Santa Clarita / Antelope Valley : Residents Express Divided Views of City

What do Santa Claritans think of their city?

If you believe the responses to a city survey circulated among local business leaders, they hate it, love it and, in some cases, both.

One respondent praised Santa Clarita because it is close to Los Angeles and has a low crime rate and good shopping. Showing that memories of the drought are short, another liked the lack of rain.

On the downside, some business leaders charged that the city is too weighted with regulations.

“Permits, permits, permits,” bemoaned one respondent, who pointed to “negativity toward business by (a) small, loud group of malcontents.”

City officials said they were not surprised by the conflicting views of life in the northern valley. “The responses were quite varied,” said Gail Foy, city public information officer. “What’s a good thing for some people is bad for others. We knew that.”

The four-question, quality-of-life survey was distributed to 65 business people during Santa Clarita’s Economic Recovery Workshop Oct. 29. Twenty-eight responses were received, painting a many-hued picture of the 5-year-old city.

Some described the area as having a highly skilled work force; others contended that there were few such employees.

Housing affordability was also in dispute, with some surveys indicating “available and affordable housing” as a strength and others citing the lack of such housing as a weakness.

Some aspects of life in Santa Clarita were lauded for reasons that had in the past been subjects of controversy. The Valencia Town Center, the community’s 8-month-old mall, was singled out as a benefit for the area, even though it had once been reviled by some because it lacked an upscale tenant such as Nordstrom.

Although local government was praised by some as “forward-thinking,” city leaders attracted their share of criticism.

One respondent said there was “excess spending for frivolous city studies perceived to be (a) waste of taxpayers’ dollars.”

Most critical was one respondent who listed no positive attributes for the city other than its fiscal health. The respondent said Santa Clarita’s government is “still immature and insecure as a result” and “has a tendency to overreact and take extreme positions.”

And while one survey described Santa Clarita as having a “generally progressive attitude,” another said there is “conservative political dominance with signs of racial prejudice.”

Santa Clarita officials put a positive spin on the survey, pointing to responses calling the city “family-oriented” (11 responses) with a low crime rate (12 responses) and close proximity to Los Angeles (16 responses).

“What I get out of it is it’s still a nice place to live,” said Santa Clarita City Councilman George Pederson.

Expect those sentiments to appear in future marketing materials touting Santa Clarita to prospective businesses.

“Some of those ideas have been used in the city’s quality of life brochures,” said Dan Powers, assistant city planner.