Cityhood Bid Aims at Clout for Rancho Santa Margarita

Nestled in the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains, Rancho Santa Margarita’s lush suburban neighborhoods have provided a refuge from the ills of big-city life ever since the first tract homes shot up in the mid-1980s.

But many residents in the South County community think their isolation has made them easy to ignore, robbing them of the political clout to increase sheriff’s patrols or halt the county’s plans for an international airport at nearby El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

From that bundle of frustrations came a five-year, grass-roots crusade for political independence that, on election day Tuesday, could transform Rancho Santa Margarita and a few of its neighboring communities into Orange County’s first new city of the next millennium.

“It’s just a question of having a say about issues that affect you,” said Mike Safranski, one of 14 residents running for Rancho Santa Margarita’s first City Council. “We’re kind of at the end of the world here . . . and we’ve been treated like it.”

Those feelings of resentment, of being neglected by Orange County’s power structure, have thrived in the south for more than a decade and have been a driving force in a stampede toward incorporation in the region.

Six new municipalities have sprouted up along the I-5 corridor in the last 12 years: Mission Viejo in 1988: Dana Point and Laguna Niguel in 1989; Laguna Hills and Lake Forest in 1991; and, earlier this year, the Leisure World retirement community became the city of Laguna Woods.

On Tuesday, voters will be asked to decide whether Rancho Santa Margarita will become the county’s 33rd municipality. The city would be home to more than 40,000 residents and would include the communities of Rancho Santa Margarita, Dove Canyon, Robinson Ranch, Trabuco Highlands, Walden and Rancho Cielo.

The cityhood campaign faces no organized opposition, and local public opinion surveys have shown that the proposal has overwhelming support. If approved, Rancho Santa Margarita would officially become a city on Jan. 1, 2000.

Tuesday’s ballot also will include a list of City Council candidates, mostly political greenhorns--a drug-abuse counselor, a submarine maintenance manager, an officer with the county marshal’s office. If cityhood passes, the top five finishers would become council members.

Rancho Santa Margarita’s drive for cityhood began in earnest in 1995 after the failure of the proposed “super city,” a conglomeration of nearly every unincorporated community from Las Flores to Coto de Caza. When it became clear that the super city was not only unpopular but a fiscal impossibility, community leaders in Rancho decided to strike out on their own.

Gary Thompson, a member of the Rancho Santa Margarita Cityhood Committee and one of the 14 candidates for City Council, said the master-planned community was always designed to become self-sustaining. By 1995, according to Thompson, the community had reached a level of financial viability that made it sensible to begin looking into becoming an independent city.

“There is a certain maturity that a community reaches, and when you realize that as a community you are generating so much money you begin asking where is the money going and is it going toward services,” said Carol Gamble, another candidate who was a member of the cityhood committee.

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The question of whether the city was receiving adequate services from the county was even more pressing after the county’s declaration of bankruptcy on Dec. 6, 1994.

Jack Leonard, a member of the Rancho Santa Margarita Civic Council, said the bankruptcy sparked fears that the county was mishandling the unincorporated areas and that services would decline even further as the county struggled to regain financial solvency.

One of the biggest worries for nearly all the residents of the community was that law enforcement would not keep up with the rapid pace of development.

“We asked the Sheriff’s Department what level of service we should be receiving and where we were at the time, and we found out that we were in fact falling behind,” Thompson said.

Gamble said the final realization came after a yearlong struggle with the county about the mismanagement of parkland in the community, a problem that has left numerous sports leagues and teams scrambling for time on playing fields.

“We had a problem with the stewardship of the community that we were made aware of with the park problem and the realization that we were generating more revenue than we were receiving back in services,” Gamble said. “Self-governance was the logical conclusion.”

Cityhood advocates also hope incorporation would give residents a louder voice in the fight against the proposed El Toro airport. While state law bars cities from using public money to advocate positions on ballot measures, cityhood supporters feel that official protests from a city council would carry more weight than those from scattered homeowners groups.

“We can adopt resolutions. We can join with the other cities in South County in opposition to the airport. We can go to Sacramento. We can go to Washington, D.C.,” said Safranski, the council candidate and president of the Trabuco Canyon Water District.

Still, Safranski said the new city’s greatest challenge would be the task of creating a fiscally responsible municipality from scratch.

The new city could assume responsibilities for police protection, animal control, community development, street lights and maintenance and general municipal administration. Fire protection and emergency medical service would continue to be provided by the Orange County Fire Authority.

The new city most likely would contract with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department to provide law enforcement, just as other South County cities have done.

“No one out there is going to be paying more taxes. It’s just that their tax money will be reallocated,” said Daniel Schwarz, policy analyst for the Local Agency Formation Commission, the agency responsible for approving annexations and incorporations.

LAFCO analysts estimate the new city would have an annual budget of $7.4 million in 2001, and that would hold steady until about 2009. The city’s greatest expense, by far, would be for law enforcement, which would cost an estimated $1.3 million in 2002 and increase to $4.1 million by 2009. The county has agreed to continue providing police protection in the area for two years and road-related service for one year.

About half of the new city’s revenue would come from the existing 8.25% sales tax, which currently goes to the county. The county also would give the new city $200,000 a year in property tax revenue to offset the long-term cost of including the Dove Canyon and Robinson Ranch community within Rancho Santa Margarita’s boundaries. Plus, the county would assist in the acquisition of land for a new community center.

State law requires newly incorporated cities to reimburse the county for lost future revenue. Under the so-called revenue neutrality agreement, the city would pay Orange County $12 million over the next 10 years. About 60% of that would come in cash payments in the first seven years of incorporation.

The remainder would come from a unique sales tax revenue sharing agreement. Once the city’s yearly sales tax revenue exceeds $3.1 million, the county would receive 90% of the taxes collected.

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The 33rd City?

On Tuesday, voters go to the polls in the Rancho Santa Margarita area to decide whether it should become the county’s 33rd city and if approved, who should sit on its new five-member city council.

FACTS

Estimated city population: 40,000

Estimated annual budget: $7.4 million

Date of new city’s incorporation: Jan. 1

Number of council candidates on ballot: 14

Source: Local Agency Formation Commission