Council factions repeat serious mistakes

Residents have good reason to express concerns about Yorba Linda's political direction, as City Council members and a few vocal supporters are on track to repeat serious mistakes from the not-too-distant past.

Factions vying to control a council majority are involved in the same behavior that led to wide-spread voter discontent with council decision-making generally and votes on high-density development specifically, just a few years ago.

My May 23 column detailed the return of outside, special-interest money in campaigning, as evidenced by big-dollar donations from “independent expenditure” committees run by public employee unions and coalitions of businesses and real estate interests.

This column focuses on other danger signals, including meetings between developers and individual council members and the continuing noxious payback attitudes exhibited by both sides of recent 3-2 councils.

Simply, council members should not meet privately with developers before projects come up for a vote. Some claim the meetings have resulted in reduced project densities, but without published agendas, meeting minutes and citizen oversight, there's no assurance the claims are true now or will be in the future.

The same results could be achieved at open workshops and council meetings where all discussions and decisions are on the public record.

A past council created a Town Center Ad Hoc Committee where council members, city staff and developers met in secret to discuss plans for the high-density 2005-06 Old Town project that was eventually withdrawn.

This group met in private, unrecorded sessions, despite the existence of a Town Center Standing Committee that required agendas, minutes and citizen participation.

A subsequent council banned closed-door ad hoc committees as part of an ethics ordinance that later received 85 percent voter support in 2010.

The ordinance doesn't end all bad practices, but provisions also limit campaign contributions from city contractors and prevent council incumbents from strong-arming the 20 council-appointed city commissioners for election-year endorsements.

Decisions appearing to be political payback are further proof council members are repeating past mistakes.

Annual selections of the mayor, mayor pro-tem and council representatives on four key county boards lately follow a reward-your-ally, screw-your-opponent format. And politicized appointments to citizen advisory committees distract from the important tasks assigned to these groups.

Subjecting Tom Lindsey to a November recall election when his term ends in December is evidence of political payback, probably for his vote against contracting with the Sheriff's Department.

A more logical choice would have been to target Gene Hernandez, along with Craig Young, since they vote similarly on development projects and their terms run through 2016, unless the real aim is to pump up negatives on Lindsey's campaign for a second term.

New addition to list of controversial projects

Easily added to a “top 10” list of the most controversial projects ever approved in Yorba Linda's near 47-year history is the 80-unit, three-story Tesoro Townhomes development on four acres at the city's western entrance at Yorba Linda Boulevard and Prospect Avenue.

Although the new condominium community survived on a 3-2 City Council vote earlier this year, governing body members recently approved demolition of the two buildings comprising the now-vacant Yorba Linda Medical Arts facility with a 5-0 tally.

For conflict regarding multi-family housing and residential density levels, Tesoros Townhomes rivals an early 13-acre apartment development proposed for land south of the center that now houses Orchard Hardware and Sprouts Market at Yorba Linda Boulevard and Richfield Road.

Opponents challenged the council's action in a 1970 election, and voters overturned the council-approved zoning rules for the envisioned complex, 1,302 to 887. Years later, the property was developed as Cerro Verde condominiums.

Of course, number one on a top 10 list of disputed developments is the 2005-06 failed Town Center plan that would have remade the acreage surrounding Main Street into a dense, multi-story commercial and residential area.

That controversy led to two successful petition drives, an ordinance requiring a public vote on major changes to city zoning documents, a near-complete turnover of council members in the 2006 and 2008 elections and changes in the city's top management staff.

The demolition permit for the two-story medical buildings, 30,260 and 44,000 square feet, received positive votes from all council members, John Anderson, Gene Hernandez, Tom Lindsey, Mark Schwing and Craig Young, in April.

But Anderson and Schwing opposed the original vesting tentative track map, conditional use permit and design review in February after the project received Planning Commission approval on a 3-2 vote. Anderson had appealed the planners' decision to the council.

Interestingly, a demolition permit request triggers a review of a building's historical significance, under council policy. The medical structures, completed in 1978 and 1983, “are not considered historically significant due to their age.”

In order to be considered for potential historical significance, a building must be a minimum of 45 years old, according to city policy, and a 2010 Citywide Historic Property Survey only evaluated buildings constructed before 1965, Building Official Bob Silva noted in a recent report.

A survey by Norco-based Ambient Environmental conducted for the Newport Beach-based Tesoros Townhomes developer, Prospect Place, found two instances of asbestos material, one in a basement restroom and the other in a second-floor suite, out of 45 samples taken.

A concern raised by some residents concerning residual radiation was dismissed by city officials due to information provided by UCLA's Center for the Health Sciences. According to a city report, “unlike some other forms of radiation, diagnostic x-rays do not have enough energy to make anything exposed to them radioactive.”

A 1963 thought: let's annex to Anaheim

A political donnybrook is on the horizon as the factions who've held seesaw control of the City Council the past several years face another knockabout battle for two seats and a possible recall on two incumbents, if one of the camps turns in sufficient signatures next week.

