County Recommends Dissolving Council

For more than a decade, the North Tustin Municipal Advisory Council has fought commercial developments and piecemeal annexations to maintain the rural, open atmosphere of the prestigious unincorporated area that includes Cowan Heights and Lemon Heights.

Although the council is a strictly advisory body to the County Board of Supervisors, its members say they have been instrumental in controlling building in the area. They point, for example, to their role in the approval of the North Tustin Specific Plan, which limits development there.

Now, however, it appears likely that the council will be disbanded.

Faced with a $58,000 budget deficit for the North Tustin service area, the county Environmental Management Agency is recommending that the seven-member council be dissolved. The recommendation has the support of Supervisors Roger R. Stanton and Gaddi H. Vasquez, who represent the area, but it has brought a mixed response from the community and from the council itself.

The council was formed as the Santiago Municipal Advisory Council in 1979 with the understanding that it would be funded by donations, said Ken Scattergood, county special districts administrator for the Environmental Management Agency. That was never the case, however, Scattergood said. The money for its annual budgets of $20,000 to $25,000 has instead come from service area funds, he said.

If the county does not eliminate the council, he said, it will probably have to start charging the 25,000 to 30,000 residents of North Tustin for some of their county services, beginning in the 1990-91 fiscal year.

Council Chairwoman Dessa Schroeder argued that the group has saved the county money because its unpaid members have spent hours researching issues ranging from cat mutilations to lighting on tennis courts.

But Stanton said the council has little real authority in any case.

“They and their claque have continually said that the board wanted to take their power and authority, and that’s been puzzling to Gaddi and me. They have no more power than making recommendations. . . . Their recommendations carry no more weight than those of individual constituents.”

Council member Phyllis Spivey, a vocal critic of the body, agrees with the agency’s recommendation. “I think the supervisors should be commended for removing an unnecessary layer of government,” Spivey said. Spivey, a real-estate broker who was elected to the council in 1988, has repeatedly clashed with the other members over numerous issues.

Some council members and others in the community, however, say disbanding the body would be a victory for a small but active group of real-estate developers.