Board Likely to Affirm Gypsum Cyn. as Jail Site

Two years after targeting Gypsum Canyon as the site for a massive new county jail, the Board of Supervisors this week is expected to seal that controversial decision, despite doubts about how to finance the 6,700-inmate facility or buy the land in eastern Orange County.

The supervisors, in a series of actions Wednesday, can remove any remaining uncertainty over the location of a new jail by reaffirming their support for Gypsum Canyon and rezoning the 2,000-acre site to allow development of a jail or other public facilities.

The board must also certify environmental documents evaluating the project’s impact on the chaparral-covered canyon south of the Riverside Freeway in the Santa Ana Mountains.

Despite pressure from Anaheim and Yorba Linda officials and residents, the same narrow majority that selected Gypsum Canyon from among several other remote sites in the summer of 1987 appears to be intact for Wednesday morning’s public hearing in Santa Ana on the environmental impact report.

‘Cast in Concrete’

Board of Supervisors Chairman Thomas. F. Riley and Supervisors Roger R. Stanton and Harriett M. Wieder supported Gypsum Canyon two years ago, and Riley said he’s unaware of any change of heart among the three.

“It’s my sense that the vote is going to follow the same lines,” said Riley, adding that Supervisors Gaddi H. Vasquez, whose district includes Gypsum Canyon, and Don R. Roth, who represents adjacent Anaheim Hills, remain opposed to putting the $700-million jail there.

A disconsolate Roth agreed that the board remains divided on the issue.

“It appears everyone’s position is cast in concrete,” Roth said. “I don’t look for any surprises.”

Proponents say the site is freeway-close, yet remote enough not to disturb surrounding residential neighborhoods. Moreover, the site is large enough to accommodate 6,700 inmates in a maximum-security facility, tripling the county’s current jail capacity and relieving chronic overcrowding at current facilities.

Opponents, however, say a jail in Gypsum Canyon would hurt residential property values in nearby Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda. They also contend the site is too far from the criminal courts in Santa Ana and that the county cannot afford to bus inmates back and forth for court hearings. Moreover, they note that the county does not have the estimated $35 million to $40 million to buy the site from the Irvine Co., which is pushing ahead with its plans to build several thousand homes in the area.

To fight the jail plan, Anaheim Hills residents banded together and successfully qualified an initiative to be placed before voters next year requiring that all future county jails be built in Santa Ana.

Wednesday’s vote to confirm or deny Gypsum Canyon as the preferred jail site is part of an agreement engineered, in part, by Riley and state Sen. Marian Bergeson (R-Newport Beach).

Sales Tax Proposed

Bergeson is the author of a special bill that would ask Orange County voters to approve a half-cent increase in the sales tax to pay for construction of new jails, court buildings and juvenile justice facilities.

If the jail sales-tax measure is put on the countywide ballot as planned in June, 1990, and approved, the half-cent tax increase is expected to yield $121 million a year, which Riley and others say would be crucial seed money for a new jail. The operating cost alone for a facility the size of the proposed Gypsum Canyon jail is an estimated $90 million a year.

Earlier this summer, Santa Ana officials had threatened to block the bill, fearing that revenue from the sales tax eventually would be used to expand the current jail in Santa Ana or build a new one elsewhere in their city. To win support from Santa Ana officials, Bergeson agreed not to submit her bill to the governor until the supervisors named a specific jail site.

If the supervisors Wednesday reaffirm the Gypsum Canyon site, there is time before the current legislative session ends in mid-September for Bergeson’s bill to win approval and be sent to Gov. George Deukmejian for his signature. First, however, her bill must be passed by two Assembly committees, then approved by the full Assembly, with final concurrence from the Senate.

“With each month that passes, the cost of a new jail keeps climbing and climbing and climbing,” Riley said. “It’s time the board decides, once and for all, where the jail is going and get the process rolling.”

But Roth complained that the county is “once again rushing into the jail issue,” this time to satisfy Bergeson and those supporting the half-cent jail tax proposal. He said the county’s environmental study of the jail’s impact on noise, traffic and public safety in the Gypsum Canyon area was “unfairly hustled along” at the expense of local city officials and residents who were denied an adequate opportunity to comment on the proposal.

As a result, Roth warned that Gypsum Canyon could become entangled in a legal web similar to the one enveloping the expansion of the Theo Lacy Branch Jail in Orange. A Superior Court judge halted the expansion of the 622-bed facility after the city of Orange filed a lawsuit alleging that a state-required environmental report on the project did not fully analyze the negative impact on the surrounding area.

“I am alarmed that we are rushing into something that is only going to result in more legal bills,” Roth said of Gypsum Canyon. “We are up to our eyeballs in legal fees now. I’m afraid this whole process has been flawed, and for what? A half-cent sales measure that will never fly.”

Roth and others believe the jail tax measure is a long shot because county voters are unlikely to approve two tax increases in less than a year. In November, Orange County voters will be asked to approve raising the current 6-cent-per-dollar sales tax by a half-cent to help fund more than $11 billion in transportation improvements.

Richard Adler, a senior planner with the county’s Environmental Management Agency, said the environmental review of Gypsum Canyon was not “cut short or accelerated,” as Roth implied.

But even with a majority of supervisors voting for the site, the prospects of a jail being built at Gypsum Canyon are uncertain.

In June, 1990, voters will be asked to require that all future county jails be built in Santa Ana. The measure is sponsored by a community group called Taxpayers for a Centralized Jail, a group made up largely of Anaheim Hills residents opposed to Gypsum Canyon.

The group’s president, Rick Violett, said there is little doubt that the supervisors will vote in favor of Gypsum Canyon. But he is confident that county voters will approve the centralized jail initiative, prompting the board to reconsider its jail site selection.

It is unclear, however, whether passage of such an initiative would affect the Gypsum Canyon site.

The county also faces the task of acquiring the Gypsum Canyon site. County planners recommend purchasing nearly 2,000 acres in the canyon, although the jail complex would be built on less than 250 acres. The land is owned by the Irvine Co., and company officials say they intend to build homes on the property.

The area is unincorporated county territory, but it falls within the city of Anaheim’s sphere of influence, and Irvine Co. officials hope the city will one day annex the land. If the company won’t sell the site, the county has the right to purchase it through eminent domain, a legal procedure allowing private property to be declared necessary for public use.