suffer the same urban ills such as high crime and lack of public services that drove them from the cities they moved from.

Opinions Still Differ

Others fear that cities are being formed that do not make sense over the long range and that will result in their own neighborhoods being made permanent wards of county government.

As for the residents of Mission Viejo, which officially became the county’s 27th city March 31, cityhood has been a positive thing for some and a not-so-positive one for others.

John Nutting, 22, a clerk at a Lucky supermarket, has lived in Mission Viejo for 13 years. Nutting says he supported cityhood “just for the name, to feel like you’re something rather than just in some county.” His biggest complaint is that the city is growing too fast.

“They’re building too much,” he said. “I liked looking out at the open fields.”

Sharon Arnett, 42, a hairdresser, has lived in Mission Viejo for 17 years. “I don’t think anything’s been fixed,” Arnett said of the performance of the new city government. “The roads are still torn up. The traffic is bad . . . . I have not seen them (the City Council) do too much, but I guess it takes time.”

Delays a Sore Spot

Jacque Schulthess, 56, an 11-year resident, voted for incorporation but still does not know the mayor’s name. The name she does know, however, is that of the city traffic engineer. She has been calling and writing him for weeks now, asking for a traffic light at a busy intersection near her house.

“I know with the county it would take 5 years or so,” she said. “Possibly with the city it would take less time. I would hope they would be more responsible to the people of Mission Viejo.”

Some Mission Viejo residents who opposed incorporation still believe that they were correct.

“I personally feel the community was much better off before it became a city,” said Nadine Secarea, who co-chaired the No City Committee with her husband, Val. “We have police services contracted with the county at increased rates (costs), but I don’t see any sheriff’s patrols other than those I see setting up speed traps.

“I don’t recall seeing any speed traps when I lived in an unincorporated Mission Viejo. I don’t mind them handing out speeding tickets, but it doesn’t make my home and my community safer from burglars.”

‘Very Little Feedback’

Nor is Secarea particularly impressed with the performance of the City Council.

“The council members may have done things that are very good for the community, but I have very little feedback on that,” Secarea said. “I would say that they seem to be more interested in their own political agendas, not a community agenda.

“I moved here because it wasn’t an incorporated city, and I didn’t want to live in a city with all of a city’s usual problems. Now there is nothing to prevent it from happening here.”

One official who thinks Mission Viejo’s experience could be a useful model for other incorporation-minded residents is county Supervisor Gaddi H. Vasquez, who recently moved from Mission Viejo to Orange to reduce his commuting time.

Vasquez says it is too early to evaluate Mission Viejo’s long-term chances for success as a city because the City Council has not experienced a full budget cycle and because “many of the departments in the city are still in the developmental stages.”

But, he added, “the City Council and the city administration have done an exceptional job in establishing the city government and making the transition of services to a contract basis.”

Mayor Murray doubtless would agree.