Rural Portola Hills Resists Cityhood Fever : Incorporation: The young canyon community is being wooed by backers of a plan to include it in a new municipality of El Toro, but many residents are opposed.

Debbie Brown moved into her new Portola Hills tract home in the rolling foothills of the Santiago and Modjeska peaks to steer clear of the hustle and bustle of El Toro.

Now she’s afraid the bucolic lifestyle that she bought into a year ago will be spoiled by an El Toro cityhood movement that wants to bring her Trabuco Canyon community under its umbrella.

“We have nothing in common,” Brown said recently. “We don’t share the same interests.”

Brown is heading a campaign to exclude the semi-isolated neighborhood of Portola Hills from a plan to incorporate a wide area in the Saddleback Valley--a move that could conceivably postpone a hoped-for November ballot measure until next year.

The El Toro-based Community Coalition for Incorporation wants voters to approve the creation of a 21-square-mile city comprised of El Toro, Lake Forest, Portola Hills and the yet-to-be-built Foothills Ranch.

But while a growing number of other South County communities are turning to cityhood as a way to better deal with local issues, Portola Hills seems to be one of the last holdouts, saying no thanks to local representation.

Residents say the 1,000-acre Portola Hills neighborhood of 976 homes, townhouses and condominiums at the junction of El Toro and Santiago Canyon Roads should be left to follow its own destiny.

“That is why we moved up here,” Brown said, noting that the nearest supermarket is miles away. In fact, the only business within walking distance is Cook’s Corner, the landmark bar known best as a hangout for crusty Trabuco Canyon residents and bikers.

Although longtime Trabuco Canyon residents have rejected any association with Portola Hills, the development’s homeowners prefer to be identified with that rural community rather than built-out El Toro.

Portola Hills was built four years ago by the Baldwin Co. for middle- and upper-income home buyers who were courted with a promise that they would live in seclusion, far from El Toro’s theaters, stores and traffic.

“When people think of El Toro, they relate it to the Marine base” and high-density development, said two-year resident George Kowalik during an emotionally charged residents’ meeting this week. “That can’t be good for our property values.”

At the meeting, held at the Portola Hills Recreation Center, anti-cityhood leaders claimed that a majority of their neighbors backed their movement, and they have been soliciting signatures to document the level of local opposition. So far, more than 400 signatures have been gathered, Brown said.

Some of the 100 Portola Hills residents at the meeting said they were satisfied with county services and did not want to be saddled with another layer of government.

Still others argued that they would consider forming their own city in the future. A few feared that property taxes will be raised under a new city government, a complaint denied by cityhood supporters.

“It is just too soon for us to be a city,” Brown said. “Each person has his own reason (for rejecting cityhood), but we have the same goal.”

Cityhood coalition chairwoman Helen Wilson, who is hoping the Local Agency Formation Commission approves a November ballot measure, said she would consider dropping Portola Hills from the plan if it threatens that target date.

“I feel in my heart that they should be in it,” Wilson said. “(But) if it continues to be a hotbed, we’ll drop it,” Wilson said. “We have no problem with that.”

Wilson said the coalition’s steering committee will be meeting over the weekend to discuss changing the proposed boundaries. Leaving out Portola Hills will not affect the proposed city’s financial stability because there are no businesses located in that community, she said.

Since Proposition 13, cities have relied heavily on tax revenue from local businesses.

Carving Portola Hills out of the northernmost portion of the proposed city would shrink the size of the city by about one-tenth, Wilson said. “We can live with that,” she said.

Wilson said, however, that she will fight a recent proposal by Portola Hills community leaders to ask LAFCO to also exclude the Foothills Ranch property that is located north of the proposed Foothill Transportation Corridor.

The proposed Foothills Ranch Planned Community, located between Portola Hills and El Toro, will include 4,000 homes, as well as industrial and commercial centers.

Brown said that she and other Portola Hills residents are eyeing about half of the planned community because it will generate commercial tax revenue for Portola Hills if it eventually decides to incorporate.

That dispute could cause the cityhood vote to be postponed until March, LAFCO executive director James Colangelo said.

Colangelo said that LAFCO has scheduled a public hearing on June 20. If the dispute is not settled by July 11, “there’s a pretty good chance it will be a March vote,” he said.

Some Portola Hills residents who support El Toro cityhood said they were saddened over the call for excluding their neighborhood, arguing that only by joining a city would residents be able to develop a long-awaited park and enjoy increased police protection.

“I’m sorry about all this,” said Margaret Nicholson, an outspoken advocate of cityhood. She said the anti-cityhood group has not taken into consideration that more than 200 of the 1,000 registered Portola Hills residents have signed pro-cityhood petitions since January.

Nicholson, who is also president of the Portola Hills Homeowners Assn., scoffed at opponents’ distaste for politicians and local government, pointing out that only 56 Portola Hills residents bothered to vote in the last election.

“It’s amazing that people complain about politicians when they don’t even vote,” Nicholson said.

Bob Bess, another pro-cityhood Portola Hills resident and member of the coalition steering committee, conceded that a majority of his neighbors do not favor cityhood.

“I personally think that the community will be better off as part of a city,” Bess said. “But it won’t do the cityhood campaign any good to drag people in kicking and screaming.”

Times correspondent Len Hall contributed to this report.