NORTH TUSTIN : Debate on Future of Area Expected

A major showdown over the future of this upscale bedroom community is expected Wednesday afternoon at a public hearing of the Local Agency Formation Commission.

The showdown will pit residents who want North Tustin to become a new city against those who want the community to remain as it is--unincorporated county land--or be annexed to adjacent Tustin or Orange.

“I have gotten word from both sides that they plan to fill the hearing room,” said Jim Colangelo, executive director of LAFCO. The meeting will be in the County Hall of Administration in Santa Ana.

The debate over the future of this 16-square-mile area of about 30,000 residents has heated up in the last year. Residents have scrambled to put together proposals for LAFCO and have heatedly debated the issue in local newspapers.

The commission is not expected to make a decision on either incorporation or annexation at Wednesday’s meeting but will consider whether to require an environmental impact report on the incorporation, Colangelo said.

Commission members will also discuss whether to consider annexation and incorporation simultaneously or separately.

Incorporation proponents gathered more than 6,000 signatures late last year, asking LAFCO to hold a public hearing on the matter and place the issue on the ballot. The proponents say that creating a new city would give residents political autonomy and help maintain the semi-rural atmosphere of the area.

Those who want a new city point to a feasibility study conducted by Christensen & Wallace, an Oceanside consulting firm, which found that the city would be financially viable if an annual utility-users tax of about $74 were instituted in the new city’s ninth year, when state aid would be reduced. The tax is necessary because the proposed city would have only one business and almost no sales-tax revenue, according to the study.

Incorporation opponents dispute the figures in the Christensen & Wallace study, which is being reviewed by the state controller’s office at the request of the Tustin City Council.

The opponents say they would prefer to be annexed by Tustin or Orange. LAFCO has determined that much of the area targeted for incorporation is within Tustin’s “sphere of influence,” meaning that Tustin is the most logical city to annex the property, but a portion is also within Orange’s area.

The Tustin council has sent LAFCO an application to annex more than 800 acres. In Orange, the council voted unanimously last month to pursue the annexation of five parcels. Orange officials have contacted the approximately 500 residents living in those five parcels, encouraging them to support the annexation.

Included in the area targeted by Orange is the Orange County Mining Co., the only source of sales-tax revenue in the proposed city of North Tustin.