Supervisors to Decide Role of Cities in Base Plan : Development: Irvine, Lake Forest are expected to oppose move to relegate them to advisory role in El Toro reuse process.

Lake Forest and Irvine city officials are expected to oppose a proposal to drop them from the planning process for El Toro Marine Corps Air Station when the Orange County Board of Supervisors meets today.

The supervisors are supposed to debate a staff recommendation that the board assume sole responsibility for planning the reuse of the Marine base. Before Measure A was approved by voters last month, a nine-member board composed of the five supervisors, three representatives from Irvine and one from Lake Forest made up the El Toro Reuse Planning Authority, which was the county planning agency for the facility.

After Measure A’s passage, the board decided to abandon the reuse planning authority. It voted to withdraw from the planning authority by year’s end, leaving Irvine and Lake Forest without any participation in the planning process.

At today’s meeting, the supervisors are expected to approve the county’s formal withdrawal from the planning agency, but delay its taking effect until Jan. 31.

Measure A requires the county to build a commercial airport at El Toro. While it does not require the dismantling of the planning authority, it calls for a new 13-member El Toro Airport Citizens Advisory Commission to plan for an airport.

The lame-duck planning agency was studying three development possibilities for the base. In addition to an airport, the agency was also considering a combination of residential, commercial and industrial development, and a theme park, university campus or research-and-development facilities.

In a letter Wednesday to County Administrative Officer Ernie Schneider, Irvine City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. asked the board to postpone any action on the dismantling of the planning authority until next month. The supervisors are leaning in favor of a proposal that they take sole control of planning for the base and assign an advisory role to Irvine and Lake Forest officials.

Brady argued that Irvine officials have not had enough time to adequately study the county’s proposal to put together a new planning agency without input from Irvine and Lake Forest, the two communities most affected by the closure of El Toro.

“Given the complexity of issues related to this important item, my office will not have sufficient time to review and seek City Council action on a county proposal,” Brady wrote in the letter. “In keeping with your commitment that we would be given sufficient time to review and comment, I would like to request a delay” of the board action scheduled for today.

Irvine and Lake Forest officials are hoping that the supervisors’ preoccupation with Orange County’s financial crisis will make them amenable to a postponement. However, a staff report encouraged the supervisors to plow ahead with plans to dismantle the current planning agency.

“Despite the county’s entrance into bankruptcy, (county planning) staff believes that it is important to continue with the (proposed) reuse planning process,” the report said. The reorganization of the planning agency must continue in order to “streamline” it and pursue federal and state funding for the planning process, the report continued.

In order to qualify for continued federal funding, the new planning agency has to be approved by the Defense Department. The current planning authority has already received and spent $741,616 from the Pentagon, $403,335 from the Federal Aviation Administration and $200,000 from the county, Irvine and Lake Forest combined.

Meanwhile, a taxpayers’ group that opposed Measure A has asked the supervisors to call a special election next November to repeal the initiative. The Taxpayers for Responsible Planning cited the county’s recent bankruptcy in asking the supervisors “to start showing fiscal leadership and begin a repeal of Measure A.”

If the supervisors do not schedule a special election, the group threatened to gather enough petition signatures to put the measure on the ballot.