But the significance of the upcoming Nov. 4 election pales in comparison to this community's most important ballot ever, involving a largely forgotten issue settled by 1,669 voters in 1963.

The long-ago vote led to a 1967 election in which 1,963 voters cast ballots to incorporate Yorba Linda against 638 who were opposed – but it was a rocky road that took four more years to traverse.

The 1963 issue, affecting about 5,000 residents of an 11-square-mile area generally following the boundaries of the then-existing Yorba Linda County Water District and a portion of Puente Hills, was a measure to annex to Anaheim, a plan endorsed by many community leaders.

The matter appeared fairly urgent because Brea and Placentia were nibbling at the community's borders with small piecemeal annexation attempts.

Although incorporation efforts were made in the 1950s and early 1960s, they failed, generally due to issues involving the small area's tax base and financial ability to “go it alone as a city.”

According to “a group of representative residents,” as related in a 1962 Yorba Linda Star article, “the best course to follow was to petition the city of Anaheim for annexation of the entire area....for the preservation of Yorba Linda as a community with legal boundaries.”

One strong selling point in the proposal would have allowed Yorba Linda “to maintain its name and identity as it is now known,” comparable to Corona del Mar in Newport Beach.

The 36 petitions calling for an annexation vote contained 920 names, with 822 validated as registered voters of the affected area, more than the 588 required. Just 14 percent of the owners of the area's assessed land value opposed the election at a county hearing.

With apparent support from so many community members, including Star owner Bill Drake, the election appeared in the bag, and Anaheim named a Yorba Linda resident to its Planning Commission one month before balloting.

But annexation lost, 1,062 to 607, with a “yes” majority achieved in only one of the 12 precincts. Most voters believed, as stated in a letter to the Star, annexation “would completely eliminate local dignity, independence and the prospect of ever becoming a city with local rules.”

Within a month of the vote, advocates from both sides of the issue formed a new incorporation committee and – despite years of adverse state court and county government rulings – eventually gained approval to hold the 1967 election that won cityhood.

An interesting aspect of these first community elections: nobody put an unflattering picture of an opposition leader in a circle with a line through it. Too bad the worthy precedent didn't last.

Yorba Linda committees push political agendas

One pattern on the Yorba Linda civic scene has remained constant since the late 1950s and early 1960s: residents pushing political agendas organize committees to promote their goals and publicize their activities to the broader community.

Two such groups are on opposite sides of the current wrangling over residential density levels on mostly west-side infill properties, affordable housing requirements and a recall effort aimed at Mayor Craig Young and Councilman Tom Lindsey.

Roadside signs promoting the recall and accusing Young and Lindsey of favoring higher den-sities are posted by the nine-year-old Yorba Linda Residents for Responsible Representation.

(YLRRR officers substituted the word “representation” for the original “redevelopment” sometime after several founding members left the group over various policy disputes.)

Signs opposing recall are posted by Residents for a Better Yorba Linda, a group with some of the same supporters as the disbanded United Citizens for Yorba Linda that aided a recall effort against John Anderson and opposed Nancy Rikel and Mark Schwing in the 2012 election.

YLRRR endorsed successful candidates Anderson and Jan Horton in 2006, Hank Wedaa in a 2007 special ballot, Nancy Rikel and Mark Schwing in 2008, Anderson and Tom Lindsey in 2010 and Schwing in 2012, later withdrawing support for Horton, Wedaa and Lindsey.

United Citizens endorsed the successful Young and Gene Hernandez in 2012 and A Better Yorba Linda supports Hernandez, Lindsey and Young and opposes Anderson and Schwing.

Current committees always choose positive, high-sounding names, even when the goal is to target adversaries with negatives or what they like to call “highlighting an opponent's record,” allowing their candidates the opportunity to take a more positive road in campaigns.

Early groups took purposeful names and listed members in circulars and ads. A Citizens' Com-mittee to Study Incorporation formed in 1956, followed by Cityhood Steering Committee, Yorba Linda Homeowners' Association, Committee for Incorporation, Committee for the Preservation of Yorba Linda and Committee for Yorba Linda, which opposed annexation to Anaheim.

A successful later group, Prevent Airport Traffic in Chino Hills or PATCH, combined grass roots support with leadership from some north county elected leaders, including five-time mayor Wedaa.

As land became valuable for new homes, developers contributed heavily to city committees, such as Past and Present Elected Officials Representing Yorba Linda, which endorsed candidates for council and Yorba Linda Water District.

And the John Gullixson-guided, developer-funded Safe Streets Are for Everyone successfully opposed an initiative ballot measure to stop the widening of Imperial Highway.

Arrayed against the developer-funded council candidates and projects of the 1990s and early 2000s was the financially challenged Organization of Unified Concerned Homeowners, or OUCH, led by several advocates for a semi-rural environment.