LAFCO Denies Santa Clarita Boundary Bid : Planning: Developers fought the city’s attempt to extend its sphere of influence over 160 square miles.

Santa Clarita officials came away from a countywide planning agency empty-handed and angry Wednesday after their attempts to extend the young municipality’s influence far beyond its borders were thwarted, largely because of developer opposition.

For the second time in less than three years, the Los Angeles County Local Agency Formation Commission turned down the city’s bid to expand its sphere of influence over 160 square miles of the unincorporated Santa Clarita Valley. A sphere of influence is a required step before annexation.

In voting 6 to 1 to deny the expansion, commissioners said they were responding to 26 requests from landowners--most of them development companies--who wanted to be excluded from the sphere. The commissioners also made it clear that they, along with the developers, dislike a growth-control initiative on Santa Clarita’s April ballot that would allow the issuance of only 475 residential building permits per year.

“If the initiative goes through, the building is going to cease and I don’t think anyone wants to be involved with that,” said Commissioner Henri Pellissier, a Whittier businessman. “If the moratorium is voted down, the city should come back here. . . . It might be a different story.”

Commissioner James Van Horn, an Artesia city councilman, voted against denying the city’s sphere request but blamed Santa Clarita’s slow-growth tilt for ruining the city’s chances by inflaming the development community.

“You have really caused a political firestorm . . . and it makes it very difficult to sit up here and fly against that,” Van Horn said.

A sphere of influence does not officially confer additional planning powers to a city over an area, but it does give it more clout when commenting on county planning decisions.

Commission Chairman Thomas E. Jackson, a Huntington Park city councilman, encouraged the city to renew its request. Jackson ensured that Wednesday’s vote was taken “without prejudice,” meaning that the city could reapply immediately rather than waiting a year to try again.

A furious Santa Clarita Mayor Jill Klajic said the city definitely will reapply--”We’ll come back; we’ll come right back,” she said as she left the meeting room. She added that she would consult the full council about the timing.

Klajic and other representatives of the 40-square-mile city lambasted LAFCO commissioners for bowing to development pressure.

“If all it takes is a developer deciding if they should be in a sphere or not, why have a LAFCO?” Assistant City Manager Kenneth R. Pulskamp said.

Pulskamp and Klajic noted that LAFCO had turned down Santa Clarita’s sphere request in 1989 because the city had not completed its General Plan. “Now we come back with a General Plan and they come up with another reason,” Pulskamp said.

Developers who attended Wednesday’s LAFCO meeting left quickly after the vote, many of them smiling, but landowner and attorney Kevin Lynch stayed behind to argue with the sphere supporters.

“I don’t think the city does much for the people,” Lynch said loudly as reporters interviewed Klajic. “They’ve got a rule for everything.”

Ruth Benell, LAFCO’s executive director, had recommended that the seven-member commission give the city less than half of the sphere it wanted. But Wednesday, citing the 26 requests for exclusion from the sphere, Benell said the city should not receive any sphere beyond its borders.

Immediately after Benell’s recommendation, Supervisor Deane Dana read a prepared statement urging the denial and expressing concern about the growth-control initiative.

Many of the protest letters from developers seeking to have their land excluded questioned whether the 4-year-old city could handle the additional responsibility of a larger sphere of influence.

One of the most critical letters, from developer G.H. Palmer Associates, said the area’s first regional mall “has fallen apart and now appears will not be developed because of city policies and problems.”

But a spokeswoman for Newhall Land & Farming Co. denied that charge, saying earlier this week that the shopping center is under construction now and will open as planned in the fall.

Particularly upset with the commission’s vote were residents of Sunset Pointe, a hillside development west of the Golden State Freeway, where a majority of the owners of 250 houses had overwhelmingly supported annexation to the city.

“I’m offended,” said Chip Meyer, spokesman for the Sunset Pointe homeowners. “This is a democracy. . . . It’s not up to an outside agency to tell the people who should govern them.”

At one point in the meeting, commissioners appeared poised to approve the sphere’s expansion into Sunset Pointe, but then they discovered that the tract was separated from the existing city limits by a strip of land owned by Larwin, one of the developers that asked to be excluded.

Under zoning law, cities may only annex land contiguous to their boundaries, and commissioners said they would not force Larwin into the city’s sphere to accommodate the residents of Sunset Pointe.

Meyer charged that LAFCO members were unduly influenced by campaign contributions from developers, landowners and business owners who opposed the sphere.

“This is clearly a pay-back,” he said.

Those LAFCO members who hold other public offices have repeatedly denied that they are influenced by contributions.

Campaign finance reports indicate that Dana has received at least $127,000 since 1984 from the sphere opponents. Supervisor Ed Edelman, another commissioner, received at least $28,000; and Councilman Hal Bernson received at least $39,000.

Reports for Van Horn and Jackson were unavailable Wednesday and the other two commissioners--Pellissier and retired Judge James DiGiuseppe--are not candidates for elective office.

As news of the LAFCO vote spread through Santa Clarita City Hall on Wednesday afternoon, the mood grew glum. Employees, who gathered in small groups to discuss the decision, expressed surprise and anger.

Gail Foy, the city’s spokeswoman, summed up the most common refrain: “We knew we wouldn’t get much, but we expected something, not nothing.”

Times staff writer Tracey Kaplan and researcher Cecilia Rasmussen contributed to this story.