ORANGE : La Veta Proposal Is Sent Back to Council

Unable to agree among themselves, members of the Planning Commission this week sent a controversial proposal to extend La Veta Avenue back to the City Council without a recommendation.

The proposed extension between Cambridge and Tustin streets is shown as a four-lane arterial road in the city’s General Plan and would provide what has been called an essential east-west traffic route.

But the plan would also leave some homes on Fairway Drive on an “island” between La Veta Avenue and the Garden Grove Freeway and would require paving over part of Santiago Creek, a greenbelt that residents have been fighting for 10 years to preserve.

The City Council is scheduled to hold a public hearing and vote Tuesday on whether to amend the General Plan and remove the extension.

None of the planning commissioners supported the road extension as proposed, but they disagreed on whether the proposed street should be removed from the General Plan before an alternative is approved.

Commissioners Randy Bosch and Don Scott voted to remove the La Veta extension from the plan immediately. Bosch said the city must find long-range solutions to its paralyzing traffic problems and should consider slowing development and reducing density as well as working with nearby cities to develop alternative methods of transportation.

Commissioners Carmine Master and Bill Cathcart voted to retain the La Veta extension in the General Plan while such alternatives are considered.

Unable to break a 2-2 tie, the commissioners agreed to send the proposal back to the council with no specific recommendation.

La Veta Avenue was scheduled to cross Villa Santiago, a development on the former Santiago Golf Course that was recently rejected by the council after years of public protest.

Representatives from the Department of Public Works and Traffic have recommended La Veta as the best and most cost-effective solution to the city’s traffic problems. The four-lane arterial would cost about $2 million.

In June, the City Council requested an independent study of the traffic-circulation element of the General Plan and asked the traffic department to recommend alternatives to the long-debated La Veta extension.

City Traffic Engineer Bernie Dennis said almost any alternative is sure to be more expensive and possibly just as controversial as the La Veta extension and warned that if the city approves a development plan for the former golf course without addressing the traffic problems, it could face “possible litigation from adjacent cities or possible denial of state funds.”