Yorba Linda's 50th anniversary: Not all of the first City Council members supported incorporation

Interesting to note during Yorba Linda's 50^th anniversary celebration: Not all of the first City Council members were enthusiastic supporters of cityhood.

In fact, Herb Warren, who placed fifth for five council seats out of 27 candidates in 1967, fought incorporation and helped finance activities of a committee opposed to Yorba Linda becoming Orange County's 25th city.

However, Warren soon changed his opinion on the wisdom of incorporation, and in a 1988 interview with Dennis Swift for the Cal State Fullerton oral history program, praised his one-time opponents who supported cityhood as “farsighted.”

Warren singled out George Machado, a member of the first planning commission and second council, as “more objective than some of us who were so close to the forest that we could not see the trees.” Warren also came to support Machado's low-density General Plan from 1971.

Truly, Warren was a man who didn't “hold grudges,” as he told Swift, since Machado formed a slate that ousted Warren and two others from the council in 1970 and opposed Warren's 1974 comeback attempt. Imagine that happening in today's political climate.

Initially, Warren was among the larger landowners and oil men opposed to incorporation. He said they thought “a city would be duplicating Orange County services, which many of us felt were adequate and well served.”

And Warren stated, “We were also thinking that it would cost us extra money and extra taxes, and somebody with 20, 30, 40 acres in Yorba Linda felt that it would impose an undue tax burden on them.” But incorporation won 1,963 to 638, with Warren joining the new council.

“Once the city was formed, I was convinced…(it) would have to impose city taxes and it could not be run without some kind of property tax,” Warren noted. “To our pleasure and pleasant surprise, we found that the opposition in that particular instance was right.”

(After passage of Proposition 13 in 1978, then-City Manager Art Simonian lobbied the state legislature for a law granting the city 10 percent of property taxes collected in the city, now the city's prime income source.)

Warren added: “I have been very pleasantly surprised at the quality of the city. I have to hand it to these people that I did oppose. I think that they have done a very good job in planning.”

In addition to three council years, Warren served in other positions, several focusing on farm and agricultural activities and for service groups such as Rotary and Chamber of Commerce.

He was elected to the Yorba Linda elementary school board in the 1950s, served as a Yorba Linda Water Company director before the mutual became a public agency in 1959 and was a North Orange County Community College District trustee before and after his council service.

Warren concluded his 1988 interview by noting, “I expect I will meet my maker right here in Yorba Linda.” He died at age 87 in 2004 after 80 years in Yorba Linda.