Hacienda Heights Cityhood Issue Arises Again

When Dorothy T. Treakle moved to Hacienda Heights, cows roamed the hillsides and orange groves outnumbered houses. Decades later, oranges and cows have given way to million-dollar, custom-built homes with breathtaking views of the San Gabriel Valley.

With a population of more than 54,000 and growing, Hacienda Heights is an ethnically diverse and affluent bedroom community sandwiched between Puente Hills and the Pomona Freeway, 18 miles east of downtown Los Angeles. Business signs along the main thoroughfare, Hacienda Boulevard, are as likely to be in Chinese, Korean or Spanish as English.

Visitors see swaths of houses and even supermarkets built with Mediterranean-style tile roofs. But the community’s best-known landmark is the glistening, 10-year-old Hsi Lai Temple, the largest Buddhist monastery in the country and an institution that played a controversial role in recent Democratic campaign financing.

Even with all the development, Treakle says, one thing has remained the same over the years: The suburb is in a kind of bureaucratic no man’s land, she and others say, because it is an unincorporated part of Los Angeles County.

Seven years after voters rejected cityhood, civic activists have resurrected a bid to turn Hacienda Heights into Los Angeles County’s newest city. Although they face opposition, cityhood advocates are optimistic because they say an influx of younger families is seeking a sense of community amid the building boom that has covered the Puente Hills.

“We have no voice. We’re surrounded by cities. Our government should be here, not in downtown Los Angeles,” said Treakle, 69, referring to the Board of Supervisors that oversees unincorporated areas.

Treakle and others say that since June they have gathered about a quarter of the 7,000 voter signatures required by year’s end for the measure to qualify for the November 2000 ballot.

A second-generation Japanese American, Treakle in many ways personifies the community’s diverse elements that she hopes to weave into a city. A bilingual educator, Treakle is able to argue her case on doorsteps in fluent Spanish as well as English in a community whose population is composed almost equally of Asians, Latinos and whites.

She knows history is not on her side.

In 1982, just before a November cityhood election, opponents discovered that some of the signatures on the petition were forged. The county canceled the election. Three years later, another cityhood drive came to a halt after political squabbles.

In 1992, cityhood finally made it to the ballot but failed by fewer than 700 votes. Proponents blamed the loss on fears of another layer of bureaucracy and on anti-government sentiments during the recession.

Proponents hope to emulate Diamond Bar, a new city along the Pomona Freeway where voters first rejected cityhood, then embraced it a decade ago. That put Diamond Bar on the economic map, Hacienda Heights cityhood activists contend.

Opponents, however, say the latest cityhood campaign will go the way of predecessors because Hacienda Heights is doing just fine under county government. “We have all the services from the county we need. If we become a city you’ll pay more for everything and there be a lot of restrictions,” said Dennis Matthewson, 59, a retired trucker and founder of a group called United Against Cityhood.

At the center of the debate is whether Hacienda Heights would be financially better off as a part of the county or as a city.

Cityhood proponents portray the county as taking too much away in taxes from Hacienda Heights and not giving enough back in services.

“We’ve got good roads, a thriving library and responsive sheriff’s station, but ultimately we’re paying for more than we get,” said Barbara Fish, co-chair of the Hacienda Heights Cityhood Organization.

In 1992, the Local Agency Formation Commission found that the 12-square-mile area would be viable as a city and would generate $2.2 million a year more in taxes and fees than it would need to spend on services.

If the petition drive is successful this time, the commission would again study the financial viability of a new city and its impact on the county. LAFCO approval is needed to place the issue on the ballot.

In a city, Fish said, residents can better control how their tax dollars are spent.

“When push comes to shove, an incorporated city gets better service from the county,” said Fish, who is also the president of the 42-year-old Hacienda Heights Improvement Assn.

The homeowners group, a quasi-town council, advises Supervisor Donald Knabe, who says he is neutral on the issue, leaving the decision on cityhood to residents.

One of the issues fueling the cityhood drive has been long-standing concern about the Puente Hills landfill, the nation’s second-biggest dump, which is just west of proposed city borders.

In 1994, the dump expanded into grassy canyons nearer Hacienda Heights homes and an elementary school. Residents opposed to the growth had to turn to the regional school district as their advocate in an unsuccessful lawsuit against the dump.

In the 1980s, what had been a predominantly white suburb with some Latino enclaves became a destination for upwardly mobile Chinese and Korean newcomers.

Its Asian population skyrocketed 157% from 1980 to 1990, and growth is continuing. Today, even the sign outside the massive Mormon church on Colima Road, one of the area’s wide boulevards, is in English and Chinese.