South County Incorporated?

They moved to the foothills of South County to get away from it all, trading concerns about crime and traffic congestion for a view of the mountains, roomier homes, better schools. A proper place to raise a family.

But it didn’t take long for people who fled to the edge of the Cleveland National Forest to feel the encroachment.

There’s the 35-acre auto mall in Rancho Santa Margarita that was protested as an eyesore, or the kids--some residents think they’re gang members--who hang out at the local Taco Bell. And that’s nothing compared to the recent proposals for an international airport and maximum-security jail at nearby El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

“It’s made a lot of people realize that we have no rights, we have no power,” fumes Michelle Lamb, a Rancho Santa Margarita businesswoman and community activist.

South County residents have long felt ignored by Orange County’s power structure. But that feeling of helplessness is perhaps most acute in the unincorporated foothill communities, where fed-up residents are rebelling against county control by trying to turn themselves into Orange County’s 32nd city.

“It’s really ironic that we need to incorporate in order to retain that unincorporated feel, that to maintain our rural environment we have to become a city,” said Helen Ward, a Foothill Ranch resident. “But I don’t see any other way around it. We can’t just put our faith in the county.”

If successful, the movement could provide one of the wealthier and fastest-growing areas of South County with the political clout residents say they desperately need. But the cityhood debate appears to be dividing neighbors instead of uniting them.

There are no fewer than three separate incorporation movements--and there are a fair share of opponents who want nothing to do with a city. Supporters envision an idyllic community where the collective affluence is used for the greater good. But opponents--generally those with the wealth--are wary about sharing.

“It shouldn’t sound selfish, it’s just realistic that we’re asking, ‘How does this benefit us?’ ” said Mel Mercado, a manager in the home-building industry and a resident of Rancho Santa Margarita, a meticulously planned community. “People have saved long and worked hard to get here, and there’s a fear that we’re going to have to fork over more, or have less.”

The cityhood debate is being watched by outsiders for several reasons. Incorporations are becoming a rarity since a 1993 law made incorporation more costly for fledgling cities.

The movement also forces bankrupt Orange County to make a critical choice. Supervisors have vowed to stop providing municipal services, such as law enforcement, emergency services and animal control, as a way to save money, but incorporation would also strip the county of regional sales and property tax, which totaled nearly $6 million during the 1993-94 fiscal year.

The county won’t analyze how an incorporation would impact its finances until a new city looks more likely, but Supervisors Marian Bergeson and Don Saltarelli, whose districts include the foothill areas, have given their blessings to incorporation.

And finally, it remains unclear whether the residents of Trabuco Canyon who eschew street lights and don’t worry about leaving a rusting Volkswagen on the front lawn can share a city council chambers with residents from “Beverly Hills South”--as the pricey gated community of Coto de Caza is called.

“Areas like these are generally self-centered, very concerned with maintaining their quality of life and their particular sense of identity,” said Al Sokolow, a public policy specialist at UC Davis who keeps track of incorporation efforts statewide. “That’s the sentiment that’s going to be difficult to overcome. ‘City’ is a bad word for some people living in the suburbs.”

The incorporation movement that has made the most headway would gather up all 10 communities, including Trabuco Highlands, Robinson Ranch, Dove Canyon, Portola Hills, Rancho Cielo and the new Las Flores development. It would span roughly 32 square miles and include about 95,000 residents when planned developments are built out over the next several years.

Supporters--including Lamb and others--have already begun to collect the signatures needed to put the issue before voters in 1997.

Another incorporation effort led by Mercado would rope off Rancho Santa Margarita from the rest of its neighbors. A third would encompass Foothill Ranch, Portola Hills and perhaps Trabuco Canyon.

The financial keys to incorporation are the inclusion of Rancho Santa Margarita or Foothill Ranch, which contain the businesses and shopping centers that provide the sales tax base that is critical to supporting a city.

The three proposals cannot all succeed. And the infighting has already begun. Leaders of each faction tout their own incorporation efforts as superior, while accusing their opponents of grabbing for a political career. Some neighbors are barely on speaking terms with each other.

Supporters say cityhood, funded with the millions in property and sales taxes that the region deposits each year into county coffers, would solve a host of ills. A preliminary financial feasibility study suggests that the 10 communities combined as a city could net at least $1.6 million a year after paying for necessities such as police, fire and animal control services.

“It certainly looks like it is financially feasible from the figures we’ve seen,” said Michael Bannan, a Vista-based municipal finance expert who performed the study for Lamb’s group.

That determination would ultimately be made by the Local Agency Formation Commission before residents could vote on cityhood.

Supporters say they intend to contract with the county for law enforcement and other services, and use the leftovers to build parks, senior centers, recreational facilities, improve libraries or do anything else the community might want.

“We can do an awful lot of good with that money,” Lamb said.

Opponents don’t necessarily disagree. But their concern is that cityhood may ultimately lead to higher taxes, or will water down the amenities they already enjoy.

The most contentious point by far revolves around parks and recreation facilities, which are a scarcity in some areas, such as Dove Canyon and Rancho Cielo. Told of children being placed on waiting lists to play sports, the Orange County Board of Supervisors recently agreed to study the problem.

Rancho Santa Margarita residents, meanwhile, pay $39 a month to maintain 12 privately owned fields. In exchange for allowing the green spaces to be used for regional youth sports teams, Rancho Santa Margarita residents get priority when it comes to signing their children up for youth sports teams, Mercado said. Cityhood supporters say the fee would be eliminated and parks would be maintained by communitywide taxes. But critics think cityhood would also strip Rancho Santa Margarita kids of the sign-up preference--unthinkable for residents who rank youth sports as a key factor for moving there in the first place.

