Cooperation Among Cities Is Way to Go : * New and Older Communities Look to Each Other to Find Solutions to Problems

Some of the cities in South County are so new that they barely have come to terms with their own heady independence. Lake Forest, for one, still is trying to decide how it feels about its new name; there are those who much prefer the traditional El Toro and are sticking by it. Meanwhile, Mayor Helen Wilson considers an Amtrak station for her town.

Things are happening there and in nearby municipalities as a result of the southward sprawl of suburban growth. But as much as Lake Forest and others such as Laguna Hills and Laguna Niguel consider how to approach their own problems in their early years of incorporation, they are learning quickly that they share regional concerns with their neighbors. All, for example are concerned about managing growth. Served as they are by the same freeway arteries serving job centers near and far, they are wrestling with similar traffic and congestion issues. They have barely stepped up to the launching pad and they find themselves sharing with older communities the budgetary concerns brought on by the recession.

In Mission Viejo, Mayor Robert A. Curtis laments the proverbial crunch of traffic congestion and the demands placed on services by growth. Almost all of these new cities are planning to work this year on projects designed to improve traffic light synchronization and expansion of arterial roads.

It is heartening, in view of these concerns, to find that the cities also are looking to cooperate with one another and serve on regionwide transportation agencies. Their problems are indeed regional in scope; it’s nice to have your own new town, but some of these problems are best tackled at higher levels of discussion. As these new cities have emerged from the wing of county government, they are finding the need to cooperate.

For example, the completion this year of the long-awaited addition of an on-ramp to Interstate 5 with the expansion of Stonehill Drive in Dana Point is a good sign, eliminating the need for some residents to drive through San Juan Capistrano to the freeway and the bottleneck on the bridge between Coast Highway.

Dana Point Mayor Mike Eggers sees the big picture correctly. He says, “You can no longer work in a vacuum. Not only it is not cost-effective, but it makes no sense. “ As he rightly points out, several major roads in the city pass through other jurisdictions. So it’s best that they share consultants and work toward common solutions.

It’s good to see this happening as South County comes of age.