Limbo has longevity in Santa Ana Heights

TONY DODERO

I’ve often marveled in this space about those stories that won’t die.

The headlines that are rewritten, practically word for word, time and

time again.

The usual suspects are the 19th Street bridge, the Westside Job

Center and charities, the Back Bay dredging, urban storm runoff, John

Wayne Airport expansion and noise and, last but not least, the

annexation of county-controlled Santa Ana Heights.

Regarding the last item, a reader’s e-mail about a recent omission

of fact in an editorial that ran on Feb. 22, titled, “Newport

literally crosses the line,” sent me to our archives, where I knew I

could find a number of stories for clarity.

I popped into the newsroom library (an outdated creature now with

the advent of electronic databases) with its 1950s-era metal, file

cabinets and took a quick jog down memory lane, unearthing stories

dating back to the 1970s and 1980s and 1990s and right on up to the

present century, all dealing with Santa Ana Heights and its hoped for

annexation to Newport Beach.

I even wrote a few stories myself, it seems, back when I was

prowling around Newport Beach City Hall for a living in the early

1990s.

The old headlines from the browned and frayed news clips were

familiar: “Council to review report on Santa Ana Heights annexation,”

“Newport seems willing to add Santa Ana Heights,” “Newport wins OK to

annex Bayview.” The last one was from 1985.

Hmmm. And here’s an interesting one from 1983: “SA Heights

annexation plans eyed,” written by one Steve Marble. The first

paragraph of the story reads, “A passionate battle over the future of

Santa Ana Heights has been rekindled by new efforts to have the rural

unincorporated neighborhood annexed by Newport Beach.”

In the 21 years since he wrote that story, Marble, a reporter at

the time, climbed the ranks of the Daily Pilot newsroom hierarchy to

become managing editor, leaving in 2000 to join the editing staff of

our sister paper, the Los Angeles Times, and has raised two kids and

sent them off to college.

And what has become of the Santa Ana Heights annexation since

then? Well, the issue is still not resolved.

That’s not to say part of it isn’t resolved. Just last year, only

20 years after Marble’s news story, the residents who live on the

eastern end of Santa Ana Heights finally got their long-awaited wish

and became full-fledged Newport Beach citizens.

Problem is, not everyone got invited to that party.

This brings me back to our editorial oversight.

The annexation boundaries and history is a tad confusing. On one

end are the homes and businesses east of Irvine Avenue, north of Mesa

Drive and south of Bristol Street, casually known as east Santa Ana

Heights. On the other end are the homes and businesses, roughly

bordered by Santa Ana Avenue to the west, snaking south a few blocks

and taking in the Santa Ana Heights Country Club to the north.

The western edge of Santa Ana Heights, referred to on county maps

as Area 7, has received conflicting messages over the years.

While Newport was happy to gobble up the eastern portion of the

land, Costa Mesa officials want the western side.

This came to a head in recent months as Newport officials unveiled

a four-pronged plan to investigate a possible takeover of county

operations currently in the city’s sphere of influence. That plan

included such entities as John Wayne Airport, the Coyote Canyon

landfill, the Harbor Patrol and Santa Ana Heights.

We’ve generally been in favor of Newport’s goals. But in the

aforementioned editorial, we made the following observation:

“Knowing residents in the Santa Ana Heights area were eager to

come to the beach city, Newport officials moved quickly to annex East

Santa Ana Heights and now have their sights set on the rest of the

288-acre area,” we wrote. “An area that comes with $30 million for a

redevelopment project, as part of a massive plan that if it came to

pass would have Newport Beach controlling not only Santa Ana Heights,

but the Coyote Canyon Landfill, the Harbor Patrol and John Wayne

Airport. The problem is that Costa Mesa officials are now saying the

western end of Santa Ana Heights, including the country club, is not

up for grabs, especially not those areas that are already part of the

city.”

After this editorial ran, I got a call from west Santa Ana Heights

resident and UCI science professor Cal McLaughlin, who pointed out we

neglected to mention one important fact.

The residents of Santa Ana Heights held a protest vote in the fall

of 2002 and overwhelming, by a 70% margin, chose not to be annexed by

Costa Mesa.

“The paper should really come down on the side of the people,”

McLaughlin told me in a visit to the newsroom, in which he gave me

and other editors a history and geography lesson on Santa Ana

Heights.

What we learned is even if Costa Mesa wants to annex that land,

the protest vote petition submitted to the Local Agency Formation

Commission -- the entity that oversees annexation -- creates a major

obstacle to that goal.

Instead, McLaughlin, one of the leaders of the protest vote, wants

Newport Beach to go forward with its plans to annex, something we

editorialized against.

McLaughlin is mostly right. Newspapers should come down on the

side of the people most of the time.

And in this case, I agree with him that even though he and his

neighbors don’t want to call Costa Mesa home, we shouldn’t tell them

that they should just be quiet and be annexed.

If the people of that area take a democratic vote and that vote is

against becoming Costa Mesa, Costa Mesa officials should just take

the hint.

But the larger problem is the quagmire between the two cities that

seems to be brewing over this and other issues. Costa Mesa officials

continue to make statements that they don’t want to give up that

chunk of land. And Newport officials say they’d like to have it.

That same editorial began with these lines: “In life there are

boundaries. Space that must be respected. Lines that just shouldn’t

be crossed.”

Until those lines and boundaries are mutually agreed upon by both

cities, my guess is our archives will continue to fill up with Santa

Ana Heights annexation headlines for years to come.