Leisure World Cityhood Petition Expected

LAGUNA HILLS — Advocates of cityhood for Leisure World said Friday they will turn in a petition next week with 4,000 signatures supporting incorporation of the retirement community.

Coupling the petition with a full financial review of the community, expected in the next two weeks, Leisure World officials say they will have a completed application before the Local Agency Formation Commission by early October.

“We’re looking for self-determination,” said Matt Magidson, president of the Golden Rain Foundation, which runs the 18,000-resident community. “By becoming a city, we gain a voice in what happens to us.”

The petition will be submitted to LAFCO, which oversees annexations and incorporations in the county, on Wednesday and must then be verified. About 3,800 signatures--25% of registered voters in Leisure World--are required.

Magidson said that, once the signatures are verified and the financial report is submitted, LAFCO will review the application, a process that typically takes about six months.

If LAFCO approves, Leisure World residents would vote on cityhood in November 1998.

“We’ll need to look at a lot of issues,” LAFCO board member Susan Wilson said. “We need to know that there’s enough revenue to support a city, and we have to settle health and safety issues and boundary issues.”

Leisure World already provides most of its own services, such as road maintenance, recreation, park maintenance and security. Its revenue comes from homeowner fees rather than the property and sales taxes.

“It will be a very interesting application,” Wilson said.

Because the Golden Rain Foundation is empowered to spend Leisure World funds, the community’s incorporation drive has shot far ahead of similar efforts in other cities.

Organizers in Rancho Santa Margarita and Foothill Ranch, two other Orange County communities that are weighing incorporation, say they do not expect to have their completed applications before LAFCO until December.

“We have our own community that has the resources to support this entire effort,” Magidson said, “as opposed to people in other areas that have to start fund-raisers and go out into the community to ask for money.”

The cost of the required financial studies is about $50,000. At Leisure World, the money was allocated by a vote of the Golden Rain Foundation’s directors.

Leisure World voters narrowly defeated an incorporation proposal in 1989, and opposition still exists.

“Probably most people around here are opposed to cityhood,” resident Helen Ensweiler said. The directors of the foundation and other homeowner groups in Leisure World are for cityhood, she said, but “not the rest of us.”

Creating a city would merely add a layer of bureaucracy, she said, given that a management company already operates Leisure World.

“It would be like having two management groups,” she said.