COSTA MESA : City Closer to Buying Adjacent County Land
Costa Mesa may get a little bigger if all goes well with its plans to buy several pieces of county land that border the city.
City Manager Allan L. Roeder said the city is pushing forward with plans to purchase the county “islands”--including the Santa Ana Country Club--which border or are surrounded by Costa Mesa.
“It is like cleaning up the city’s boundaries,” Roeder said.
Past efforts to annex the land failed, Roeder said, because residents of the area preferred living in county-controlled territory.
“The unincorporated areas were more rural and wanted to keep it that way,” Roeder said. Perhaps more important, however, the residents of those areas usually paid lower taxes than did residents of the surrounding cities. But officials of the city of Costa Mesa said the county’s bankruptcy may now make annexation attractive to them.
The county has signaled it may be willing to turn the areas over to cities to save on the cost of providing services to those residents, he added.
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