Yorba Linda City Council adopts official city flag design after committee reviews 31 contest entries

 

Yorba Linda's City Council has retired a city flag a past council introduced 40 years ago and replaced it with a design that has spawned a bit of controversy regarding what some people say is a lack of clearly recognizable elements representing the city's identity.

Numerous emails supporting and criticizing the new flag were submitted to the council before the body adopted a resolution designating the design as “the new official” Yorba Linda flag on a 5-0 vote at a May 18 meeting.

The new flag was chosen from 31 proposals presented to a seven-member committee of city residents formed to sort through designs submitted for consideration in a city-sponsored con-test earlier this year.

The committee included representatives from the Historical Society, Women's Club, Chamber of Commerce, Arts Alliance Foundation, Parks and Recreation Commission, Arts and Cultural Collective Group and Yorba Linda High School Visual Arts Department.

The committee heard a presentation on “best practices of flag design” from the North American Vexillological Association, a scholarly group that studies flag design, said a report to council members by Allison Estes, assistant to the city manager.

The vexillology report noted the association's five principals of flag design: keep it simple, use meaningful symbolism, use two or three basic colors, no lettering or seals and “avoid duplicating other flags, but use similarities to show connections.”

The chosen design was submitted by Michelle Pohl. The city's resolution noted her entry symbolized “the beauty of the rolling hills," with the viewer's eyes drawn into the flag design "with a gentle sweep of two rolling hills.

The resolution continued, “A star adorns the upper left corner, or west side of the flag, as a symbol of the westerly location of the treasured birthplace and library of Richard Nixon.” The flag has three colors, yellow, blue and white.

Yellow, the resolution noted, represents gracious living and friendship, blue represents “the intelligence stemming from our high-achieving, award-winning schools” and white shows “peacefulness, a trait rooted in our city's pastoral beginnings....”

Some of the flag's critics wanted more visual representations of the city's identity, such as a horse, white trail fence, orange tree or other portrayals.

The first city flag was introduced at a 1981 council meeting, and a plaque was presented to designer Beth Barton, but a resolution to accept it as an official city flag was never adopted.

Plans call for flying the new flag at City Hall and the Community Center. A flag also will be displayed in the council chambers, with one purchased to be given to contest winner Pohl.

The retired flag “will be preserved and displayed at the Yorba Linda Public Library's local history area, where other historic . . . Yorba Linda artifacts are housed,” Estes said in her report.