Old Rivalries Boil Over in Mission Viejo City Council

For the first 9 months of cityhood, Mission Viejo’s five City Council members treated each other with dignity and respect, avoiding any appearance of dissension at public meetings.

All that good will has evaporated, however, in the past month, as a bitter dispute over annexing neighboring Aegean Hills split the council, revealing long-simmering rivalries.

Animosity was so great at a recent council meeting that members traded barbs, interrupted each another constantly and even fought over whose names should go first on a new city plaque. One councilman directed staff members to research ways the mayor and mayor pro tem could be removed from office.

Called Shakedown

“The councilman has limited capacity to understand the subject matter,” Councilwoman Victoria C. Jaffe hissed to Councilman Robert A. Curtis during an argument over postponing action on the disputed plaque at the Feb. 13 council meeting.

A red-faced Curtis retorted: “Being rather dense, I would suggest this matter be handled right now.”

Some political observers say it is part of the inevitable shakedown in a new city with new and inexperienced political leaders. But while city staff and council members say the business of Mission Viejo is being conducted normally despite their differences, others blame the infighting for the departure of the city’s first manager after only 9 months.

Nonetheless, the squabbling by council members clearly is not well received by some residents.

“The council needs to clean up its act,” resident Eileen Fallman admonished members at the Feb. 13 council meeting.

Councilman Christien W. Keena later acknowledged that the council needed some chastising that night.

“It definitely was not our best foot forward,” said Keena, a lawyer. “But we’re human and I’m glad it’s out. It can only build upward now.”

Political observers outside Mission Viejo are not surprised at the infighting, given the highly charged world of politics in southern Orange County .

Michael Eggers, a councilman in the new city of Dana Point who for several years has served as an aide to Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad) in southern Orange County, said emotions are running high throughout the region because of the incorporation fever that has gripped the area for the past 3 years.

“Before, it had been sleepy little south county, but now all of a sudden things are happening fast and furious,” said Eggers, whose own city incorporated Jan. 1.

Last March 31, Mission Viejo became Orange County’s 27th city, and the county’s first new municipality since 1971.

Politicians Stake Turf

New cities are also more susceptible to political infighting than well-established ones because the politicians are staking out turf, said Alan Saltzstein, a political science professor at Cal State Fullerton.

“The field is wide open,” Saltzstein said.

Although animosities are only now being displayed in public, tensions have mounted within the Mission Viejo City Council ever since incorporation, according to sources both inside and outside city government.

One of the underlying reasons for the tension, Keena and other sources said, is that not all the members of the Mission Viejo Community Services District, a representative body for the area before its incorporation, won election to the City Council.

Three of the district board members--Keena, 41, a lawyer; Jaffe, 41, an insurance manager, and Norman P. Murray, 71, a business executive--were elected to the council.

William S. Craycraft, 45, a sales manager who is the current mayor, and Curtis, 33, a lawyer, were not members. Yet Craycraft and Curtis finished first and second in the vote-getting, stunning the Community Services District (CSD) faction.

“The CSD members assumed they would all be on the council. When they were not, they were shocked,” said one area political observer who asked not to be named.

One of the first sore points between the CSD faction and Craycraft and Curtis involved choosing the city’s first mayor. Although top vote-getters in council races are historically awarded this honor in new cities, fifth-place finisher Murray was chosen over Craycraft.

Craycraft, however, became the city’s second mayor after Murray’s term ended Dec. 31.

The former CSD members said the selection of Murray, a longtime civic activist in Mission Viejo, was largely a sentimental one. But many in the city said Craycraft and Curtis smoldered over the decision. And although the council presented a show of unity at public meetings, sources said the closed sessions often were dominated by arguments between the two factions that lasted well into the night.

The ongoing friction between council members is believed to be a major factor in Mission Viejo City Manager William Talley’s decision to resign effective Jan. 31 and take a similar job with the new city of Dana Point, several city sources said. Talley would say publicly only that conflicts in his Mission Viejo retirement package led to his departure.

The council has been searching for a new city manager, and is expected to make a final selection out of a field of 70 candidates by the end of March.

Keena said the loss of the city manager would have made things difficult enough for the new council, even without the division among its members over the proposed annexation of the adjoining community of Aegean Hills.

That plan has been fiercely opposed by many Mission Viejo residents, as well as the Mission Viejo Co., master planner of the community. The developer does not want any tampering with its original plan, which has been hailed as a national model for planned communities. Aegean Hills was not part of the original plan for Mission Viejo.

Keena said the pressures over Aegean Hills finally became too much on Jan. 23, when a divided council voted 3 to 2 to reverse its previous support for annexation of the area. It was during that vote that the private differences between council members erupted in public.

“This is a brand-new council and for a brand-new council to have to form a city, hire a staff and then, during such a big issue (as the Aegean Hills annexation), lose a city manager, it became too much,” Keena said.

