2 Documents at Odds on Laguna Niguel Land Deal

District attorney’s investigators are examining contradictory documents that raise new questions about whether Laguna Niguel officials approved a 1988 transaction that deeded 96 acres of potential parkland to a housing developer, city officials say.

One is a resolution indicating that the Laguna Niguel Community Services District board approved the land deal by a 4-0 vote on Jan. 20, 1988, with then-president Patricia Bates absent.

However, minutes of the meeting on file at City Hall indicate that no such resolution was discussed or voted on, and that Bates, in fact, was present for the entire Jan. 20 session.

And one former board member, listed on the resolution as having approved it, said Friday that the vote never occurred.

“Something’s wrong there!” said Nancy Lewis, who attended roughly half of the two-hour board meeting, according to the minutes, including the portion where “Ordinances and Resolutions” were discussed.

“No, I do not recall the resolution. I do not see this resolution in the minutes,” Lewis said during a telephone interview from her home in Westford, Mass. “It’s not reflected in the minutes and certainly if it were passed, it would be reflected in the minutes, don’t you think?”

The land transaction recently became the focus of a criminal investigation when county officials accidentally discovered that the potential parkland was dotted with more than 100 new houses. The revelation outraged Laguna Niguel residents and has sent county and city officials scrambling to figure out what happened.

The board resolution, a copy of which was obtained Friday, bears the signatures of the district’s then-vice president, James F. Krembas and then-general manager, James S. Mocalis. Both men also signed a subsequent quitclaim deed, giving the public land--with a development value of up to $70 million--to Taylor Woodrow Homes California Ltd. It now is part of the Marina Hills planned community and contains the 100 residences.

Krembas, now a Laguna Niguel city councilman and a key figure in the investigation in part because his wife went to work for the developer shortly after the land transaction, did not respond to several telephone calls from The Times or a written message left at his home. He has previously denied any wrongdoing and said that he mistakenly signed the public land deed, thinking that it involved another transaction.

Mocalis forcefully denied Friday that he or former board attorney James S. Okazaki--who prepared the resolution, according to city records--did anything wrong.

“I know that neither Mr. Okazaki nor I was involved in anything that was improper,” said Mocalis, who, before working in Laguna Niguel was a longtime city manager of San Juan Capistrano.

Although Mocalis said he could not specifically recall the resolution, he said he is confident that both he and Okazaki acted properly in preparing and presenting it for Krembas’ signature.

Mocalis also suggested that meeting minutes reviewed by The Times might contain errors that were corrected at the following board session.

But Lewis, reading from a copy of the Feb. 3, 1988, minutes, said they show that she and her colleagues unanimously approved--without any revision--the Jan. 20 meeting record.

“If there are different minutes around, I’d like to see them,” Lewis said.

Okazaki did not return calls from The Times. A secretary at his San Juan Capistrano law office told a reporter that he was in Los Angeles for the day but would receive the messages in the evening.

The resolution in question specifically authorizes Krembas, as board vice president, and Mocalis, as the board’s chief executive, to give up the public’s interest in land that had until then been protected from development. The resolution declared that the “irrevocable offer” promising the 96 acres was “vacated” and that the public “will not be adversely affected” because other “more beneficial” land is being offered by the developer in its place.

Each of the other four board members has said repeatedly that they never discussed such a transfer and probably would not have approved it. The board, now defunct, administered parks and public lands in the area before Laguna Niguel incorporated as a city this year.

City officials said the resolution was not found when questions first arose several months ago about the transfer as a result of the district attorney’s investigation. It was discovered this week after Bates, who is now the mayor, asked the city attorney to brief the City Council in closed session on the staff’s role in the land transfers.

The council has since voted to formally investigate the actions of Mocalis and Okazaki, who has repeatedly said he played no role in preparing the deed and had no knowledge of it until the day he was asked to notarize the signatures on it.

However, Okazaki billed the board for three hours of legal work done in early February, 1988, to research laws governing the transfer of land by a public agency, prepare a resolution authorizing the transfer of land to Taylor Woodrow, review deeds and oversee their execution, city financial records shows.

A bill dated March 1, 1988, from Okazaki to Mocalis indicates that he first researched the land transfer on Feb. 2 and spent parts of Feb. 8 and 10 preparing the authorizing resolution. The following day, Krembas and Mocalis signed the deed transferring the 96 acres to Taylor Woodrow and it was delivered to a title company on Feb. 12.

“The purpose of that would seem to be to attempt to comply with certain statutory procedures that would govern the transfer of land by a public agency,” said Laguna Niguel City Atty. Terry Dixon, who is assisting in the city’s review of the land transfer.

Dixon noted, however, that the deed was prepared 18 days after the board was to have considered it and approved it. “They didn’t have that resolution in front of them to consider,” Dixon said. “Without having that in front of them, how could they know what it was that ended up being reflected in this document?”

Neither Bates nor Laguna Niguel Councilman Paul Christiansen, who also served on the district board, could be reached for comment Friday.

Taylor Woodrow President Gordon Tippell said he was not surprised to learn that such a resolution existed. Tippell has maintained that the development on the disputed 96 acres was authorized by county officials and that his firm gave parks, ball fields, open space and other public amenities in exchange for the land.

Tippell has also contended that board members legally approved the land transfer during the Jan. 20 meeting.

“It wouldn’t come as any great surprise that there existed such a document because I think they passed what we asked them to pass,” Tippell said. “Whether or not they understood it, I can’t say. It’s only up to them to answer.

“In my opinion they did no wrong in passing it; in fact they did everything correctly. They shouldn’t be embarrassed by that. They shouldn’t be embarrassed to admit they approved the quitclaim deed. Unfortunately, they don’t seem to be able to understand that at the moment.”