Residents West of Santa Clarita Seek Cityhood

A citizens group took a small step toward creating a new city west of Santa Clarita on Friday when it turned in petitions asking a state agency to study the feasibility of incorporating the proposed city of Sunset Hills.

An earlier petition drive fell 24 signatures short of the 142 needed to request formation of a city of 27.8 square miles in an area west of the Golden State Freeway and south of Magic Mountain.

Cityhood proponents needed signatures from 25% of the area’s 567 registered voters to qualify their petition, said Michi Takahashi, a spokeswoman for the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO), which oversees annexations and incorporations.

Friday was the deadline to submit additional signatures, and cityhood proponents submitted more than 50 new signatures.

If the signatures are certified by the Los Angeles County registrar of voters, LAFCO would begin the lengthy task of studying whether a financial base exists to support the proposed city, Takahashi said.

Santa Clarita Mayor Jo Anne Darcy, who succeeded Jan Heidt as mayor Tuesday night, said Friday that Santa Clarita probably will oppose the incorporation of Sunset Hills because the City Council “would like to see it come into our city,” she said.

The Santa Clarita City Council asked LAFCO to declare the Sunset Hills area eligible for annexation, but LAFCO denied the request last month.

Some Santa Clarita residents called the Sunset Hills cityhood effort a sham, saying it was just an attempt by the area’s principal developer, the Dale Poe Development Corp., to avoid Santa Clarita’s development restrictions. Santa Clarita City Councilman Dennis Koontz has sarcastically labeled the proposed city “Poe-Town.”

But Ernest Dynda, one of the cityhood proponents, on Friday said the incorporation effort is genuine.

Dynda, a former Agoura Hills city councilman who helped that city incorporate in 1982, said Sunset Hills offers cityhood proponents a unique opportunity because the area is largely undeveloped. Rather than wait to incorporate an area already filled with traffic and planning problems, the cityhood supporters could attack problems before they begin, he said.

The other leaders of the incorporation drive are Jeff Reed, a Sunset Pointe resident, and Jeff Stevenson, a vice president of Dale Poe Development.