Laguna Hills Ready to Vote on a Divisive Cityhood Issue

The Sunday-evening concert at Leisure World had been proceeding nicely when the pianist decided to end his Gershwin medley with a personal pitch on behalf of cityhood for Laguna Hills.

But the political tune by the usually popular performer did not sit well with many of the senior citizens in the audience, some of whom started hooting and walked out.

“This is the most emotional issue that has come up in the 12 years since I have been here,” said Myra Neben, editor of the Leisure World News, the weekly newspaper in this retirement community of 21,500.

At stake is the question of whether Leisure World and its neighboring communities want to band together and form a city of Laguna Hills, a municipality of 45,000 on 6,000 acres wedged between the San Diego Freeway on the east and the Aliso Viejo planned community on the west.

The decision to make Laguna Hills the county’s 29th city will be made at the polls Tuesday. If approved, the city would begin operations Oct. 1.

Tuesday’s election is the fourth incorporation election in south Orange County in the last 18 months, as various communities seek to exert local control over growth and public services.

Two communities, Mission Viejo and Dana Point, were successful, while a proposal to create a Saddleback Valley city was defeated last November. Another incorporation election, for Laguna Niguel, is scheduled for November.

However, none of the other cityhood attempts has the unique demographic mix of Laguna Hills.

While traditional family communities, such as Laguna Terrace, Aliso Hills and the pricey Nellie Gail Ranch, would be included in the new city, the mostly retired residents of Leisure World would form its geographic and political heart.

Disagreement about cityhood is so hot in Leisure World that some neighbors no longer speak to one another.

The Leisure World News last week was full of political advertisements and letters to the editor from proponents and adversaries of cityhood. Although most of the letters have been heavily in opposition to cityhood in recent weeks, the paper Thursday came out in support of the measure.

The prospect of cityhood is frightening to many Leisure World residents who cherish the pleasant environment inside their private community and worry that a new city could upset their life style. They are warned by cityhood opponents that a new city could burden them with new financial liabilities and make them prey to sleazy politics.

At the same time, promoters of cityhood are saying that incorporation would empower them to control development, crime and traffic outside their gates where they go to shops, doctors offices and restaurants. And advocates tell them that as a city they could more effectively oppose commercial use of El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, which they fear would greatly increase the number of noisy jets flying overhead.

Di Bernardini, 83, who recently was waiting outside Clifton’s cafeteria in Laguna Hills for a Leisure World bus to take her home, expressed the views of the cityhood opponents this way: “We are fine the way we are.”

But Catherine Condit, 78, who was walking nearby, said she already had cast an absentee ballot in favor of cityhood. “I don’t want to be part of a little island,” she said. “You just can’t stand still.”

In the last days before the election, campaigning has heated up as committees on both sides of the incorporation issue try to sway the undecided. Within the last two weeks, volunteers have been trekking door to door, handing out flyers, launching telephone-and-mail blitzes and erecting posters along roadsides in Laguna Hills.

Simultaneous campaigns are being waged by 14 candidates who are vying for five city council positions that would become available in a new city. Five of the candidates are residents of Leisure World, including three who are in favor of city formation and two who are opposed.

Advocates of cityhood say that Leisure World can provide the proposed new city with a great economic advantage. Joel Lautenschleger, co-chairman of Citizens to Save Laguna Hills, a cityhood advocacy group, pointed out that Leisure World “generates revenue without expenses.”

Leisure World is a private community that finances the vast majority of its services, including streets, golf course, library, swimming pools, security guards, landscaping maintenance and a bus system.

Since city money could not be spent inside a private community, Leisure World would place few demands on city funds. In addition, its citizens would add considerably to the city’s population, which is used in determining the amount of state funding the new city would receive.

Proponents of cityhood say that Laguna Hills also will derive substantial tax revenue from the Laguna Hills regional mall and other commercial and hotel development. Without taking any action to increase taxes, they say, the city will be rich enough to improve its parks, traffic enforcement and other services. Millions of dollars of tax revenue generated in Laguna Hills that has been spent by the county government on services in other areas, they say, would remain in Laguna Hills under cityhood.

According to a fiscal analysis done for cityhood proponents by HSW Associates, a firm in San Juan Capistrano, Laguna Hills in its first full year as a city would have revenues of $15 million and, after costs of operation, would have almost $5.5 million in “surplus” for municipal improvements and an emergency fund.

