ANAHEIM : Home Builders Must Give Land for Trails

In a victory for a group of horse owners, a unanimous City Council gave final approval this week to an ordinance that requires individual home builders in Anaheim Hills to donate a portion of their land to the city for equestrian, bicycle and hiking trails.

Under the ordinance, builders in the hills will not be issued city permits to allow their homes to be occupied until the trails along the perimeter of their properties are installed. A similar ordinance already applies to the builders of housing tracts. Only homes not yet built or that undergo major reconstruction will be affected.

More than 10 equestrians from the area were at Tuesday’s meeting to ask the council to approve the ordinance, which they said is needed to complete the city’s 10-mile trail system.

At last week’s meeting, when the council had given the ordinance tentative approval, and on Tuesday, two homeowners from the area who do not own horses asked that the city abandon its trails in the hills, saying they are poorly maintained.

Residents John Stollo and Charles Cuggett said that it is unfair that home builders are forced to make a $40,000 donation of land to the city and that the existing trails are poorly maintained and disjointed

But the equestrians disagreed.

“The trails would be better maintained if the homeowners would just call the city and complain,” said Jennifer Burke, a horse owner and marketing consultant who has owned a home in the hills for three years. “I have called the city three times in the past 2 1/2 years to complain about a problem in the trails, and within days a crew has been out to fix the problem. But only the squeaky wheel gets the oil.”

She said that after a meeting between city officials and horse owners last fall, the city replaced several stretches of 15-year-old fence that had fallen along the trail.

Previously, individual home builders were required to install trails as part of their construction projects. But city officials said that many builders did not and that some built swimming pools and other improvements where the trail was to be installed, making it impossible to build the trail later.