Countywide : Sanitation Districts Seeks Fewer Delegates

Officials with the Sanitation Districts of Orange County have sent a letter to each member city and agency, asking them to voluntarily reduce the number of representatives they send to agency meetings.

The Sanitation Districts could save $36,000 a year if each city complied with the request, but officials said it was intended not to save money but to streamline the organization.

Each representative is paid a set amount for every meeting attended.

While a number of cities and agencies have not yet voted on that request, three cities have voted to reduce their representatives to one.

So far, only Yorba Linda and the Garden Grove Sanitary District have refused.

The Sanitation Districts serves 20 cities, four water and sanitation districts and several pockets of unincorporated areas.

Two cities, under the bylaws, must always have two representatives.

The agency now has 42 representatives, but if the remaining cities sent one person, there would be 27, John G. Cox, joint chairman of the board of directors and a Newport Beach councilman, wrote in his request to the cities.

“Clearly, every community that we serve has a vested interest in the Districts’ operations, and this reduction would still provide for all member agencies’ interests to be represented on the Board,” the letter said.

But John M. Gullixson, a Yorba Linda councilman and a district chairman, said the request was merely a ploy to remove a number of critics of the Sanitation Districts’ management. The Yorba Linda City Council voted this month to send Gullixson and Mayor Daniel T. Welch to represent the city.

“Cox (has) ulterior motives to get rid of people,” Gullixson said. “Dan and I are the only two fiscal conservatives on the board. I don’t want the effect of this agency on Yorba Linda to be determined by a bunch of tax-and-spend liberal Democrats.”

Cox countered that the desire to reduce the number of representatives was shared by a number of board members.

“This was not something I did unilaterally,” Cox said. “And nearly every city except Yorba Linda indicated they would comply with that request.”