Battle to Spare Bonsall : Bucolic Backcountry Area Plans a Move Designed to Save Region From Growth, but Critics Have Doubt

Had the cards been played right, Bonsall could have had North County by the tail at the turn of century.

The year was 1893, and the communities along the greater San Luis Rey River valley were disillusioned with the services they were receiving from San Diego County and its distant county seat in downtown San Diego. So there emerged talk of forming a new county, Palomar County.

Escondido, as the population and commerce center of North County, was a likely county seat for Palomar County. Oceanside officials balked, though; Escondido wasn’t much closer than downtown San Diego.

So Oceanside offered a compromise: How about a geographically central county seat? How about Bonsall?

Nothing ever came of Palomar County. And nothing much has ever come of Bonsall, which today remains little more than a river-valley way station on California 76 between the coast and inland North County. Turn north at Mission Road and you go to Fallbrook, if you’re looking for a real town.

Unless you live in Bonsall, there is little cause for pause there, save a world-class thoroughbred horse-training track, a handsome golf course where sand traps are shaped like horse heads and a not-so-fast food joint or two.

No Stop Light

Bonsall doesn’t have a stop light, or a gas station or a movie theater. Bonsall, says a local real estate salesman, is “a vastly improved intersection,” especially given a new shopping center anchored by the likes of an antique shop, a video outlet and a feed store.

Bonsall, some folks say, is still waiting to happen.

Something might happen June 7, when voters in Bonsall will be asked to establish Government, with a capital G. Government, with five elected leaders. Government, with letterhead. Government, with about $6,000 a year to spend--a donation from one of the men wanting to be elected.

Not exactly the stuff that makes county seats, but government nonetheless.

With this government, proponents say, Bonsall can become a force to be reckoned with. It will stand up and be counted. It’ll take the bull by the horns. It’ll get some respect.

What will this government accomplish? That is the crux of the debate in this community, which is so sprawling that some folks who live near the border of the district along Escondido, San Marcos, Vista and Oceanside didn’t even realize they were technically Bonsall residents and qualified to vote in the election until they began receiving election material in the mail.

Government in this case would be the establishment of a community services district. Hardly controversial on its face, the community services district (CSD) would provide library and recreation facilities--if it can find the money to do it.

Critics--folks who would just as soon put some distance between themselves and Government--can’t figure out why Bonsall would want to establish Government in these parts. What’s the need for a library, they ask, what with county library branches in Vista and Fallbrook? Who needs a ball field, some say, in a community where most homes are on lots 2 acres or larger?

Without Any Parks

But those services are lacking in the area, according to the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) which governs the formations of special districts and new cities as well as annexations of unincorporated territory into existing cities.

Proponents say Vista and Fallbrook are too far to send children for library services, and they note that there is not a single public park in Bonsall. There is thought that the CSD could try to preserve the San Luis Rey River as open space parkland to the exclusion of commercial, residential or industrial development, thereby preventing the kind of development that has lined the banks of the river downstream, in Oceanside.

The CSD would have no locally generated income until, at a subsequent election, voters decided by a two-thirds majority to assess themselves an amount not yet determined. Until that occurs, the CSD would have to rely on outside sources of funding, such as public grants and private gifts.

But the issue goes far beyond a library and recreation facilities, say the folks who want a CSD. Their home-grown Government, they say, can be used to fight the other G word, growth.

Dominic Savoca, chairman of the Bonsall Planning Group, an advisory board on land use issues for the county Board of Supervisors, said the establishment of a CSD is necessary to garner Bonsall recognition as a formal government entity, through which the community can officially register protests to the encroaching annexations of Vista into the Bonsall valley.

“This will be the closest in Bonsall we’ll ever get to cityhood,” said Savoca, a transplant 11 years ago from the San Francisco Bay area. “It will provide us with a legal, voting forum of the people. It will give us a credible voice.”

Simply put, says Savoca, the CSD could dampen Vista’s incursions into the rural Bonsall valley--annexations, Savoca and others say, which eventually will swallow much of the area.

Open to Conjecture

Whether the CSD could serve as an effective voice against Vista’s annexations, however, is open to conjecture.

John Sasso, a Borrego Water District director who sits as an alternate voting member of LAFCO, suggests the formation of a CSD in Bonsall would show the community’s intent to remain rural.

Sasso said he would interpret a vote for the CSD “as a signal that, by providing a library and park on their own, the don’t need other urban services and want to remain rural.”

County Supervisors John MacDonald and Brian Bilbray, who also serve on LAFCO and would rule on requests by property owners to annex to Vista, don’t agree with Sasso’s interpretation.

“The CSD is a concept formulated by people in Bonsall who want a vehicle through which to provide services not now provided by the county for that community,” said MacDonald, whose district includes Bonsall.

“There’s been a lot of discussion about trying to use the CSD to wall off Bonsall from intrusion by Vista . . . but that wouldn’t necessarily be true. It wouldn’t stop Vista from annexing, and I don’t see any connotation regarding rural life style, one way or the other.”

Said Bilbray: “A CSD may make the community feel gelled, more cohesive as a unit, but, outside of pulling a community together to address an issue like a library or recreation, its impact is more psychological than anything else.

“It won’t predestine any actions of LAFCO. A CSD is not created to stop annexations, but to provide services.”

Bernadean Hanson, president of the group Bonsall Area for Rural Community, said she is opposed to the CSD because she sees no compelling need for one--especially since it will have no accompanying local funding.

“If you vote to put in a new bureaucracy, and you don’t vote any tax for it, what are you saying? To me, it’s not consistent and not logical,” she said.

“Besides, there are greater priorities that need to be addressed. I’ve never heard anyone ask for a park out here. We need better roads, better police protection. . . . Before we start forming new agencies, let’s just do with what we have and put more effort into making them more effective.”

Other critics say the CSD is too encompassing at 34 square miles--generally bounded by San Marcos and Vista to the south, Oceanside to the west, California 76 and the San Luis Rey River on the north and the area beyond Interstate 15 on the east. Some of the area’s 8,000 residents have complained that they do not identify with what they consider “downtown” Bonsall, at the junction of California 76 and Mission Road, and consider themselves to be de facto residents of Escondido, San Marcos, Vista or Oceanside.

For their part, Vista city officials say they feel unjustly under attack by Bonsall’s CSD supporters. “We are interested in getting land use control in our area (through annexation) for much the same reason Bonsall wants to keep us out,” said Vista planner Bill Gutgesell. “But we believe our planning policies have a better prospect for keeping the area rural than theirs will through a CSD.”