NORTH TUSTIN : No EIR Ordered on Incorporation Issue

About 200 people turned out for a public hearing Wednesday concerning the proposed incorporation of North Tustin, although the Local Agency Formation Commission is months away from deciding the issue.

“This is the coziest I’ve ever seen this room,” said Commissioner Gaddi H. Vasquez, chairman of the County Board of Supervisors.

LAFCO decided not to require an environmental impact report on the proposed incorporation--at least for now.

Tustin Mayor Richard B. Edgar and several North Tustin residents told the commission that they think the incorporation could significantly affect the community’s environment in several ways, including a decline in street quality because the proposed budget has no money for capital improvements.

But for the time being, commissioners said they were satisfied with the simpler environmental report already prepared by the staff.

The environmental issue and competing proposals for the annexation of North Tustin will return to the commission in June, when a state controller’s review of the proposed city’s fiscal feasibility is expected to be completed.

North Tustin would be the first community in California in which voters simultaneously consider cityhood and a new utility-users tax to fund the new city, according to LAFCO’s executive director, Jim Colangelo. The tax would be necessary because North Tustin, which is mostly residential, has almost no sales-tax revenue.

Proponents of incorporation told commissioners that the approximately 30,000 people who live in the 5,820-acre North Tustin area would have more local control if the area becomes its own city.

Those in favor of cityhood cite a study by Christensen & Wallace, an Oceanside consulting firm, which found that the new city would be financially viable. The anti-cityhood forces challenged the financial conclusions of the study, which is being reviewed by the state at the request of Tustin officials.

Some of the incorporation opponents say they would prefer to become part of Tustin or Orange. Much of the area targeted for incorporation is in the Tustin “sphere of influence,” meaning that Tustin is the most logical city to annex the property, but a portion is also within Orange’s sphere.

The Tustin council sent LAFCO an application in January to annex more than 800 acres and Edgar asked commissioners to consider those requests before looking at the incorporation. In addition, the Orange council voted last month to pursue the annexation of five parcels in the North Tustin area.