Santa Clarita is marking its first birthday by escalating the battle against development while trying to expand at the same time, reflecting the city’s optimism, its clean-cut character and an impulsiveness bred during its long struggle for home rule. : A David Fighting Goliaths

It was a gutsy act for a city only 358 days old.

Besieged with complaints of congested streets and crowded classrooms, the Santa Clarita City Council decided to sue Los Angeles County to stop growth around the city--at least until schools, roads and other services can catch up.

After the vote Dec. 8, the audience in the council chambers broke into applause. “It’s kind of like David and Goliath,” said one delighted resident.

The remark could well describe the city’s first year of existence--and portend an even bolder future. Santa Clarita has emerged an energetic--if sometimes emotional and naive--David who lashes out with almost self-righteous fervor against a host of Goliaths--the county, the city of Los Angeles, developers, dumps and power plants.

Stemming Growth

At the public’s urging, the City Council has forbidden the cutting of oaks, ordered dozens of billboards removed and prohibited development on agricultural land. In short, they have been trying to prevent Santa Clarita from becoming another crammed, overdeveloped San Fernando Valley.

With more than 110,000 residents, Santa Clarita is the largest municipality ever allowed to incorporate in California, but retains a homespun, small-town atmosphere. It is, after all, the place where 2,000 people attending the city’s inaugural celebration joined hands and, swaying back and forth, sang “Reach Out and Touch Somebody’s Hand.”

And Santa Clarita residents are urging the City Council to make the city even bigger. The council in turn has started to annex land in the surrounding Santa Clarita Valley, 35 miles north of Los Angeles. It has also set some lofty goals--reducing traffic, slowing development outside the city and attaining “U.S. and world recognition.”

Some of those goals reflect the city’s optimism, its clean-cut character and perhaps an impulsiveness bred during a 30-year struggle for home rule. The council declared Santa Clarita a “drug-free city,” the mayor launched a campaign for more G-rated movies at the local theater and one council member, citing what she said were cruel farming practices, suggested the city ban the sale of veal.

Yearlong Honeymoon

The public and the council are sure to be emboldened by welcome financial news. Mayor Howard P. (Buck) McKeon announced this month that Santa Clarita’s revenue during its first year was $26.6 million--$7.5 million more than predictions made before the city’s formation.

For the most part, the council has enjoyed a yearlong honeymoon with the public.

But as the city enters its second year, that romance may be coming to an end, especially as people hear that new taxes may be needed to build roads. One study estimated that $339 million will be needed for new roads through 2010 to keep pace with growth.

“We all promised not to raise taxes,” McKeon said. “But I see roads as a separate problem.”

“As much as I hate to say ‘new taxes,’ some may be necessary,” Councilwoman Jo Anne Darcy said.

With or without new taxes, it is clear that residents would like to see more tangible results of cityhood and even stronger action by the council. “For 12 months, you people have been choking on these little things,” resident Jim Bowling said recently, complaining about a lengthy review of billboard restrictions.

“I’m here to tell you how disappointed I am in this group I helped elect last year--really disappointed,” said Mildred Jenkins, angry that council members took 4 months to divide a parcel of land.

Such restlessness among the people is understandable. “When you’ve been championing local government for so long, you’re impatient,” said Connie Worden, a planning commissioner and longtime cityhood advocate.

“I decided to give the council a year,” said Allan Cameron, a self-styled government watchdog who helped found the city. But with most city government now in place, he said, it is time for citizens “to take a cold, hard look” at what the council is doing.

“I think they need to be more assertive,” Mike Kotch, a leader in the cityhood drive, said of the council.

Earlier Efforts

Kotch, who characterized Santa Clarita’s genesis as a revolution, said the public has purposely been easy on the council during its crucial first year. “Nobody wants the revolution to fail,” he said.

That revolution dates to the early 1950s when the valley was a rural, pristine haven for refugees from the San Fernando Valley who were attracted by rolling hills covered with oak trees. During the next 20 years, several cityhood drives failed.

Then in the 1970s, a group of “separatists” twice tried to carve a county out of 400 square miles in the northwest corner of Los Angeles County. Both times, in 1976 and 1978, the ballot measure passed in Santa Clarita, which then had only 60,000 residents, but was voted down by the rest of Los Angeles County.

“It was a radical idea,” Worden said. “I always thought of us as the mouse that roared.”

‘Time Had Come’

A decade later, the valley had grown to about 100,000 residents. Many longtime residents watched in horror as bulldozers leveled their beloved hills and oaks to build housing tracts and mini-malls. “In 1986, when we started the cityhood drive, I knew the time had come,” Worden said. “It was relatively easy to form a city because the people were ready for it.”

