Supervisors Limit Sales of Parkland

Orange County supervisors on Tuesday unanimously ordered deed restrictions on all current and future county parklands, requiring a public hearing and the approval of four of five board members before any property could be sold.

Supervisors insisted the blanket ordinance was a technicality. But they acknowledged that about one-third of the county’s 27,000 acres of parks--including bits and pieces acquired through development agreements, especially during the 1980s boom years--is not formally protected. The board also barred county officials from selling any easements across parkland without a public hearing.

Previously, easements valued at less than $25,000--such as for the laying of underground fiber-optic cable--required only the approval of county staff.

“Obviously, [we weren’t] aware that we had a piecemeal approach to our parkland,” Supervisor Todd Spitzer said. “The public expects that their public parks are open space in perpetuity.”

The actions grew out of longtime county activist Shirley Grindle’s discovery two years ago that some parcels within Santiago Oaks Regional Park east of Orange lacked deed protections.

She made the finding while researching the ownership of land surrounding Barham Ranch, a 526-acre undeveloped parcel the county has considered buying from Orange Unified School District to be added to the parks in east Orange County.

Worried that county employees could swap parklands with developers--even small parcels--or sell them off without public knowledge, Grindle took her findings to the county’s Harbors, Beaches and Parks Commission, which instructed park officials to investigate.

“I was surprised that all the parkland that had been purchased didn’t have restrictions on it,” said Commission Chairman Don Bankhead, who approved the request with fellow commissioners at a Dec. 11, 1999, meeting.

Eric Jessen, chief of the parks agency, and another staff member spent two years researching several thousand pages of deeds for the county’s 25 regional parks. Some, such as Aliso and Wood Canyons in Aliso Viejo, were assembled incrementally from more than 30 parcels.

Parcels donated by the Irvine Co., including Peters Canyon Regional Park and Upper Newport Bay Regional Park, did have deed restrictions in perpetuity.

However, deeds for Talbert Regional Park in Costa Mesa and William R. Mason Regional Park in Irvine are in place for lesser periods.

Jessen added that after the 1994 bankruptcy, the county inventoried most assets, including parklands, which were briefly considered for sale to help generate revenue.

Ultimately, half the county’s park acreage was pledged as collateral toward underwriting the bond repayment program.

The board’s action Tuesday does not change the status of these lands. Passage of the ordinance means that all parklands now will be restricted for park or public use. Any sale would require a public hearing and a four-fifths vote.