17 Agencies Hold ‘Summit’ on South County Problems

Managing growth in booming southern Orange County was the dominant issue discussed Thursday by representatives of 17 city councils, school boards and other agencies in the area at a meeting believed to be the first of its kind to address regional problems.

The session involved more than 60 leaders of the governmental agencies in the rapidly growing area, where two new cities have been formed in the past year and at least two more may be formed later this year.

“South Orange County is being challenged by a wide variety of issues which must be dealt with in a comprehensive, detailed and progressive manner,” said San Juan Capistrano Mayor Gary L. Hausdorfer, who organized Thursday night’s meeting. “Together we can make a difference, and together we can preserve and enhance the quality of life so important to us all.”

Although southern Orange County is being carved up into numerous governmental jurisdictions, Hausdorfer said, everyone in the region faces such common problems as traffic, growth, air quality and water quality.

Hausdorfer called the meeting at the Dana Point Resort a “South Orange County Leadership Conference.” And he pledged that there would be more such conferences, perhaps as frequently as every 2 months.

Invited to Thursday’s gathering were representatives from these agencies:

The cities of Dana Point, Laguna Beach, Mission Viejo, San Clemente and San Juan Capistrano; the Laguna Niguel Community Service District; the Capistrano Unified, Laguna Beach Unified, Saddleback Community College and Saddleback Valley Unified school districts.

The Capistrano Beach County, Laguna Beach County, Moulton-Niguel, Santa Margarita, South Coast County, Capistrano Beach and Dana Point water districts.

County government officials were not invited, but Hausdorfer said they would be asked for their input later. County planners, in recent reports analyzing incorporation proposals, have scored the southern part of the county for being too fragmented and have recommended fewer new agencies to try to maintain cohesiveness on regional issues. During the 90-minute meeting, elected and appointed officials from the various cities and agencies identified issues, discussed a format for dealing with future conferences and agreed to meet again on a monthly basis to solve regional problems.

Among about two-dozen serious issues identified Thursday evening were growth and transportation, air and water quality concerns, offshore oil drilling and the need for better cooperation among the agencies.

However, conference participants agreed that many of the problems they identified were a direct result of the region’s swift growth. With even more development coming, most representatives said they must work together to manage growth more effectively.

“If we don’t put together a united front, (if we) keep operating in a vacuum, somebody is going to fill that vacuum for us,” Dana Point City Councilman Mike Eggers said. He warned that the county, state or federal government could move to solve their problems for them.

In opening the meeting, Hausdorfer noted that few of the people present even knew one another. “One of the real reasons I called you here tonight was to meet you,” he said.

Others in attendance said they were glad to finally start working together. “I think it’s clear that we’re not going to agree on everything, but we will have tremendous strength of numbers in representing south Orange County,” Laguna Beach City Councilman Dan Kenney said.

Raymond Miller, general manager of the South Coast Water District in Laguna Beach, added, “This will establish a method of communication to promote camaraderie among the agencies.”

In closing the meeting, Hausdorfer said: “I want this to be a conference that sets an example, not only for the county, but for all of California. My guess is that a year from now, we’ll know a whole lot more about each other.”

In an interview earlier Thursday, Hausdorfer said he organized the meeting after noticing that the multitude of government agencies in southern Orange County were being confronted by essentially the same problems.

“I have been concerned for some time that many of the issues confronting public agencies are not parochial. They are regional, and yet there had been no forum to get all these people together and simply talk,” Hausdorfer said. “City people see each other through forums, but we never get together with the school boards and water boards.”

Besides working together to try to resolve such regional issues as traffic, growth and air quality, Hausdorfer said this type of an organization can help prevent jurisdictional disputes that may arise when one agency, for example, builds a sewage treatment plant that contaminates the water of a downstream agency.

“This kind of format prevents a lot of surprises,” he said. “It also creates a forum where an elected official can come up with a solution in one community and say it may work in another.”

The intent of the organization is not to compete with the California League of Cities, Hausdorfer said, but rather to complement it.