LAGUNA HILLS : Aliso Viejo Group Joins Cityhood Push

A group of Aliso Viejo residents announced Tuesday they want their neighborhoods included in the proposed city of Laguna Hills against the wishes of the Mission Viejo Co., which developed the planned community.

“We don’t want to be another Aegean Hills,” said Paula van der Horst, a resident of the Indian Creek community and a member of the newly formed East Aliso Viejo Residents for Laguna Hills. She was referring to a small pie-shaped portion of land adjacent to the San Diego Freeway and Mission Viejo that was left out when that city incorporated in 1988.

Aegean Hills remains unincorporated, a situation that van der Horst and a handful of others don’t want to happen to their neighborhoods in Aliso Viejo.

“We spend money in (Laguna Hills). My children will go to school in Laguna Hills. We already feel like we’re a part of Laguna Hills,” van der Horst said.

The group includes residents of five of Aliso Viejo’s 18 homeowners associations: Aspen Creek, Rancho Monterey, Indian Creek, Indian Hills and Windwoods. All are east of Moulton Parkway near Alicia Parkway and just outside the gated community of Leisure World.

The Mission Viejo Co., developer of Aliso Viejo, has repeatedly said it would like to keep the planned community intact. The development is about 20% complete, company spokeswoman Wendy Wetzel said. About 4,000 people live in Aliso Viejo, with 50,000 residents planned by the year 2005, she said.

“We are opposed to the inclusion of any portion of the planned community of Aliso Viejo in the Laguna Hills cityhood movement,” Wetzel said. “It’s too early in the life of that planned community. It’s like if someone had tried to grab a piece of Mission Viejo when it was only 2 years old.

“And people did try to grab pieces of Mission Viejo. The rest of the Aliso Viejo community should have at least one chance to vote as a whole community on its future.”

Van de Horst said her group will join forces with Citizens to Save Laguna Hills, a group that last week launched a campaign to form an eight-square-mile city of about 30,000 residents.

Volunteers are walking door-to-door to collect 4,000 signatures needed to file Laguna Hills’ application to the Orange County Local Agency Formation Commission, the official body that acts on matters of cityhood. The group hopes to quality the cityhood measure for the November ballot.

The newest cityhood effort, the community’s third in recent years, does not include the Leisure World retirement community. Strong anti-cityhood sentiment was blamed for the defeat of a incorporation ballot measure last June.

This will be the first time, however, that residents of Aliso Viejo will have a chance to vote on incorporation.

Another cityhood drive is under way in the Saddleback Valley communities of El Toro, Lake Forest and Portola Hills. Proponents also hope to qualify El Toro for cityhood on the November ballot.