2 Cities Ready to Celebrate Anniversary : Incorporation: Officials from Lake Forest and Laguna Hills plan festivities to commemorate first year of self-government.

Tonight, Lake Forest will quietly celebrate the first anniversary of incorporation with cake for about 100 people in its council chambers. In contrast, Laguna Hills this Saturday will celebrate its first year with food catered by area restaurants for more than a thousand.

Despite the differences, officials from both cities are anxious to celebrate the same thing--the right to govern their streets and neighborhoods.

Like residents in other South County cities, many Laguna Hills and Lake Forest residents were disillusioned with how county officials were running their community and criticized them for being too distant and unresponsive.

After approving incorporation, both officially became cities on Dec. 19, 1991. One year later, Lake Forest Mayor Helen Wilson said the ability to control the city’s destiny far outweighs the hassles of starting a new city.

“It’s great,” she said. “Citizens have access to their own City Hall. The things we talked about to promote the concept of local control have come true.”

Similarly, Laguna Hills officials are using the birthday bash for the opportunity to show residents what has been accomplished in one year.

“We are really going all out because we want people to get acquainted with their city,” said David Lewis, director of parks and recreation who organized the anniversary party to be held in the City Hall parking lot.

Melody Carruth, the first mayor of Laguna Hills who last week completed a one-year term in that job, asked: “Are Laguna Hills residents better off now than they were a year ago? I would have to respond with a resounding yes.” In those 12 months, Laguna Hills has, among other things, hired a 10-person city staff and increased the number of law enforcement officers from 13 to 18. It has also balanced an $8.4-million budget, begun the annexation of North Laguna Hills from the county and approved long-term expansion of Laguna Hills Mall.

“The one thing about cityhood that makes a difference,” said council member Joel T. Lautenschleger, “is that people making the decisions live right here. So they have to live with their own decisions.”

Lautenschleger, who has been active in the city since he moved his family here in 1984, said that under the county rule residents had to make repeated trips to Santa Ana to fight to have such things as a stop sign posted or a street name changed.

But having local decision makers, he says, creates a more efficient and responsive system in which residents feel they have a stake in the city’s future.

Just across the freeway in Lake Forest, residents have also had a voice in their new city--right down to choosing its name.

Voters were asked to decide between El Toro, the traditional name for the community, or Lake Forest. By a slim margin, Lake Forest was chosen, but the residents--and visitors--were slow getting accustomed to using the new name.

“I think the city has worked through the identity problems,” said Ginny Lavan, president of the Saddleback Valley Board of Realtors. “In the first six months, people came in and asked about the El Toro area. They still do that a little bit, but now they usually ask for Lake Forest.”

Wilson said that self-governance was the key to solving larger problems.

“Traffic was a big concern for people,” she said. “We were able to put radar on Lake Forest Drive and slow up traffic there. We weren’t able to do that under the county.”

While the city addressed that problem, creating other city services for about 60,000 residents was not easy.

It took several weeks after City Hall opened to persuade the telephone company to list the new city. Getting up to a full staff took several more months.

Many longstanding problems, such as the traffic crush on El Toro Road, existed and are still being worked on.

One thing the council learned is that some residents expected the city to be up and running the day after incorporation.

Residents would call the city asking: “Send that code enforcement guy out right away,” Wilson said. She said the city didn’t have a building department yet. “But I believe we got off to a good start and we’re over the hump now.”

Not that the tallest hurdles are behind them. The next big step for both Lake Forest and Laguna Hills is the exhaustive process of establishing a state-required general plan, a planning blueprint that maps out how the city is expected to grow.

“It will take a tremendous amount of time and energy and public input,” Wilson said. “But it affords an opportunity to constituents to get involved in planning out the city. That’s why we incorporated to begin with.”

Tale of Two Cities

A quick statistical profile of the new cities of Laguna Hills and Lake Forest:

**Laguna Hills *Lake Forest Population 22,666 62,685 Male 50% 49% Female 50% 51% Under 18 28% 26% 18 and older 72% 74% Housing units 8,187 22,809 Racial makeup White 80% 79% Black 1% 2% Latino 9% 10% Asian 10% 9% Other Less than 1% Less than 1%

** Figures based on 75% of population.

* Figures based on information from El Toro census reporting area.

Sources: U.S. Census Bureau; Orange County Administrative Office