Financing Is a Big If for Jail Plan on Gypsum Site

If all was to go smoothly, without any hitches whatsoever, the first inmates would arrive at a new Orange County jail in Gypsum Canyon in 1995, at the latest.

But everything is not going smoothly.

Last week, the county’s plans to build a 6,700-bed jail complex in the canyon just east of Anaheim Hills were dealt what could become a serious setback.

On Tuesday, state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach) withdrew from consideration in the Senate Judiciary Committee a bill she had sponsored that would have allowed voters to decide on a proposed half-cent sales tax increase for the construction and operation of jail and court facilities.

The reason: Santa Ana officials, fearful that voters will approve a June, 1990, ballot initiative requiring that all future county jails be built in their city, want to attach an amendment to Bergeson’s bill that would prohibit the money from being used to build any jail in Santa Ana within a mile of a school. That would eliminate many Santa Ana sites from consideration.

Bergeson balked, she has said, because local officials were inappropriately confusing a jail-financing plan with a jail site-selection plan. Late Thursday, however, she offered to compromise if Santa Ana city officials would remove their proposed amendment. She promised that she would not pass the sales tax measure to the governor for his signature until the Board of Supervisors gives final approval to the Gypsum Canyon site sometime in September. As of Saturday, there was no formal response from the city, so the sales tax question remains stalled.

But even if Bergeson’s bill is revived, wins passage in both houses of the Legislature and is signed by the governor and ultimately is approved by a majority of the county’s voters, the money generated by that a half-cent sales tax would not be enough to operate the proposed Gypsum Canyon jail for 1 year, much less pay for the land it would be built upon and finance its construction.

The sales tax would generate no more than $100 million annually, with jail construction projects vying with court construction projects for a piece of the pie.

By contrast, the current estimate is that it will cost at least $700 million to buy the Gypsum Canyon site from the Irvine Co. and to build the jail. It would cost another estimated $75 million to $100 million annually to operate it, county officials say.

Where would that kind of money come from in a county that last year considered massive layoffs to balance its budget?

“Obviously we don’t have very many ways to get it if we don’t get it from some source outside our routine budget,” Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas F. Riley said. As far as he knows, Riley said, the county has no concrete plan for financing the jail in Gypsum Canyon.

Plans Have Died

Plans that have been offered in the past, all of which would have required voter approval, have died on the vine.

The latest was killed in August by the Board of Supervisors. Under that proposal, voters would have been asked to approve a $700-million bond financing plan to pay for the first phase of the Gypsum Canyon Jail and for a new $250-million courthouse in Santa Ana.

At that time, supervisors and other officials said they did not believe Orange County’s conservative voters would be receptive to a measure that would add an estimated $70 in property taxes for every $100,000 in assessed value.

Officials also have discussed creation of a community services district, in which properties are assessed a special tax for specific public improvements. Creation of such a district would require that voters approve it with a two-thirds majority.

If such financing plans eventually were put to voters and approved, the $100 million generated by a half-cent sales tax might be adequate to pay the annual charges to service the debt, county officials said. Even so, money for day-to-day operation of the jail still would have to come from somewhere else.

Residential Development

Now, adding to the uncertainty surrounding the Gypsum Canyon jail project--and in part because of it--is the Irvine Co.’s announcement that it is beginning preliminary planning for residential development of its landholdings in the area, which include the proposed jail site.

Construction of homes on or near the jail site would make the county’s purchase of the land through condemnation proceedings more difficult--and more expensive.

“We had put any plans for development on hold,” said Dawn McCormick, a spokeswoman for the Irvine Co. “But since there has been no movement by the county, and there are plans for other development in the area, it’s become necessary to begin initial master planning . . . in cooperation with the city of Anaheim.”

The Hon Development Co., in conjunction with Anaheim, is planning to annex land in the adjacent Coal Canyon area, and that move would require the annexation of a small piece of the Irvine Co. land as well, McCormick said.

“Because of that, it seemed appropriate . . . that we work with . . . Anaheim to begin development of a master plan for the area,” she said. “Since the county movement has stalled, it’s in our interests to look at that property for development.”

Still, McCormick said, the company is several years away from actually building houses on the land.

Murry Cable, an assistant county administrative officer, said he did not know what impact, if any, the Irvine Co.’s announcement would have on plans for a new jail in Gypsum Canyon. He noted, however, that both the county and the company formally opposed the proposed Coal Canyon annexation plan at a meeting last month of the Local Agency Formation Commission, a county agency that oversees cityhood and annexation proposals. The matter was continued for 90 days, Cable said.

Some county officials in private conversations have talked of paring down the Gypsum Canyon project considerably and financing construction from the county general fund. Such an alternative, however, would require huge--and perhaps untenable--cuts in county services.

So where does that leave the Gypsum Canyon project, which could become part of a legal tangle if voters approve the 1990 initiative to build jails only in Santa Ana?

Still alive, insisted Supervisor Riley.

The county is in the process of completing a state-required environmental impact report on the Gypsum Canyon site, which was chosen from among several remote canyon areas by a sharply divided Board of Supervisors in July, 1987.

The environmental report, Riley said, is due to be finished in early September, and the Gypsum Canyon site is expected to get final approval from a majority of the five supervisors.

By then, Riley said, he also hopes that Bergeson’s bill will have been revived, passed and ready for the governor’s signature.

At that point, the county can seriously pursue its plans to build a jail in Gypsum Canyon, Riley said.