“That’s a big concern for a lot of people,” said Rancho Santa Margarita resident Gary Thompson, planning director with the Department of the Navy in San Diego. “They want to know that there’s a place for their children to play.”

Residents of gated communities such as Dove Canyon and Coto de Caza also worry that cityhood could mean losing their guard shacks and electronic security fences that close them off from the rest of the community.

“Of course we’re worried about that,” one Coto resident said privately. “We bought because this was a gated community and we want it to remain a gated community.”

But those who support joining all 10 communities together insist that a city, if structured correctly, can be all things to all people.

They propose a city charter that would keep gated communities gated, give environmentally minded Trabuco Canyon residents control over planning in their own backyards, and restrict use of private facilities--such as pool houses--to the residents who paid for them.

“We’ve said it before, ‘What is private will remain private,’ ” said Ron Greek, a businessman and Coto de Caza resident who supports a single foothills city.

But opponents aren’t willing to take that risk on what they label as a “supercity”--a term that raises visions of a futuristic Los Angeles. Others fear cityhood would forever change the nature of their community or make certain areas dumping grounds for all things undesirable--such as a police substation or a courthouse--that couldn’t be placed in a gated community.

“I don’t know of anything we can gain from being part of a big city,” said Ward, who chairs the Foothill Ranch Governance Incorporation Committee. A recent community poll showed Foothill Ranch residents are overwhelmingly opposed to joining a large city, she said.

“A city probably wouldn’t let me do this,” said Phil Gillespie, waving toward a chicken coop on the front lawn of the Trabuco Canyon home where he has lived 14 years.

Ward and Mercado, who want their respective communities to incorporate on their own, are working together along with folks in unincorporated Aliso Viejo, who are also toying with cityhood. One major benefit of their proposal, they say, is that it would give South County as many as three additional cities.

In the process, it raises questions about whether more political clout comes from one large city or several small ones.

“The perfect city would be one as large as feasibly possible,” said Bill Kogerman, co-chairman of Taxpayers for Responsible Planning, a group that opposed an airport at El Toro. Kogerman is advising Lamb and others that a large incorporation would help the fight against a commercial airport at the Marine base.

The exact opposite advice comes from Irvine Mayor Mike Ward--also a critic of the airport plan. The power of a city comes from its votes on regional boards such as the Orange County division of the League of California Cities and the South Coast Air Quality Management District, he said.

“It’s a one-city, one-vote deal,” he said, noting that South County is outnumbered more than 2 to 1 by cities in the northern portion of the county.

Laguna Hills Councilwoman Melody Carruth can’t help but see the cityhood debate as “history repeating itself.”

Residents in 1988 overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to incorporate foothill communities into a Saddleback Valley city of more than 75,000, recalled Carruth, who helped lead the fight in favor of smaller cities that are more responsive to the community.

“I welcome five more cities,” Carruth said. “More say for South County.”

Supporters of turning the 10 foothill communities into a single city acknowledge they have their public relations work cut out for them over the next several months. But as Lamb and her co-workers go about collecting signatures, she said she plans to urge residents to do some soul searching.

“We should be looking at this as ‘us against the county,’ certainly not ‘us against us,’ ” Lamb said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Supercity Movement

Three cityhood efforts are brewing among 10 unincorporated communities located at the edge of the Cleveland National Forest. One would combine all 10 communities to form the county’s 32nd city. A second movement, by a group of Rancho Santa Margarita residents, would make that community a city by itself. The third idea would bring cityhood to Foothill Ranch, Portola Hills and perhaps Trabuco Canyon.

Foothill Ranch

Portola Hills

Trabuco Highlands

Trabuco Canyon

Robinson Ranch

Rancho Santa Margarita

Rancho Cielo

Dove Canyon

Coto de Caza

Las Flores

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Community Profiles

Many of the far-flung foothill communities have little in common but a few main roads, red-tiled roofs and an address in unincorporated South County. A 1993 Orange County monitoring report pegged population in the foothill communities at about 38,000. but more recent county data still being compiled put the number closer to 65,000. The places:

Coto de Caza: A gated community lined with equestrian trails and boasting multimillion-dollar estates

Dove Canyon: Gated; pricey homes built around a picturesque--and challenging--golf course designed by Jack Nicklaus

Foothill Ranch: Residents can avoid the freeways with job opportunities at nearby offices and businesses and take advantage of the large shopping complex.

Las Flores: Area’s newest development; adjoining O’Neill Regional Park is a selling point

Portola Hills: Residents cherish the rural setting; made up of middle- and upper-income homes

Rancho Cielo: Also gated, and smallest of the 10 communities

Rancho Santa Margarita: Largest of the communities and most well-known; planners describe it as a an affordable, self-sufficient place where residents can work, shop and play

Robinson Ranch and Trabuco Highlands: Residents make their homes in the shadow of the Saddleback Mountains.

Trabuco Canyon: Attracts an eclectic mix of rugged individualists--bikers make Cook’s Corner a favorite hangout bar and environmentalists relish the wide-open space. Noted for a bucolic country road that twists through an oak tree canopy. Home to the Trabuco Oaks Steak House, where diners--former President Richard Nixon was one--cheerfully have their neckties snipped off in a nod to the informal setting.

Source: Orange County Environmental Management Agency

Researched by RENE LYNCH / Los Angeles Times