NORTH TUSTIN : Incorporation Drive Continues to Gain

A push to incorporate North Tustin is taking shape despite a study showing that a new tax would be necessary to finance the new city.

At a meeting Wednesday night, an ad hoc committee recommended that North Tustin begin incorporation proceedings but not rule out the possibility of annexation to Tustin.

“I think it’s clear that the North Tustin area is going to be annexed unless we incorporate,” said committee chairman Ken Allen, calling piecemeal annexation to Tustin an “irritation.”

Committee members favored incorporation of the 16-square-mile area so that area residents could control zoning, traffic, taxes and assessments, and other issues.

According to Bill Weber, president of the Foothill Communities Assn., a survey taken at the meeting indicated that the community also favors incorporation.

About 90% of about 100 questionnaires turned in Wednesday night favored incorporation, he said. But more than half of the 250 people who attended the meeting at Foothill High School did not fill out questionnaires and many left early.

“They left because it became clear that this committee was pushing incorporation,” said Tony Coco, a North Tustin resident who resigned from an ad hoc committee studying the issue in April. “Those were people who told me that. I’m not guessing.”

The ad hoc committee reached a consensus after 15 months of study and discussion of incorporation or annexation to Tustin, Orange or Santa Ana.

A financial feasibility study unveiled by the Foothill association Wednesday night indicated that the North Tustin area would be financially successful as a city only if voters simultaneously approve a utility users tax that would average $73 per year for each household.

The utility tax is necessary because the bedroom community of 28,000 residents has only one commercial establishment and little sales tax revenue.

The homeowners association study, conducted by Christensen & Wallace Inc. of Oceanside, estimates that revenues for the city’s first year would be $7.8 million, with expenses of slightly more than $7 million.

Critics of incorporation said that financial problems would crop up after the 14th year of cityhood, which is when the study’s financial projections end.

Incorporation proponents say creating a new city would give residents political autonomy and help maintain the semi-rural atmosphere of the area more effectively than annexation.

“The city of Tustin has probably the highest residential apartment population in the county of Orange,” said committee member Marvin Rawitch. “Their vision is growth. It involves a lot of retail development. . . . That kind of ambience is very different from the North Tustin community as it exists.”

Weber said the Foothill Communities Assn. board will consider the issue later this month and decide what action to take.