TIMES ORANGE COUNTY POLL : Many Believe Crisis Will Hit Home : Residents say impact of county investment losses may be felt personally, in their communities and at schools. The perception is few will remain unscathed.

Even Orange County residents still untouched by last month’s fiscal temblor are bracing for aftershocks, a new Times Orange County poll of 600 adults shows.

Nearly half said they worry that the county’s declaration of bankruptcy and its aftermath will hurt them or a family member, with 17% calling themselves “very worried,” according to the poll, conducted Jan. 20-23.

“I have a student in the Huntington Beach Union High School District,” said Norman Kendall, a sales consultant in Fountain Valley, who was among those surveyed. “I suspect that ripple effect will be felt at school districts in terms of ancillary services . . . like libraries, maintenance people, janitors, security. Security is a big deal for me.”

As the county moves to fully comprehend one of its greatest and still unfolding crises, residents say they foresee personal consequences at home, in their communities and in their children’s schools.

In all, 74% said they believe the quality of life in Orange County will be hurt at least somewhat.

Many concur with 46-year-old Kathreen Jaramillo of San Clemente, who lost a job she loved and now must indefinitely delay the purchase of a new Ford truck and a visit with her parents in Phoenix.

“It shouldn’t have happened,” said Jaramillo, a substitute teacher in the Aliso Niguel school system until the county declared bankruptcy Dec. 6. “It’s stupid. All these brilliant people that are behind those desks, that get all that money, it just shouldn’t have happened.”

The poll appears to show a perception lengthening like a late-day shadow: Few will totally elude the disaster’s reach.

County bankruptcy attorney Bruce Bennett recently predicted that the bankruptcy will cost every Orange County resident $800. Many are beginning to feel the first repercussions from the crisis, from shoppers canceling car purchases to timid renters reconsidering their home-buying plans.

Kendall, 47, said he worried about the reach of the crisis when he read there could be fewer lifeguards this summer at beaches his family likes to frequent.

“Talk about your trickle-down effect!” he said. “What if (the bankruptcy) increases response time in the water. . . . If I’m that guy, I’m going to be affected .”

At Aliso Niguel High School, where Jaramillo was a substitute teacher, she and the teen-agers have felt the bankruptcy in a very personal way. Like so many other districts, Aliso Niguel has money frozen in the county’s depleted investment pool, so cost-cutting officials quickly slashed substitute positions like Jaramillo’s.

There once were seven “campus supervisors,” including Jaramillo, at Aliso Niguel High School--teachers who counseled students, maintained order and kept a watchful eye for drugs. Now there are four--far too few, Jaramillo says, for a student population of 2,200.

But the poll also shows that residents fear long-term, less tangible damage: 17% of those surveyed said they’ve seriously considered pulling their children from the financially hamstrung public school systems; in fact, 25% of those earning $50,000 or more said they’ve considered such a move. And nearly a third of adults with children in public school said they’ve thought about pulling up stakes and abandoning Orange County altogether.

In a Times Orange County Poll conducted the same week the county declared bankruptcy, 83% of all residents said they were not considering leaving Orange County. But that number slipped to 75% in the new poll.

“We have neighbors who say, ‘Hey, we’re really considering moving elsewhere,” said Don Lee, a 44-year-old Orange resident who worries about the future of the architecture firm he owns.

Lee said he and his friends were feeling tentative about Orange County before the crisis. Natural disasters and overcrowding already had them pondering greener pastures.

“This is kind of a last straw,” he said.

“I’ve considered moving,” admitted Lupe Marino, 49, a San Clemente resident who now worries about her chances of breaking into the public school system as an administrator, despite a master’s degree and fluency in two languages.

Marino said that besides herself, she notices friends putting the brakes on their financial schemes.

“They’re not buying their new cars,” she said, “they’re not traveling as extensively as they have, they’re not investing a great deal in a diverse portfolio as they used to. Basically, they’re watching out for their pennies.”

Lee was among the 22% of those surveyed who have read or heard about cutbacks in services that could directly affect them.

His 8-year-old son, for instance, is enrolled in the Orange school system, which has money frozen by the bankruptcy. Lee reads the newspaper and envisions his son facing larger classes, fewer field trips and less-attentive teachers.

Overall, Lee and other residents believe services and programs they’ve come to count on will be pared back as the county grapples with a $172-million budget gap in the next five months. Asked if they foresaw county programs and services being cut because of the budget disaster, 80% said they believe that will happen, and 67% said they expect fewer services in their own cities and neighborhoods.