Proponents are also plugging hard at what they say is a need to control development and thus traffic, which is becoming increasingly congested on such main arteries in the area as La Paz Road, El Toro Road and Moulton Parkway.

In particular, they want to halt plans to develop a 176-acre business park and about a 15-acre commercial site near Leisure World. Many cityhood proponents want the land, which is owned by Rossmoor Liquidating Trust and in escrow to Cabot, Cabot & Forbes, to remain in its current zoning for recreation and open space.

David Nealey, vice president and regional manager for Cabot, Cabot & Forbes in Orange County, said the company is working with county traffic and land planners to see what improvements in the road and signaling systems will be needed to accommodate the company’s plan for 1.8 million square feet of office and retail space, which would put an estimated 42,000 more vehicles a day on Moulton and El Toro.

However, Christie McDaniel, executive assistant to County Supervisor Thomas F. Riley, whose district includes Laguna Hills, said that if the area’s voters approve incorporation, the county supervisors, who have the final say on zoning changes in unincorporated areas, will defer any decision on the controversial project to the new city council.

The overwhelming sentiment among the city council candidates would be to kill or substantially scale back the business park proposal.

Yet another argument of cityhood proponents is that by incorporating now, Laguna Hills will stave off future land grabs from other south county areas that may want to include it in proposed cities.

“If we do not incorporate, we will be picked off piece by piece by surrounding communities,” said Ellen Martin, Citizens to Save Laguna Hills co-chairwoman.

But Martin said her group’s major pitch is the value of local control. “Right now we are dealing with the Board of Supervisors, (whose members do) not live in the area. They don’t have to live with the ramifications of the development decisions they make,” she said.

The only organized opposition to the cityhood drive is within Leisure World.

Leaders of that group say they are very content with their lot under county governance. They say they aren’t interested in providing a financial benefit for communities outside their gates at the risk of disrupting their lives.

“We want to be left alone because we get no benefits from being part of the city,” said John Luhring, vice president of Leisure World Residents Against Incorporation.

“They could pave the streets of Nellie Gail with gold, but it won’t help us,” said cityhood opponent Milt Nathanson.

Opponents of cityhood dispute that a new city will have any real influence on stopping the development and expansion of major streets, since the county would continue to have jurisdiction over the planning and development of arterial highways. Moreover, they doubt that a city can solve a traffic problem that they believe is regional.

Also, they warn that if a new city tried to stop development of a major project like the Forbes Ranch business park, it might be sued by developers, thus incurring great legal expense. “The risk of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit cannot be dismissed lightly,” said Ed Estrin, treasurer of the Leisure World group opposing cityhood.

Rather than gain political influence, opponents of incorporation argue that Leisure World would lose its already considerable political clout if it were blended into a larger city.

“When Leisure World speaks, our legislature listens to us,” Nathanson said. “If we join the city, we will lose our identity.”

The new city government will constitute another, unnecessary, layer of government, cityhood opponents contend. In a newsletter they distributed to Leisure World residents, they listed the 61 new city government positions that are proposed in the cityhood feasibility study, with salaries and benefits totaling $3 million a year.

Also, the opponents contend that most Leisure World residents don’t want to vote in city elections, run for city office or listen to local political rhetoric. “People came here to avoid politics,” Nathanson said.

The Leisure World opponents of cityhood observe that they are campaigning at a monetary disadvantage. Between Jan. 1 and May 20, Leisure World Residents Against Incorporation had raised $11,099 in contributions. By contrast, three organizations favoring cityhood--Citizens to Save Laguna Hills, Leisure World Residents for Laguna Hills and the Golden Rain Foundation--reported raising $28,279 in the same period.

Leaders of the opposition group are angry that the Golden Rain Foundation, a nonprofit corporation that manages the community facilities in Leisure World, chose to endorse and financially support the pro-city movement without first taking a vote of Leisure World residents.

Paul Berkery, past president of the Saddleback Region Chamber of Commerce, said most Laguna Hills residents outside Leisure World seem oblivious to the upcoming election.

“I live in Laguna Hills, and the majority of people I talk to don’t know or care that cityhood is going on,” he said. He predicted a very low voter turnout and that “the whole thing will be decided in Leisure World.”

That prospect concerns Dale White, who led a campaign to form a larger Saddleback Valley city that excluded Leisure World.

“Giving Leisure World the voting majority is insanity unless everyone wants to go back to having their lives run by their parents,” she said.