Paving the way to annexation(s)

For years, there has been discussion that the unincorporated Santa

Ana Heights area would be annexed by either Costa Mesa or Newport

Beach. During talks, the area has been split: Newport Beach has dibs

on the east while Costa Mesa wants the west. The county, which now

oversees the area, wants someone to take the area and doesn’t really

care who. But residents of the overall area tend to prefer Newport

Beach.

On Sept. 16, the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) in

charge of deciding how such an annexation happens will determine who

goes where. But a few technicalities still exist that would allow

residents to veto the commission’s decision.

On Friday, City Editor James Meier sat down with Roger Summers,

chair of the Project Advisory Committee for the redevelopment of

Santa Ana Heights, to discuss the history and future of the area and

proposed annexation and split of the “island,” as the county dubs

unincorporated areas. Meier met Summers at his Santa Ana Heights

office.

How confident are you that east Santa Ana Heights will be annexed

to Newport Beach by July 1?

I believe the Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCO) will

approve the application, which Newport has submitted for the area of

east Santa Ana Heights. There’s a silent majority up here, as there

is anywhere. And a lot of the silent majority are longtime members of

the community, and I’m not totally sure how convinced they are

Newport is the best thing for them. But my overall impression is that

it will finally take. This is the fourth or fifth attempt. This has

one has certainly gone the furthest of those attempts.

What makes you think so?

Part of it is human nature. A lot of times when people who are the

silent majority -- when you sit with them in their living room, they

may express a feeling one way or another, whether that feeling will

prompt action. Because in order to protest after the LAFCO commission

has their hearing, they will approve a protest period. It can be

anywhere between 21 and 60 days. My reaction to that is it’ll

probably be somewhere in the 30-to 45-day class, which they will

approve as part of their commission hearing on Sept. 16.

The protest has to be in writing, addressed and sent to the LAFCO

commission. It can’t be by phone call, it can’t be by e-mail. It must

be in writing.

Therein lies the question of human nature and that is, what you

and I discuss in my living room, whether that actually becomes enough

for them to sit down and write that letter and put it in an envelope

and put a stamp on it and send it, I don’t think it would probably

generate enough of a percentage, which must be 25% to put it to a

vote.

It has to be 51% or more for a vote to make it happen or not

happen. I think they could come up with the 51% to kill it. I’m not

quite sure they could come up with the 25% who would sit down and

write letters. If there are 1,000 residents up here, 25% would be 250

people. I don’t know if you could get 250 people to write that

letter.

And I think it’s time. It’s something that’s going to happen

eventually. I’ve listened to the pros. I’ve listened to the cons. We

have [Newport Beach’s] name. When we got a Post Office zip code

change to 92660, we became Newport Beach.

So James writes me a letter on Birch Street, he doesn’t put Santa

Ana Heights. He puts Newport Beach. So as far as our mail’s

concerned, we are Newport Beach. So in a sense, we have their name.

And, like I told the City Council one time and I don’t know if they

appreciated it because it’s true, do we really need their government?

Now, eventually, I think it’s going to happen. We have, I think,

struck a reasonable deal. We did, similar to Newport Coast, sit down

with the city. We’ve expressed our concerns, optimism, support and we

have asked for certain considerations that they might be willing to

agree to. And I think they have finally come around to a point where

they agree with 14 or 15 of those. And if they’ve agreed to them, why

not do it now? We’ve spent a lot of time, money and effort just to

get to us this far. So why not now? About 10 years from now, we might

not get this good of a deal.

We’re going to live with an airport, so the airport’s not really

the issue. People felt at one point that it improved our chances of

having better input into the number of flights [as a flight takes off

overhead] out of John Wayne Airport. I think since El Toro airport

has gone sideways on everybody and we’re going to now offer to

consider 1.4 million more passengers per year and another four gates

in order to keep some type of restrictions on the airport. We’re

willing to concede this to keep this. I don’t know if that’s dancing

with the devil or not. It could be a little bit. If we get this much

this time, how much is it going to be next time. If the FAA said they

could have as many flights as they want and you could do it 24 hours

a day, seven days a week, they could make that happen. It’ll make a

lot of people very angry, but it’s a possibility.

But I think the leverage of being in Newport Beach would help us.

There’s nobody more affected by the airport than Santa Ana Heights.

We have the most noise, the most pollution, we’re the closest. We

could wave to the pilots as they go by. I have a lemon tree out here

that produces some great lemons, but when I pick them, they’ve got a

black film all over them. What is it? It’s burned jet fuel. So

there’s no one more affected. But I don’t think by being in Newport

Beach or the county is any longer an issue of whether we would be

served with our proximity to the airport. So that issue is gone.

What do you foresee at this point for west Santa Ana Heights?

Well, the LAFCO commission has several options open to us. They

have an application from city of Costa Mesa requesting annexation of

area 7 as they call it. It’s actually a larger area than what we call

west Santa Ana Heights because it goes down below Mesa Drive, down to

Monte Vista, then it comes all the way up to Bristol Street, then to

Irvine Avenue and to Santa Ana Avenue. So that’s area 7.

When we talk about west Santa Ana Heights, the area becomes a

little smaller than that, from Mesa to Bristol, then basically Santa

Ana to Irvine and it jets around the golf course there. Basically,

that’s the territory. The city of Costa Mesa has applied to annex

that because it is within its sphere of influence. The residents of

west Santa Ana Heights have filed an application to have a sphere of

influence change, which is a pre-step to annexation, from Costa Mesa

to Newport Beach. LAFCO has to deal with that at the same time.

