Panel Hears Harsh Words for Foothill Plan

A county proposal to set limits on growth in the Trabuco Canyon area was sharply criticized Monday by about two dozen property owners who testified before the Orange County Planning Commission.

The commissioners themselves also expressed concerns about the complexity of the plan and indicated that they are in no hurry to take a vote on the proposal, which would affect 6,500 acres of canyon and foothill area northeast of Mission Viejo. Monday’s testimony came in the first of two days of public hearings.

Staff planners had hoped the five-member commission would approve the Foothill/Trabuco Specific Plan at today’s meeting and send it to the Board of Supervisors for consideration next week. Planning Commission Chairman C. Douglas Leavenworth said Monday that that would be unlikely.

“We need more time. We just received this document on Saturday, and there is no way we can digest this in two days,” Leavenworth said as he held up a thick summary of the plan. “This plan is too important to rush. There is too much at stake.”

Under the proposal, a maximum of 1,700 new homes would be allowed in the area, and a two-lane road stretching three miles through the backcountry would be built.

The plan has divided the residents living in the sparsely populated rural area. Environmentalists and some local residents contend it will spoil the area’s rustic charm and threaten wildlife habitat. Some property owners, however, say such limits on development are punitive because the limits prevent them from realizing the full value of their land.

“This plan devastates property rights,” declared Phil Anthony, a former county supervisor who was speaking for the Foothill-Trabuco Property Owners Assn. In urging the commission to scrap the plan, Anthony said the proposal has prompted “tension and chaos” because it was drawn “against the will of the property owners.”

Jeff Newland, whose family owns 26 acres east of Live Oak Canyon Road near Hamilton Truck Trail, said his family had hoped to build six to eight houses on its parcel. Because the plan would rezone some property to reduce density, Newland feared that the family would be limited to two homes. Moreover, he said, about 40% of the land would become part of a new forest buffer zone and would therefore be off-limits to any development. He said the plan is unfair in light of all the development occurring just beyond the boundaries of the Foothill-Trabuco planning area.

“The little guy is having to pay for all the development in the area,” Newland said. “Because some people don’t like that development, they are penalizing us by keeping us from building.”

But slow-growth activist Sherry Meddick, president of the Rural Canyons Assn., said the property owners had received ample warning a year ago, when the county designated the Foothill-Trabuco area a rural transition zone, that development would be limited in the area.

“This is the rural transition zone,” Meddick said. “Not a transition to a transition zone. We’ve got to start somewhere and think about preserving and developing within reason.”