Annexation put back on the table

With Orange County expecting an $84-million budget gap next year, county officials may want to hand over unincorporated areas to other municipalities. This could be good news for Santa Ana Country Club and the South of Mesa Drive neighborhood, which have lobbied unsuccessfully to become part of Newport Beach for years, but Costa Mesa still has first dibs on the land.

In the wake of the budget crunch, Orange County Board of Supervisors Chairman John Moorlach has asked for an investigation into how much unincorporated areas cost the county versus how much money they bring in.

Getting unincorporated areas off the books is a priority for Orange County, but it’s not at the top of the list, Moorlach said Friday, a day after the county announced it would have to lay off about 200 social services workers. An additional 4,000 county workers were told they would have to take two weeks off without pay in the wake of an expected $20-million cut in state funding.

“Things get a little more interesting when you get short-handed,” Moorlach said Friday. “[Annexation] is a priority, but certainly with our financial situation and staff a bit stretched, it’s going to be difficult to make it a high priority at this time.”

A bid Santa Ana Country Club and residents of the South of Mesa Drive neighborhood put in to become part of Newport Beach failed earlier this year.

Costa Mesa officials have been working on a proposal to provide city services to the residents south of Mesa Drive, although an attempt by the city to annex the land failed in 2002.

The proposal would allow Costa Mesa to extend city services to the country club and nearby South of Mesa Drive area, but the areas would remain part of the unincorporated county.

“It’s still in the preliminary stages,” Costa Mesa Assistant City Manager Tom Hatch said Friday. “I think there has been some discussion about it, but it’s still in draft form at this point.”

The residents want Newport Beach addresses because they believe it will boost property values, and they claim the city could offer them better services than Costa Mesa, said John Fay, who has lived in the South of Mesa Drive area since 1998.

The idea of Costa Mesa providing city services to the area doesn’t sit well with Fay, he said.

“I see it as kind of an attempt to wear us down,” Fay said. “But we’ll always have a right to protest.”

County officials earlier this year rejected the requests of neighborhood residents of the unincorporated South of Mesa Drive neighborhood to extend an application that would allow them to be annexed by Newport Beach. The residents needed a tax-sharing agreement from the Orange County Board of Supervisors to move forward. Moorlach blocked the board from voting on the agreement by declining to sponsor the agreement. Moorlach, a longtime Costa Mesa resident, has been outspoken in his belief that Costa Mesa has more of a right to the land than Newport Beach.

Costa Mesa has a sphere of influence over both the country club and the South of Mesa Drive area and tried to annex them in 2002, but faced widespread opposition from property owners who petitioned against the annexation.

Newport Beach voted 6 to 1 to move forward with the annexation application in February, even though city staff recommended the city let the application expire rather than risk a land battle with Costa Mesa over who should get the property.

Santa Ana Country Club and the residential neighborhood gathered more than enough signatures last year to petition for annexation to the county agency that oversees the process.

BRIANNA BAILEY may be reached at (714) 966-4625 or at [email protected].