To throw another monkey into the wrench, the Santa Ana Country

Club has also applied for a sphere of influence change. In the

various meetings I’ve attended and people I’ve talked to, I believe

-- this is strictly my opinion -- that LAFCO could very easily

approve the application of Costa Mesa to annex west Santa Ana

Heights. At that point, I don’t think it would be difficult for the

west Santa Ana Heights area to opt out of that during the protest

period. If that were to happen, the area would remain county. I don’t

think they would have a difficult time getting those votes.

The county wants to get out of the business of having these

islands, but the county may have to keep that one for a time. They

would have go through the same protest conditions that we would have

to go through. I think they’re going to deal with seven applications

at that time. Bay Knolls is an application in and of itself. I think

the country club is one. There are various other islands, too, with

applications. Each one has to be looked at separately.

What will happen if Santa Ana Heights is split between Newport

Beach and Costa Mesa?

As far as our Project Advisory Committee, we would still be

dealing with a redevelopment agency. And we have a fair sized amount

of money in that agency budget that was created from a bond issue

issuance. It’s being paid off until 2035. We’re a very unusual

redevelopment agency in that we’ve got an airport in our area and

that airport pays about two-thirds of the bond-repayment obligations.

The other third is paid by the residents and property owners within

that specific plan. Another good sized chunk comes from the Marriott

Suites and Downey Savings building because that’s all within the

redevelopment area. Even though that area got annexed into Newport

Beach many years, it still participates in the bond repayment.

So we have the ability to pay back our bond. We’re lucky that he

have the cash-generating ability to pay that back. We also get hit to

the tune of about $4 million that they take out of us to pay the

bankruptcy. We’re a cash cow, too, and when the supervisors scrambled

to look for areas to find cash, guess who was one that they looked

at? We contribute $4 million from this teeny redevelopment area down

here. That was something that the whole county participated in, but

everybody’s not kicking in the kind of bread we are. It comes out our

budget. It’s our money.

But do I think it’ll go through? Yes, I think it will this time. I

think we need to look at it from a positive standpoint and create a

relationship with potentially not only Costa Mesa but Newport Beach.

We need to look for the good as well as the challenges. We have

some parts of our specific plan that have to do with land use,

primarily, that when we get development in our area, we have the

opportunity as have in the past to look at those. If someone wants to

build a three-story building right here, they have to pass it by us

first. We can’t really say whether you can or cannot build it, but at

least we can look at it and see that it meets the criteria in the

specific plan, which I think is protection of the overall

neighborhood.

We want to continue to be able to do that, but it also adds a

layer to those people who are also dealing with the county.

Now, when we have our meetings, we have representatives from just

about any county agency we want, from the planning department to code

enforcement to the fire department to the sheriff’s, to give us

reports on various questions we have. Now, all of a sudden, we throw

two municipalities into the mix, are they going to be as supportive?

We hope so. We’ll also put them into the program.

What amenities will have to be added in Newport-annexed east Santa

Ana Heights?

In the past, we were serviced by the Orange County Fire Authority

through what they called engine 27, which was on the airport property

at Dove Street. They had a fire in the fire station -- how’s that? --

and it burned down. So they pulled that fire station out of there and

left us vulnerable in the amount of time they like to respond to an

emergency. Newport Beach, because we were in this annexation process,

willingly came and established a temporary fire station, Station 7,

so they’re now serving us from that location.

One of the things we have asked for, and I believe received, is

that we need to find a location within Santa Ana Heights for a fire

station. We are moving forward on that. They’re looking at three or

four sites. Now it’s just a matter of getting the property owners to

agree to sell the property. We’ve even offered, we in the committee,

to use some of our funds to assist them to do that because we feel

medical and fire services to us are critical. So we’re working on

that.

We’re negotiating for a community center. We have identified a

piece of property. The county has indicated an interest in purchasing

the property through our redevelopment fund and the city has

indicated an interest in taking over then the operation and

maintenance in the long term. So that would be an asset to the

community.

From there, there are various municipal services they can offer

like a library, street maintenance, just simple things like that.

Street sweeping. Only within the last year and a half have we had our

streets swept and that’s twice a month. The city will probably do it

once a week. Things like that.

There were about 14 to 15 points that we asked Newport Beach to

consider.

Any final thoughts?

It’s been a long road. This annexation issue has come up many

times in the past. I think that the approach has maybe been

questionable to the point where some people here maybe got the wrong

impression that the city was only interested in us because of our

proximity to the airport, and the city really didn’t want us because

they didn’t fit in the Newport lifestyle. We didn’t kind of fix into

that mix. People up here got that impression through various comments

that had been made.

So it always seemed like they got off on the wrong foot. This

time, it’s been going on several years and we’ve walked a little

slower. We’ve listened where we needed to listen, encouraged we need

to encourage. And we’ve never come this far before. So we’re

encouraged.

Our hope is it’ll be a good meld for everyone, that we can be

considered an asset and a complete part -- not a sixth toe or fifth

thumb or something like that -- of Newport Beach and an active,

successful part. We in turn feel we can be of value to them and vice

versa. We’re looking forward to that. We have people down here who

live in zillion dollar estates -- the John Creans, the Buck Johns,

the movers and shakers of the county.

So we think we some things to offer to Newport Beach and we hope

they feel the same about us.