Boundary Revision Proceeds Amicably

A boundary change with neighboring Orange is proceeding peacefully, officials said this week, even though the two cities have quarreled about land in the past.

“It’s a straightening out of a border that used to be zigzagged,” Villa Park City Manager Fred Maley said. A recent improvement and realignment of Cerro Villa Drive and Mesa Drive made the change necessary, he said.

Under the proposal, the cities would swap some land, with Villa Park posting a net gain of half a dozen unimproved lots. Final approval of the border change must come from the Local Agency Formation Commission.

The Orange City Council has already approved its part of the land swap without debate, but the Villa Park council delayed action at its latest meeting because of a technicality, Maley said.

The issue is now on the agenda for the council’s Aug. 27 session. If Villa Park gives its approval, the two cities will then ask LAFCO to sign off on the border realignment.

Maley said the land addition to Villa Park, if approved, would be only the second expansion in the little city’s 34-year history.

“The last annexation we had was about eight years ago, when we took in 5 acres along the eastern boundary between Orange and Villa Park,” Maley said. Orange disputed that annexation, but LAFCO voted in favor of Villa Park.

Orange officials had also protested in the 1960s when Villa Park became a separate city, chiefly to escape annexation into Orange. But Maley said that the current border proposal is low key and noncontroversial. The property that Villa Park would gain “is land that has no direct access into Orange,” he said.

In a recent memo to the Orange City Council, Orange Community Development Director Jack McGee credited “long negotiations” for smoothing the way to the border change. He said the small amount of uninhabited land Orange is giving away “can best be served by Villa Park.”