Saddleback Valley Incorporation Supported by Study, Group Says

Leaders of a fledgling movement to incorporate a wide area of Saddleback Valley say a preliminary study suggests that the proposed city would be financially secure.

Helen Wilson, president of the Community Coalition for Incorporation, said that a study released Tuesday by an Oceanside financial consultant shows that a city consisting of El Toro, Lake Forest and Portola Hills would have a surplus of more than $5 million in the first year if revenue and spending remained at current levels.

“That’s really very encouraging,” Wilson said Wednesday. “It proves that we would be healthy if we were a city.”

The group has already announced it will launch a petition drive in January to put cityhood on the ballot in November, 1990. This will be the group’s second incorporation attempt.

The petition drive and a financial feasibility study, paid for by the coalition, are needed by cityhood proponents as part of their incorporation application to the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission.

Since the beginning of 1988, South County’s Mission Viejo, Dana Point and Laguna Niguel have opted for cityhood. Some residents of Laguna Hills are also considering such a move.

The preliminary study on El Toro adds up all revenue accrued in the area in fiscal year 1988-89 and compares it to expenditures by the county.

The one-year study will be followed early next year by a full financial feasibility study, which will project the financial condition of the proposed 21-square-mile city for two years, said Fred Christiansen, who is conducting the study.

Christiansen, who also conducted the financial feasibility study for Laguna Niguel, said that the preliminary study was done to give pro-cityhood leaders an indication of whether to “go or not to go ahead.”

“These figures say, ‘Go,’ ” Christiansen said. “Now they will move ahead.”

Wilson said coalition members last met on Monday and are recruiting volunteers to circulate petitions.

“We really don’t have much time,” said Wilson, who was one of the leaders of last year’s failed attempt to form a city called Saddleback Valley.

Unlike voters in the three newest cities, a majority of residents of El Toro, Lake Forest, Aegean Hills, Portola Hills and Laguna Hills have rejected bids for cityhood in the recent past.

The incorporation attempt for Saddleback Valley, about a year ago, was defeated largely because of opposition from Laguna Hills voters, many of whom were planning to start an incorporation effort of their own. But the Laguna Hills incorporation effort last spring was defeated too, mostly because of opposition from Leisure World.

However, Wilson said that she and other community leaders are renewing their pro-cityhood campaign because of an informal survey that suggested interest in forming a city that does not include Laguna Hills.

Of the 202 people surveyed in interviews at local shopping centers, 50% favored incorporation, 20% opposed it and 30% were undecided, Wilson said.

The new city would include the proposed Foothills Ranch Planned Community, which would include 4,000 homes, an industrial complex and a commercial center between Portola Hills and El Toro.

The group must gather the signatures of 25% of the 28,000 registered voters who live within the proposed city boundaries.

The biggest opposition to the incorporation effort may come from residents of Portola Hills, an isolated neighborhood that often affiliates itself more with rural Trabuco Canyon than it does with El Toro.

Members of the Portola Hills Homeowners Assn. said they were against the effort at an Oct. 23 meeting with Wilson and other pro-city leaders.

The level of opposition, Wilson conceded, could match that of Laguna Hills residents during the Saddleback Valley campaign.

“We had a lot of people come (to the meeting) who were dead set against (incorporation),” Wilson said.