Copper Hill Annexation Delay Annoys Would-Be Santa Clarita Residents : Cities: Although a survey shows support by 63% of the area’s 721 property owners, Los Angeles County has held up the move.

SANTA CLARITA-Copper Hill residents want to become part of the city of Santa Clarita. The city is more than happy to welcome them into their municipality.

But more than a year has passed and residents of the 210-acre area directly north of the city are a bit vexed by the stalled attempts to be annexed.

“I just don’t know what the problem is,” said Marla Stark, one of the leaders of the community’s movement to join the city. “We did our part. We wanted to be annexed for the city’s fifth birthday last December, and hopefully we can make it for the sixth.”

Even officials of the Local Agency Formation Commission, the county agency charged with monitoring annexations and incorporations of cities, agreed that it has taken longer than it should have.

“It has been a considerable length of time,” said Michi Takahashi, executive assistant to the agency. “In my opinion, it should have gotten through a hearing by now.”

Instead, the annexation, which a city survey said is supported by 63% of the 721 property owners, has been held up by the Los Angeles County bureaucracy.

“We’re not sure what the issue is,” said city planner Don Williams. “We have been getting calls from the residents there regularly asking what is going on.”

State law requires that since the value of properties in the Copper Hill community is more than $10 million, the city of Santa Clarita and the county must negotiate how to distribute the property taxes associated with the area. County officials, who must confer with five different departments to estimate their costs of providing services to the area, have not been prepared to come to the negotiating table until now.

“I can’t address as to what happened before I came here,” said Robert Muench, management analyst for the chief administrative officer’s department, who was assigned to the case four months ago.

The county does, however, plan to set a date for negotiations with the city in mid-September, Muench said.

With the annexation, the county stands to lose property tax dollars to Santa Clarita, and the negotiations will determine how the city and county should share about $210,000 in taxes that is collected from the Copper Hill area.

Currently, the city receives about 6% of property taxes collected in the city, with the balance going to the county. For the Copper Hill region, however, city officials estimate they would need to receive at least 8.2% of the property taxes to break even.

The county could block an annexation by not approving a property tax transfer agreement.

“I think you are likely to see that happen all over the state now, because the state is taking away all this money from the counties,” said Bob Braitman of Braitman & Associates, a local government organization consultant based in Ventura, referring to the $2.6-billion transfer away from municipalities to education approved in the state budget this year.

But Muench said the county has no plans to block the annexation.

“There is no motivation there for Los Angeles County. We fully intend to deal in good faith with each annexation,” Muench said. “There is no attempt to delay or withhold information trying to avoid property tax shifts.”

Many of the 2,160 residents of Copper Hill are getting tired of the wait.

“Our kids go to school in the city, we drive the streets here, and we want to have some influence on our local government,” said Cathy Culotta, another leader in the drive to join Santa Clarita. “We enjoy the resources of the city and it makes sense that we ought to be part of it.”

Culotta and others would also like to take advantage of what they perceive to be better services, such as law enforcement. Residents have long complained of lengthy waits for sheriff’s deputies to arrive.

Some residents didn’t discover that their homes were outside the city limits until they tried to vote on a slow-growth ballot measure last year that would have influenced development around the neighborhood.

“Hopefully, coming up there is a smoking ordinance that I want to have a voice in,” Stark said.

When the city was originally proposed, prospective residents of Santa Clarita asked that it include a 95-square-mile area within the V formed by the Antelope Valley and Golden State freeways. But by the time the city came into being in 1987, LAFCO whittled the area down to a mere 39 square miles.

The boundaries gave the city areas that were already developed, while the county had authority over construction in the mostly undeveloped areas around the city. As houses have been built in unincorporated areas, residents have petitioned to become part of Santa Clarita proper.

The city has had eight successful annexations in the past five years: three are in the Sand Canyon area, two are in Oak Springs, plus the Price Club, Weston Landmark and Pinetree.