On Nov. 3, 1987, voters overwhelmingly approved incorporation, 14,416 votes to 6,747 votes.

The city united four distinct communities, Valencia, Newhall, Saugus and Canyon Country. Valencia is an upscale “master-planned” community launched in the 1960s that is best known as the home of Magic Mountain. Saugus, a hodgepodge of new housing tracts, older homes and neighborhood shopping centers, grew up around a Southern Pacific railroad station built in 1887.

Newhall, founded by pioneering land baron Henry Mayo Newhall in 1876, still retains a Western flavor. Main street--San Fernando Road--still looks like a Western movie set. Canyon Country is a mixture of housing tracts, mobile home parks, condominiums and hog and horse farms. It also includes affluent Sand Canyon, a secluded community of large estates and Arabian horse ranches that some have called the “Bel-Air of Santa Clarita.”

Santa Clarita became the county’s 85th city, and its seventh-largest. It is surpassed only by the cities of Los Angeles, Long Beach, Glendale, Torrance, Pasadena and Pomona. The community is 92% Anglo and the average age is 29. The average household income is $42,981--$10,000 higher than the county average.

The city was launched with a festive but dignified ceremony last year attended by more than 2,000 people who captured the mood of the year to follow. Music played that night ranged from the Beach Boys’ “Be True to Your School” to John Philip Sousa’s “Stars and Stripes Forever.”

An all-American atmosphere prevails. Santa Clarita is a place where the local Brownie or Boy Scout troop is invited to post the colors and lead the Pledge of Allegiance at most City Council meetings. It also is a place where, during a public meeting, the mayor asked his wife to stand and take a bow on their wedding anniversary.

More than 100 residents typically attend each council meeting and almost all stay until the end, sometimes past midnight.

Or as City Councilwoman Jan Heidt puts it, seeing the city limit signs go up “just tugs at your heartstrings.”

But in the beginning, progress was sometimes rocky.

Residents complained that people outside the valley had no idea where the city was. For months, directory assistance operators told callers seeking Santa Clarita City Hall that no such place existed. Even the city’s first stationery said Santa Clarita City Hall was located in Canyon Country.

The first City Hall was a dingy, one-room office with a card table, a few chairs and a space heater donated by residents. Basic tasks were delayed for months until a staff was hired. The minutes of the council’s Dec. 28 meeting, for example, were not typed and approved until June.

In perhaps the best example of frustrations a new city encounters, Santa Clarita is fighting to stop construction of a power plant that the county mistakenly approved during a moratorium imposed by the City Council. County officials, with all good intentions, were acting on behalf of the young city while it organized its government.

Such growing pains are natural to new municipalities, said E. Fredrick Bien, a veteran city administrator who served as Santa Clarita’s interim city manager and has helped organize half a dozen other cities. Compared to most young cities, Santa Clarita is in good shape, he said.

“They’re even better off than I had predicted, and I thought they looked pretty good,” Bien said. “They’re taking off fast.”

Fran Pavley, first mayor of Agoura Hills, which incorporated in 1982, said Santa Clarita’s first year is typical. “The first few years of a city, you spend so much time establishing policy,” said Pavley, an Agoura Hills City Council member.

Told of Santa Clarita’s marathon council meetings, Pavley chuckled and said: “It gets better. You can tell them that.”

It already has. Council members, after a 2-day retreat with an efficiency expert, learned the basics of parliamentary procedure. An agenda that a year ago took until 2 a.m. to complete can be finished around 11 p.m.

Meetings have dragged on for hours partly because the council has let citizens have their say--no matter how long it took. “We felt it was necessary to let people talk all they wanted because for so long they haven’t had a voice,” McKeon said.

Looking toward the city’s second year of operation, the council has established a list of long-range priorities--building roads to alleviate traffic congestion, annexing the entire valley, acquiring the abandoned 502-acre Saugus Rehabilitation Center site for future use as a civic center and park, and forging a stronger community identity.

In the meantime, the City Council would like to see the Sheriff’s Department, which provides the city with police protection, paint their black and white cars a different color with the city seal on their doors.

“Quick fixes” to improve traffic circulation are planned as well, City Manager George Caravalho said. They include removing bicycle lanes to form additional traffic lanes, synchronizing traffic signals and restriping streets.

These improvements are still months away. Nevertheless, most residents are simply pleased to be part of a city at last.

Cameron recalled the day he saw city attorneys fighting in court to block the proposed power plant. “After having had to do without that sort of assistance for so long, it was just an amazing feeling,” Cameron said. “My tax dollars at work.”