Lake Forest Move Upsets Residents

Re “Lake Forest OKs Annexation Bid,” Aug. 19:

As a Foothill Ranch resident, I have listened over the years to the city of Lake Forest’s motivations for the annexation of my community. However, its actions are inconsistent with its words.

Lake Forest said the annexation of our area is part of a General Plan and that my community was intended to be part of Lake Forest. Prior to the purchase of my home, I was never informed that Foothill Ranch would become, one day, part of Lake Forest.

If Foothill Ranch was intended to become part of Lake Forest, then the action by the Lake Forest City Council to take 90% of the commercial and retail areas and to exclude all of the residential does not adhere to the “General Plan.”

Lake Forest’s piecemeal approach to phasing in the General Plan is not right because it purposely excludes the one key element in order for an annexation of the General Plan to succeed--the people’s vote--even in a “phasing plan.”

Lake Forest’s proposal purposely seeks to avoid the residents’ vote. We residents retain the right to choose what governance options are in the best interest of Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills. If Lake Forest’s proposal is approved, our democratic right to vote on our governance preference--self-incorporation--will be taken away.

If the Local Agency Formation Commission approves Lake Forest’s partial-annexation application, it will be creating an island of residents staying under the jurisdiction of the county, much like the North Tustin area. Would this be good public policy?

If Foothill Ranch and Portola Hills communities are excluded because of Lake Forest’s controversial application, the residents will not yield to annexation now or in the foreseeable future.

GLEN E. WARD

Foothill Ranch

* My family moved into a new home in Portola Hills almost four years ago with much excitement at the chance to start “fresh” in a new community. Our experience has been very rewarding, and over time our community identity has matured nicely.

As a reflection of this progression in civic identity, I have become active in the local Cityhood Now drive, becoming informed about our options and helping with the gathering of petitions.

Over 80% of the more than 100 registered voters on my own and an adjacent street added their names to the petition.

Many had very strong feelings of not being part of the city of Lake Forest and virtually none of those not signing did so because they wanted to be annexed by Lake Forest in the future. Conversations with other street captains indicated the same results on other streets in our residential areas.

Yet Lake Forest has announced with much fanfare its intention to annex our area in “phases.” First, the tax-rich commercial and retail areas of Towne Centre (the future tax base for our own city), and later, by default, the residential areas of Portola Hills and Foothill Ranch.

Rather than allow us to vote to determine our own destiny, it instead grabs what it wants and thus entirely ignores the desires of the vast majority of the local population.

It seems to me to be the pinnacle of hypocrisy for the Lake Forest City Council to do to our local communities the very thing it so vehemently complains the county is doing to it regarding the conversion of the El Toro Marine base into a public airport!

If it succeeds in shoving its annexation down our throats contrary to the residents’ clear preference regarding cityhood, it will be a mockery of the democratic process upon which this nation was founded.

RICHARD MEHL

Trabuco Canyon

* I told the Lake Forest mayor and City Council members that we were extremely disappointed in the way they were disregarding the wishes of the residents of our community.

Knowing that there is an overwhelming preference for self-governance in our community, Lake Forest still decided to go forward and take away a key piece to our plan for cityhood. This action is not only deplorable but despicable.

If the mayor and City Council truly respected and listened to the residents in our community, then their annexation bid for the businesses in Foothill Ranch should have waited until we had our opportunity to try for cityhood.

Instead, they chose to underhandedly take away these businesses, which they knew were vital to our own proposal for cityhood, before we even had a chance to submit our plan.

I said to the mayor, “Thanks for thinking that you know what’s best for us, but no thanks. We’ve seen what you’ve done to El Toro Road and Rockfield.” There is a long list of businesses that have boarded up and left Lake Forest (Kmart, Spoons, Red Lobster, etc.), and we do not want that to happen in Foothill Ranch.

I asked that we be given a chance to form our own city, just as they were given a chance to form Lake Forest years ago. Unfortunately, this fell upon deaf ears as the mayor and City Council members saw it unimportant to give us that opportunity.

VINCENT PLAZA

Foothill Ranch