Yorba Linda mysteries still are intriguing

I love a good mystery, and I find any puzzle with a Yorba Linda angle particularly intriguing.

In 2007, I tried to solve the mystery of a phantom publication, after a Superior Court judge granted a Long Beach businessman's petition asking to have a “Yorba Linda Voice” news-paper “ascertained and established” as “a newspaper of general circulation.”

The petition stated the Voice is “published for the dissemination of local news” in Yorba Linda with “a bona fide subscription list of paying subscribers” and had been “printed and published regularly every Wednesday” in Yorba Linda for more than a year before the petition was filed.

I couldn't find anyone who had ever seen a copy of the newspaper, including city and school officials, longtime residents and reference librarians. More than six years later, I still haven't found a copy, although the paper is listed on the county court website, updated in November.

A more recent baffler was investigated by the city's contract legal team, Rutan & Tucker, involving a vacant parcel of land along Imperial Highway, on the northeast side of the intersection with Lemon Drive, just south of the now-closed bowling alley parking lot.

The tiny, triangular plot enjoys great visibility from passing cars and is used by local businesses for advertising signs and is popular for political signage during elections. It took its present shape after a reconfiguration of Lemon Drive.

Ownership of the dusty patch came into question when the owner of the bowling alley land--the Harold and Elsie Q. Gelber Trust--asked to purchase the plot to fulfill landscaping obligations for the Fresh Market now under construction.

A report by Assistant City Attorney Megan Garibaldi noted the city believed it owned the small plot at the time a conditional use permit was approved for the market.

But a city-requested title report determined the plot was owned by the Olinda Land Company, a firm that no longer exists. Rutan & Tucker requested a chain of title “as far back as the title company could provide, but ultimately could not ascertain who is the current owner....”

The city's legal team surmised the tiny bit of land was owned either by the city due to a conveyance for the construction of Lemon Drive or the Gelber Trust because an easement to create Lemon Drive reverted to the trust when the portion wasn't needed for public use.

The City Council ended the legal tangle by executing a quitclaim deed to the trust, “conveying the city's interest, if any, in the remnant parcel.”

City Attorney Todd Litfin told me: “A quitclaim deed merely says 'we give you any ownership interest we have' but doesn't mean we owned it--just trying to clean up the record and giving Fresh Market peace of mind that they could actually go on property and start maintaining it.”

Yorba Linda's oil fields, Nixon birthplace

An invitation to speak at last week's Yorba Linda Historical Society meeting allowed me to expand on past columns regarding the importance of the oil industry to this community and add details to the peculiar story of an “oil discovery” on the Nixon birthplace property.

Tracking a century-long flow of oil from underneath Yorba Linda's 20-square-miles is complicated because some fields partly inside present city boundaries include wells on land in several surrounding cities.

Yorba Linda currently sits on all or parts of seven fields, with four labeled active by the Department of Gas, Oil and Geothermal Resources, a state agency listing 2,215 wells in the fields, with 1,309 termed “producing.”

The fields, clockwise from the city's northwestern boundary, are Coyote East (including parts of Brea, Fullerton, La Habra and Placentia), with 504 wells since 1909; Yorba Linda in the Vista Del Verde area, with 832 wells since 1930; and Esperanza, with 23 wells since 1956.

Continuing clockwise are three smaller, now-abandoned fields, Kraemer Northeast, Kraemer and Kraemer West, with 55 wells since 1953, 1918 and 1956, and Richfield in the southwest (including parts of Anaheim and Placentia), with 801 wells since 1919.

Bob Silva, Yorba Linda's building official, told me, “The city does not maintain an accurate count of the abandoned wells,” but he stated, “We do inspect active well sites yearly.” Senior Community Preservation Officer Howard Weldon noted the city has 36 active wells and 18 storage tanks operated by seven companies.

The Nixon property oil story is intriguing. Nixon, on his last day as president, paid tribute to his father, Frank, who owned “the poorest lemon ranch in California” but “sold it before they found oil on it.” Nixon repeated the story in his memoirs, and his mother had told the tale for a 1960 “Good Housekeeping” article.