“I think there’s a huge misconception that there’s fatness everywhere that can be cut and trimmed,” Lee said, hinting that taxes may be the only way out of the crisis, a once heretical idea now gaining sway with some in Orange County.

As for his own business, Lee believes the bankruptcy could shatter the fragile consumer confidence he needs to stay afloat.

“The bankruptcy hurts,” he said. “I’m an architect. I do primarily housing. And it hurts the whole perception of the county. Who wants to invest here? Who wants to build here?”

Fewer people all the time, it seems. The thought of owning a home in Orange County has lost some luster since the onset of the bankruptcy crisis. The number of renters who consider buying a home in Orange County an “excellent” or “good” investment decreased sharply, from 47% to 35% since August, when the Orange County Annual Survey was conducted, a chilling bit of news for the real estate industry.

People who already own homes in the county are not feeling much more buoyant. Only half of Orange County’s homeowners believe buying a house here is a “good” or “excellent” investment, down from 57% in August.

Confidence in the future of their schools is even lower. Asked how they expected the crisis would affect the caliber of education in their public school districts, 63% thought quality would decline.

“We’re worried about it because schools operate on such slim margins, with no money for anything,” Lee said. “As classes get bigger and resources get smaller, schools really look to parents to fill in the gaps.”

Officials in the Irvine school district have considered asking parents to pitch in and perform light custodial work.

When they are not feeling antsy about the county’s future, residents are in a raw mood about their elected officials.

“I’m not putting blame on the system,” Marino said. “I’m putting blame on the administration at the county level that has not taken responsibility over budgets and over . . . the various municipal functions and how the funds were allocated.”

“Nobody can tell anybody else, ‘Take care of my money and I don’t want to worry about it,’ ” said 43-year-old Lee Painter of Orange, an engineer who works for the Navy. The Board of Supervisors “still had a responsibility to see whatever (former Treasurer-Tax Collector Robert L.) Citron was doing, he was doing right.”

With a sense of rage about their elected officials, and gloom about the near future, it is not surprising that those surveyed generally downgraded their assessment of Orange County in general.

Asked about the quality of life here, 74% thought the bankruptcy will cause it to diminish.

“Indirectly,” said Marino, “it’s going to affect everybody. Not just me, but you. . . . It’s going to affect everybody.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Times Orange County Poll

* Friday: The political fallout

* Saturday: Taxes and the road to recovery

* Today: How the bankruptcy hits home

HOW THE POLL WAS CONDUCTED

The Times Orange County Poll was conducted by Mark Baldassare and Associates. The telephone survey of 600 Orange County adult residents was conducted from Jan. 20 to 23 on weekend days and weekday nights, using a computer-generated random sample of listed and unlisted telephone numbers. The margin of error is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

TIMES ORANGE COUNTY POLL: The Fiscal Fallout

Nearly half of those polled say they are at least somewhat worried they or a family member will be hurt by the county’s fiscal crisis. The perception that services and programs run by the county and local school districts will have to be reduced is firmly entrenched.

How worried are you that you or a family member will be hurt financially as a result of the crisis involving the county’s investment fund? Very worried: 17% Somewhat worried: 30% Not too worried: 26% Not at all worried: 26% Already hurt: 1% *

Do you think that county services and programs will have to be reduced as a result of the investment fund losses: A lot: 34% Somewhat: 46% Very little: 9% Not at all: 5% Don’t know: 6% *

Do you think that programs in your school district will have to be reduced as a result of the investment fund losses: A lot: 22% Somewhat: 42% Very little: 17% Not at all: 12% Don’t know: 7% *

Community Impact

Most residents believe their city or community will have to reduce services, and a quarter have seriously considered leaving the county. Nearly one in five of those with children in public school are entertaining ideas about opting for private education:

Do you think that services in your city or community will have to be reduced as aresult of the investment fund losses? A lot: 18% Somewhat: 49% Very little: 19% Not at all: 7% Don’t know: 7% *

Has the Orange County bankruptcy made you think about moving out of Orange County? Very seriously: 12% Somewhat seriously: 13% Not moving: 75% *

Parents with children in public school were asked: Has the county’s financial crisis made you think about sending your child to a private school? Very seriously: 10% Somewhat seriously: 7% Not too seriously: 3% Not at all: 80% Source: Times Orange County Poll