Leisure World Is Pondering Cityhood

Setting the stage for a territorial battle with Laguna Hills cityhood proponents, Leisure World leaders said Thursday that they are considering a proposal to form a city out of the retirement community.

“We may decide to incorporate,” said John W. Luhring, a spokesman for the Golden Rain Foundation, the retirement community’s governing body. “We have done a quick and dirty study about finances, and it looks like it (cityhood) would be very viable.”

The announcement came a day after cityhood proponents in Laguna Hills said that they collected enough signatures to qualify for the November ballot. The boundaries for the proposed city exclude Leisure World but come right up to the retirement community’s walled border in many places.

The Laguna Hills group must now await completion of a financial feasibility study before it can turn in its cityhood application to the Local Agency Formation Commission, said Ellen Martin, head of Citizens to Save Laguna Hills, which is leading the incorporation effort. If approved by voters on Nov. 6, the eight-square-mile area would become Orange County’s 30th city.

A June ballot measure calling for a city that included Laguna Hills and Leisure World was narrowly defeated, largely because of strong opposition from voters in the 21,000-resident retirement community.

After that ballot measure failed, Citizens to Save Laguna Hills removed all Leisure World residential property from the latest Laguna Hills proposal but apparently has included about 30 acres of non-residential property owned by the Golden Rain Foundation.

Luhring and Albert Hanson, president of Golden Rain Foundation, issued a statement opposing the boundaries drawn up by Citizens to Save Laguna Hills and vowed to derail the new incorporation proposal.

They said that they will oppose the Laguna Hills plan when that group goes before LAFCO and the Orange County Board of Supervisors for final approval.

“They are putting the boundaries right up to our front doors wherever they can,” Luhring said in a telephone interview. “That is not very nice.”

As president of Leisure World Residents Against Incorporation, Luhring said he opposed last year’s plan to link his community with the rest of Laguna Hills because Leisure World residents would have had a “minority voice in the city.”

But he advocates a separate city for Leisure World residents, saying the community would benefit from commercial tax revenue.

Luhring said that two strip malls that are included in the Laguna Hills plan would also be part of the Leisure World proposal. The nearby Laguna Hills Mall, the largest generator of tax revenue in the area, would not be included in a Leisure World city proposal, he said.

The retail centers--near El Toro Road and Moulton Parkway--would provide the only retail tax revenue for a new Leisure World city, Luhring said.

“Those two shopping centers should be left alone,” Luhring said. “They don’t help their city (plan), but it would ruin ours,” he said.

The feasibility study recently conducted by Golden Rain showed an incorporated Leisure World would enjoy a $2-million-a-year surplus after paying for city services such as fire and police protection and sewage. Revenue would come from retail sales taxes, homeowner association dues, and various tax revenues that would normally go to the county.

Leisure World residents own their homes and belong to one of three homeowners associations. A person must be 55 years old to live there; the average age is 76.

Luhring said that more than 10,000 Leisure World residents signed a petition asking for cityhood in 1981. Cityhood for Leisure World was not pursued at the time, Luhring said, “because the time was not right.”

If Leisure World leaders decide to go forward with incorporation, they will need to conduct a similar drive, collecting signatures from 25% of the community’s registered voters. Along with the signatures, a map of the proposed city and a financial-feasibility study would have to be submitted to the county.