But historian Stephen Ambrose related in his even-handed Nixon biography: “In 1919, there was an oil boom in Yorba Linda and Frank made a major financial error. A speculator offered him $45,000 for his property. Frank turned it down. 'If there's oil on it, I'll hang on to it,' he said. It turned out to be no better for oil than it was for lemons, and when Frank did sell, he got less than 10 percent of what had been offered.”

Earl Mazo noted in a favorable Nixon biography, as Frank picked a location for a gas station venture: “... two good sites for the station were available to him...two miles apart. After much deliberation he chose the East Whittier site over one at Santa Fe Springs. A year later oil was discovered on the Santa Fe property. The very first well was a 25-barrel-a-day gusher.”

Fawn Brody, who interviewed “old Yorba Linda residents” for a biography highly critical of Nixon, stated they found Nixon's resignation-day oil statement “troubling.” 

City Council: 'What goes around, comes around'

An old adage—“what goes around, comes around”—aptly describes actions on Yorba Linda's political scene, as past and present recall petitions, mayor selections and appointments to represent the city on county agency governing boards clearly demonstrate.

Shifting three-vote majorities on the City Council explain some of the teeter-totter votes that have many residents wondering if political payback represents the guiding principles of the city's elected leaders and a few of their ardent supporters, although participants claim their votes are solely motivated by the issues.

In 2012, opponents of the then-council majority (John Anderson, Nancy Rikel and Mark Schwing) launched a recall effort against Anderson, and this year, opponents of the new council majority (Gene Hernandez, Tom Lindsey and Craig Young) want to recall Lindsey and Young.

Anderson recall advocates, who also opposed the re-election of Rikel and Schwing in 2012, mounted the city's closest-to-success recall drive to date, but the 7,856 signatures they gathered came up short of the 8,668 needed to put the recall on a ballot.

(Petitioners said they checked signers against voter registration lists, but because they lacked the required numbers, city officials didn't initiate an official verification process.)

Three other recall efforts quickly died: two against John Gullixson (1993 and 1999) and a sputtering 2006 attempt against Allen Castellano, Ken Ryan, Keri Wilson and Jim Winder.

For much of this city's history, council members routinely rotated the mayor's chair among their colleagues on 5-0 votes, despite individual disagreements on issues, following a responsible example set by the first council 46 years ago.

But the Anderson-Rikel-Schwing council majority denied then-Mayor Pro Tem Jan Horton the mayoral slot on a 3-2 vote in 2008, making her the only council member to never serve as mayor, excepting Hernandez, the current mayor pro tem, elected to council just a year ago.

Now, Craig Young is serving a one-year term as mayor on a 3-2 vote, with Anderson and Schwing thinking it was Anderson's “turn” in the top position, although exactly when newly elected council members, such as Hernandez and Young, fit in a rotation has varied over the years.

(Rotations aren't seamless, since five council members are elected to four-year terms on a staggered basis—three in one election year and two in the next—and some don't run again and others are turned out by voters.)

Horton also was dumped as the city's representative on the Orange County Fire Authority board in 2008 by Schwing, the newly named mayor, and replaced with Nancy Rikel, a member of that year's council majority with Anderson and Schwing.

Now, Schwing has been dropped from his post as a toll roads director on a 3-2 vote and replaced with Young, a member of the current council's majority with Hernandez and Lindsey. Appointments are still made by the mayor but lately require council concurrence.

School board sees light in financial tunnel

Ask real estate agents and Chamber of Commerce business leaders and you'll find agreement that Yorba Linda's desirability and prosperity as a community is directly related to the quality of education provided at Placentia-Yorba Linda Unified School District campuses.

That's why so many city residents have been concerned over the past few years about the financial plight of the state's public school system. Simply, rebuilding aging campuses and keeping current with rapid technological changes takes significant economic investments.

Families look at the local school system when choosing to live in a community and these families purchase products and services from city businesses. They join and often serve as leaders in churches, sports and cultural groups and other local organizations.

