Cityhood Is ’98 Goal for 4 Communities

As many as four South County communities could become cities in 1998. Or none at all.

Leisure World and Rancho Santa Margarita have turned in cityhood applications and have begun the paper chase to prove financial self-sufficiency to get on the November 1998 ballot.

Aliso Viejo and Foothill Ranch began their cityhood drives this year, but neither has begun gathering signatures on an incorporation petition--a key step in applying to become a city.

Although the incorporation groups are taking different paths to cityhood and are determined to guide their own destinies, they are working with one another.

Representatives of the Foothill Ranch, Rancho Santa Margarita and Aliso Viejo groups meet regularly to share tips and information about the incorporation process. Although Leisure World doesn’t meet with the others, cityhood supporters say they cooperated with Aliso Viejo recently, agreeing to pull back a proposed boundary line between the two communities.

“We’re helping each other along with the how-to-do process,” said Helen Ward, a leader in the Foothill Ranch drive. In addition to a common goal, “we share the same [county and state] government people.

“All of us have different challenges, and we each see our areas as unique,” said Ward, who says her group still hopes to complete the process by November. “But we have a positive working relationship. After all, we’re neighbors down here.”

Said Bob Ring, a petitioner for Leisure World cityhood: “Every one of [the potential cities] is unique. We all have our own problems and idiosyncrasies. We want to be a city forever, so we need to take our time and get it right.”

If it were a horse race, Leisure World and Rancho Santa Margarita would be the favorites to get cityhood on the ballot in 1998.

In Leisure World, the effort has been bolstered by the Golden Rain Foundation, one of the main ruling bodies in the community of 18,000. The foundation, which oversees the golf course and recreation centers, has lent financial backing to the financial studies needed to qualify a community for incorporation.

As a result, Leisure World turned in its application two months ago to the Local Agency Formation Commission, which determines whether the community qualifies for the ballot.

Ahead are months of meetings with county officials to determine how to share tax revenue and financial information required by the commission.

The biggest obstacle probably will come from residents. Opponents argue that the community, which is run as a homeowners association, already functions well and doesn’t need an additional layer of government.

A cityhood proposal was narrowly defeated in 1989. Although 4,000 signatures were gathered on the petition in just five weeks, Ring acknowledges that a largely silent group of senior citizens may resist the change.

“Generally speaking, this community doesn’t buy green bananas; it doesn’t want to make a change,” Ring said. “The message needs to get out that this is an ever-changing environment. We need to have a voice in what happens around us.”

Rancho Santa Margarita became the second South County community to make its cityhood drive official earlier this month, after proponents spent months collecting signatures outside a local department store and submitted them to the formation commission.

Now the real work begins.

Consultants, paid about $25,000 by the cityhood group, will try to answer the critical question: Can this community support itself financially?

Leisure World and Rancho Santa Margarita have done studies that say tax revenues are sufficient to pay for running a City Hall and services such as road maintenance and police. But the key will be what happens in negotiations with the county, which under state law has a right to a portion of those tax revenues.

A law passed by the Legislature in 1992--at the behest of Orange County--requires that new cities compensate their counties for lost taxes.

The law has stopped new incorporation efforts in their tracks. Only one community, Citrus Heights in Sacramento County, has incorporated since it passed, and under the new law is required to pay the county $5 million a year. The city is now trying to renegotiate that.

In the years just before 1992, the county had begun to take a hard line regarding incorporation and annexations. After losing millions in revenue when five South County cities incorporated in four years, the county haggled for years over property and sales tax splits for annexations for Mission Viejo and Laguna Hills.

But in 1997, the early reports from the cityhood groups have been encouraging.

“The county has been incredibly fair and helpful,” said Gary Thompson, a member of the Rancho Santa Margarita cityhood committee. “They meet with us about once a month and helped us get the financial information we needed” to apply.