Council members Jaffe, Keena and Murray said they voted to drop their support after hearing a new city report that said projected revenues from the proposed new area would be far less than previously thought. Curtis and Craycraft voted to continue their support regardless of the revenues the area would bring to city coffers.

On March 1, the county Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) is scheduled to decide the annexation of Aegean Hills, where many of the 7,000 residents had petitioned to become part of Mission Viejo. Mission Viejo has approximately 70,000 residents.

In the weeks after that Aegean Hills vote, Curtis and Craycraft continued to press their case for Aegean Hills outside City Hall, further infuriating fellow council members.

Craycraft, for example, took the opportunity during a recent interview on a local cable television station to express his continued support for the annexation of Aegean Hills.

And Curtis, a former Aegean Hills resident, issued a press release stating that he had convinced state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) to sponsor amended legislation that would allow cities incorporated after Jan. 1, 1988, to immediately collect certain state revenues from newly annexed areas.

At present, new cities must wait 8 years to collect such state revenues as cigarette and gas taxes in a newly annexed area. The cities can, however, collect property, sales and state motor vehicle taxes from that new area.

The city’s latest feasibility study showed it would collect, at most, $438,000 in surplus tax revenues from Aegean Hills. Earlier estimates, based on outdated demographic information from the county, were that the city would collect more than $1 million.

Curtis said in his press release, which carried a Mission Viejo city seal but was printed at his own expense, that a change in the legislation would mean that the city could collect an additional $500,000 in revenues from Aegean Hills.

The three council members who oppose annexation became incensed. They charged that both Curtis and Craycraft were purporting to represent the entire council, when in fact they were in the minority.

Majority Acted

The majority faction contacted Bergeson’s office, and let it be known that the city of Mission Viejo did not support the proposed amended legislation--at least not before LAFCO takes up the Aegean Hills question.

Then, at the Feb. 13 council meeting, Curtis sought City Council approval calling for Bergeson to spearhead the amended legislation. But Jaffe, Keena and Murray blocked the proposal. (Bergeson subsequently has dropped her sponsorship of the amendments.)

Although Curtis had touted the resolution as necessary to help other new California cities, Jaffe called that a “smoke screen” to boost Curtis’ Aegean Hills cause. Curtis, in turn, accused Jaffe and his other council detractors of engaging in “political shenanigans” by contacting Bergeson’s office on their own.

Jaffe also introduced a proposal to prohibit individual council members from speaking for the city as a whole, and Keena directed city staff to research ways to remove the mayor and mayor pro tem, who are appointed by the council. Action on both requests may be taken at a future meeting.

Although Keena, who is now mayor pro tem, called his proposal “more of an inquiry and a housecleaning,” Curtis took it as a threat against himself and Craycraft.

“I’m just concerned if there is any present need you would have for this action?” Curtis asked Keena in the meeting.

“I am touched, Mr. Curtis, by your concern with my well-being,” Keena replied. “(The City) Council should have the right to remove an officer.”

Gave Explanation

Keena later said his removal proposal was not aimed at Craycraft, but was to deal with future instances if a mayor or mayor pro tem tried to use those appointed positions to espouse personal political views. The mayor, Keena added, is supposed to speak for the council as a whole when representing the city at public functions.

Under Jaffe’s proposal, all statements to the press from the mayor and city staff would have to be approved in advance by the council. The proposal also would require that the mayor’s mail be opened for all other council members to see, and that any requests made of city staff by individual council members be relayed to the rest of the council.

Jaffe said these limitations are needed in order for the city to present a united front. Craycraft, however, said they would infringe upon the council members’ personal rights.

“The mail that comes to me is personal and private,” he said. “The mail that comes to the council and mayor should be shared with the council.”

Keena also took a jab at the mayor when he asked that action on approval of the city plaque for Mission Viejo’s new Oso Viejo Community Center be postponed. Keena and some other council members were upset that Craycraft’s name is listed ahead of the other council members on the plaque. The council voted 3 to 2 to postpone the plaque decision, with Craycraft and Curtis dissenting.

Murray explained that since he served as Mission Viejo’s first mayor, the council wants his name to go alongside Craycraft’s.

Caught in the middle between the warring council members is the city staff, which has had to respond to individual council requests and watch in dismay as seemingly routine items are pulled off the consent calender for discussion and delay. Consent calendar items include such matters as routine payment of bills. As many as a dozen out of 22 consent calendar items have been pulled for discussion recently, lengthening council meetings that might ordinarily run 2 hours to as long as 5 hours.

“It is terrible for city staff morale,” Curtis said of the dissension.

A source outside the city agreed: “They’re going crazy over there.”

But council members are all unanimous in saying they each hope that the worst is over and that they can start mending fences from here.

Craycraft said: “It really distracts and makes it difficult to take care of business at hand when there is uproar and acrimony.”