Mission Viejo Residents to Be Polled Again on Whether They Favor Building a City Hall

Less than a month after voters soundly defeated a ballot measure that called for construction of a $18-million city hall, residents will be polled again to see if they want a new civic center.

City officials said this week that they will conduct a citywide telephone survey within two weeks to determine whether voters rejected only the specific project that was before them on the June 2 ballot or are against spending money on any kind of city hall.

Residents will also be asked if they support building a new civic center on a six-acre parcel at Marguerite Parkway and La Paz Road, a site that the Mission Viejo Co. on Friday offered to sell to the city for about $5 million.

In a special closed-session meeting Monday, the City Council agreed to consider the Mission Viejo Co. offer. The six-acre site is part of a 10-acre plot at the busy intersection. The city agreed last month to buy the other four acres to build a public library.

Representatives of the Citizens Action Committee, the group that led the successful fight against the city hall project, have given their blessing to the location.

When combined with the proposed library, “it would help form a true civic center,” said Norman Murray, vice president of the group. “This land is one of the options we’ve always supported.”

Some council members, however, still prefer the originally proposed site on Los Altos near Crown Valley Parkway.

“City hall needs to be where the financial and retail hub of the city is,” said Councilman Robert D. Breton. Crown Valley Parkway is a business and retail corridor that is home to the Mission Viejo Mall, other businesses and Mission Hospital Regional Medical Center.

“The library needs to be in a centrally accessible place, but people don’t frequent city hall like the library,” Breton said. The Marguerite Parkway and La Paz Road intersection is also one of the busiest in the city, he added.

But Breton added that the Marguerite Parkway site “if not at the top, is near the top of the list of best qualified sites” for a city hall. “If residents feel strongly this is best, I would support it.”

Based on previous citywide telephone surveys, city officials estimate the cost at the poll will be $6,000. The Citizens Action Committee estimated the cost at $10,000, although officials there did not say how they arrived at that figure.

But Murray said that the survey is “a waste of money” at either price and questioned whether the city needs a poll to gauge residents’ sentiments over building a civic center.

“I think the message is very clear,” he said. “They don’t want a city hall on that (Los Altos) site. They just won’t stand for an $18-million, 80,000-square-foot city hall. We don’t need a poll just a couple of weeks past the election to figure that out.”