ORANGE : It’s Just the Neighborly Thing to Do

Robert J. Walters was appointed to the Planning Commission this week--just a month after officially becoming a resident of the city.

Walters, 51, has lived in his hillside Orange Park Acres home for more than 14 years and has served on several community boards for nearly that long. But it wasn’t until February that his property was annexed into the city of Orange.

The annexation was one of many to take place over the last few years in the hilly horse country of large homes and rural ambience. Once an unincorporated island on the eastern fringes of Orange, Orange Park Acres is slowly being absorbed into the city.

This trend--and Walters’ appointment to the commission--reflects the increasingly friendly relationship between residents of Orange Park Acres and City Hall, once adversaries who now work together on a variety of issues.

As a planning commissioner, Walters is the highest-ranking city official from Orange Park Acres. The distinction is a signal to his neighbors that they are considered a part of Orange, he said.

“It will make the rest of residents (of Orange Park Acres) more comfortable about joining the city now that we are moving into the managing of the city,” Walters said. “If we have no seats on key boards, it takes some faith to join the city.”

Walters said his knowledge of east hills issues will bring a valuable perspective to the Planning Commission. But he vowed to “work for all areas of the city.”

Walters comes to the commission after serving for five years on Orange Park Acres’ own community planning panel. He also worked on the area’s water district board.

In these jobs, Walters witnessed firsthand the warming of relations between his community and the city.

Around the time Walters moved to the area, many Orange Park Acres residents opposed annexation. They feared that the city would allow dense development nearby and require that sewer lines, curbs and street lights be installed. Such changes, they believed, would ruin the rural feel of the area.

Tempers began to cool 13 years ago when the city adopted the Orange Park Acres plan, which required one-acre lots in the area and allowed for local streets to remain free of lights and gutters.

“People like the country atmosphere,” Walters said. “They feel having curbs and gutters isn’t like being in the country.”

Since then, Orange Park Acres residents have joined forces with the city to oppose such proposals as an eastward extension of the Garden Grove Freeway and the construction of a jail nearby.

“I think it’s just a question of four or five years before all of Orange Park Acres is in the city of Orange,” he said. “The old animosities are gone.”

Walters noted that, as Orange’s city boundaries continue to push eastward beyond Newport Avenue, Orange Park Acres will one day “be in the middle of Orange and not on the edge of it.”

Walters, president of an Anaheim freight management firm, holds a degree in political science from UCLA and attended the Pepperdine Law School. He has a wife and four children.

Mayor Gene Beyer, who selected Walters from among 33 candidates, said the new commissioner will “look at the whole picture of what is good for Orange.”

Walters replaces Michael Alvarez, who vacated the seat earlier this year.

Walters described himself this way: “I am a middle-of-the-roader. I am not a wild-eyed environmentalist . . . nor do I want to sit in the seat of developers.”