PLACENTIA : City Weighs El Toro Panel Membership

The City Council will decide Tuesday whether to appoint a council member to the advisory body to the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, a county agency that could determine the redevelopment of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

But Mayor Norman Z. Eckenrode has already objected to the authority’s voting setup, which gives voting privileges only to the County Board of Supervisors and representatives from two cities in the county.

“Every city should have a say in how El Toro is used,” Eckenrode said, referring to the voting arrangement. “I would strongly object to not having that say.”

The Board of Supervisors has invited Placentia to send a representative to serve on the Executive Council, which will advise the planning authority on reuse of the Marine base. The planning authority, which has voting power, consists of the five supervisors, three council members from Irvine and one from Lake Forest. The Executive Council has no final decision-making authority, which has angered several other cities who do not have representatives on the planning authority.

The council has stayed out of the debate about who should determine how the base is used when the Marine Corps moves out in 1999. It did not join the Orange County Regional Airport Authority, formed by several other cities in a failed attempt to wrest control of base reuse planning authority away from the Board of Supervisors.

But local council members have said the city is leaning toward supporting a commercial airport at the site. Business leaders who support an airport at the base believe the makeup of the county planning agency is biased against a commercial aviation facility.

Eckenrode said the city would support a commercial airport at the site because it would provide thousands of jobs, “some of them in Placentia.”