School district voters approved two bond issues to finance new campuses and buildings and substantial refurbishment to older structures, but day-to-day operating budgets for personnel and programs have suffered setbacks for several years.

In fact, last year I noted the district issued a second “qualified certification” regarding the ability to meet financial obligations for the next two years. A qualified certification means the district is “not positive” sufficient monetary resources will exist to meet future needs.

But now, the five elected trustees at their final meeting in 2013 viewed a report stating that district officials believe “the district can meet its financial obligations” for the current school year “and two subsequent years.”

In posting the first of two state-required interim reports to county Superintendent of Schools Al Mijares, “The board understands its fiduciary responsibility to maintain fiscal solvency for the current and subsequent two fiscal years,” noted Jennifer Miller, director of fiscal services.

According to the latest projections of income and expenses, the district will dig into reserves built up during better financial times for the current school year and next year but expects to add to the banked funds two years from now.

Here are the anticipated numbers this year and next: $201.8 million in revenue and $208.2 million in expenditures, reducing reserves to $8 million in 2013-14, with $200.8 million in revenue and $202.8 million in expenditures, reducing reserves to $6.5 million in 2014-15.

But red ink is expected to disappear for 2015-16 with $206.3 million in revenue and $205.4 million in expenditures, building reserves to $7.9 million. The figures include 24,925 in average daily attendance and a boost from 182 to 185 service days starting next year.

Another plus is a one-time state allotment of $5.1 million to be spent this year and next to support implementation of Common Core standards. Funds can be used for professional development, instructional materials and technology.

The spending plan will be heard in a future meeting with approval at a subsequent session. Standards are written to be “real world” relevant. They can be viewed at corestandards.org.

New year promises wild political ride

It's not a stretch to predict 2014 will be a year of local political turmoil because verbal sniping has continued unabated since the last City Council election, when voters – bombarded by union and business-financed ads and mailers – made key changes in this city's governing body.

One of the few unresolved questions is whether or not campaign spending in this year's election will match or exceed the city's record high for a council contest achieved in the 2012 race: a total of $261,599 spent by or on behalf of the top contenders.

Two of three candidates endorsed by 2012's biggest single spender – the Association of Orange County Deputy Sheriffs at $78,839 – lost (Ken Peterson and Nancy Rikel), while two candidates with business group support (Gene Hernandez and Craig Young) won. Incumbent Mark Schwing was the lone union-supported winner.

This year's contest is for seats now held by John Anderson and Tom Lindsey, with the latter already an announced candidate for a second term. Experienced candidates know an early start is critical for fund-raising, so expect to see others emerge before filing opens mid-July.

Complicating Lindsey's run is a potential recall, as Lindsey and Young became the sixth and seventh of 32 council members to be served with “intent to recall” papers. Activists in past recall efforts have told me that even if they didn't gather enough signatures to put the recall on the ballot, they at least “dirtied up” their targets with negative publicity.

Also a factor in this year's election will be the city's longest-active political action committee, Yorba Linda Residents for Responsible Representation, with followers already pouncing on Hernandez, Lindsey and Young as “developer-friendly high-density advocates.”

Although some early leaders left YLRRR in disagreements over policy and endorsements, the organization, which now raises funds from garage sales and loans from members, has a record of 8 wins and 3 losses, but backing for three of the winners was later withdrawn.

Winners were Anderson and Jan Horton in 2006, Hank Wedaa on a 2007 ballot, Schwing and Rikel in 2008, Anderson and Lindsey in 2010 and Schwing in 2012. Losing were Ed Rakochy in 2008 and Peterson and Rikel in 2012. YLRRR later soured on Horton, Wedaa and Lindsey.

Interestingly, one key issue in the coming campaign will be a matter that has confronted this city's councils since their first meetings in the 1960s: individual property rights versus restrictive zoning and other policies that mandate low housing densities, with self-described conservatives lining up on each side.

Also on tap is the June primary for a state Assembly seat, with two contenders advancing to a November run-off. Young is one of three GOP candidates, and some of his council opponents hope he'll become one of 80 Assembly votes instead of remaining one of five council votes.