So Unlike the Last Three Speakers, I'm Actually an Orange County Resident. I Was Born Here

Chris Nguyen ~

So unlike the last three speakers, I'm actually an Orange County resident. I was born here and Igrew up here. My extended family lives here, and I also bought my home here. That being said, I definitelycare about the future of Orange County. Before I address whether or not Orange County should consolidate, I’ll answer the question of whether or not Orange County can consolidate. Let me first say that I think everyone in this room, including the 18-year-old college freshmen, will be dead before the 34 cities of Orange County agree to merge with the county itself. The fact of the matter is that the history of Orange County is littered with cities fearing each other.

There are two words that will cause any consolidation effort to fail. The first word is Anaheim, and the second word is Irvine. The people in the other 32 cities that make up Orange County hate those two cities. There was an effort in North Tustin to move their sewers from the Orange County Sanitation District to either the Irvine Ranch Water District or the East Orange County Water District. There were signs put up in North Tustin neighborhoods that read, “Don't let us become Irvine.”

Anaheim's history has affected Orange County repeatedly. After we seceded from L.A., we were supposed to be known as Anaheim County because Anaheim was supposed to be the county seat. However, the cities of Santa Ana and Orange got together and decided to gang up on Anaheim. This is how the city of Orange received the county seat, and this is how the county itself got its name. All of this happened because they did not want Anaheim to have this position.

I live in Anaheim Hills, and Anaheim Hills is actually the result of a breach of a gentlemen's agreement between Anaheim and Orange. For decades these cities had agreed to never cross the Santa Ana River. Nevertheless, Anaheim Hills formed when Anaheim annexed an area that crossed the river. In response, Orange panicked and started annexing land in the east. This is how we got the city of Villa Park, which didn't want to be part of Orange, and it’s how we eventually got the city of Stanton as well. These cities exist because they incorporated out of fear that Anaheim was going to convert them into a landfill. Orange County’s history is littered with fear of Anaheim, Irvine, and other similar cities.Therefore, we would never be able to get the political consent for a full consolidation.

What Wendell said was absolutely right - people want a government that's close to them. People like being able to walk down the street and run into one of their city council members. This is why there are little cities like La Palma (which is only two square miles and has a population 15,000 people), and Villa Park (which has a population of only 4,000 people). The citizens of these cities know their politicians. On the other hand, the Orange County Board of Supervisors oversees 3.1 million people. They are very distant from the average citizen. Most people walking down the street don’t even know what the board of supervisors is, but they are familiar with their city council. They may not necessarily know who their mayor is, but they know what a mayor is. For example, look at L.A. or San Francisco. I can name the present and former mayors of L.A. off the top of my head - Eric Garcetti, Antonio Villaraigosa, James Hahn, Richard Riordan, Tom Bradley, and Sam Yorty. They are well-known figures. Similarly, in San Francisco you have Ed Lee, the current mayor, and his predecessors Gavin Newsom, Willie Brown, and Frank Jordan. These are all well-known figures. But who’s the chair of the Orange County Board of Supervisors? Yeah, probably Michelle Steele; but even though this is a relatively informed crowd, I’m guessing that only 10 percent of the people in this room knew that answer. If I asked people on the street, I would be impressed if they could name their supervisors, let alone name the chair of the board of supervisors. So essentially, any movement toward consolidation of the cities would require people to have more knowledge about the government and hold it accountable.

I believe that we have the best shot at consolidation in special districts. If someone flushes a toilet in the city of Yorba Linda, it requires five government agencies to work together. The Metropolitan Water District of Southern California would bring the water up from the Colorado River and from Northern California. From there it would be handed off to the Mistral Water District of Orange County, while the Orange County Water District pools in groundwater. They would then hand it off to the Yorba Linda Water District, and the Yorba Linda Water District would get the water into your toilet. Once you flush the toilet, the water travels through the sewer pipes, and then the Yorba Linda Water District has to hand the water off to the Orange County Sanitation District in order for it to be treated. This process is the same in the city of Villa Park and in other portions of Orange County. I work in government, and even I don't think I could name any of the directors of those water districts. Nevertheless, that’s the level ofaccountability that people need to have.

People are not willing to consolidate their council members or their mayors because they know these people or they’ve at least heard of them. I think most residents of Anaheim have heard of Tom Tate too. In fact, I think most of Orange County has heard of Tom Tate and Don Wagner. When looking at former speakers of the assembly - Curt Pringle, Willie Brown, Antonio Villaraigosa - all of them went back to be mayors of their cities rather than county supervisors. Really, a board of supervisors is a quasi-parliamentary system, which is not very typical in American government. Imagine if we were to abolish the governor and have the legislature exercise executive powers. In fact, to give a more dramatic example, imagine if we were to get rid of the president and instead have congress exercise executive powers. The room may have interesting thoughts pertaining to this right now, but the structure of the board is indeed strange.

If we were to pursue a consolidation of cities, there would have to be a mayor of Orange County, and he or she would need to be a strong executive mayor. Right now we have a professional county executive that operates at the county level and is the council manager of government. I don't think most people understand that we have a council manager of government in most places. I’ve sat down to many dinners with mayors, and I’ve seen people come up to their mayor with complaints. These people believe that the mayor has full executive powers and can take direct action to solve their problems. Most mayors in Orange County make a few thousand dollars a year. They're all part time. If I put a measure on the ballot that limited their salary to $75,000 a year, I bet it would pass in two thirds of Orange County cities because people don't realize that their mayor works part time. Consolidation has to answer the question of government accountability, and people must hold elected officials accountable. However, in order to do this, the people must have access to the government. As Wendell said, government has to be close to the people, and this requires people to be familiar with their government officials.

One would likely consider school boards to be the closest level of government in the city of La Palma, which contains 15,000 people within two square miles. La Palma has five school districts - the Full and Joint High School District, the Park School District, the Anaheim Union High School District, the Cypress School District, and the San Troy School District. There is also the Savannah School District that overlaps several cities and has four elementary schools. Why does that School District even exist? In the city of Anaheim there are seven school districts. If consolidation were to take place, it would have to be at these more obscure levels of government. It would be very difficult to consolidate cities and counties, because those are the forms of government that people are most familiar with. For instance, if you ask people what city they're from, they will be able to tell you. Yet, if you ask them what school district they live in, a lot of them probably won't know. Similarly, if you ask them about their water district, most people won't know. There are even more obscure sectors of government, such as the Emerald Bay Community Services District and the Sunset Beach Community Services District. They likely have a couple hundred members. If you go onto their website, you actually have to enter a password. This probably violates the California Public Records Act, but because they're so small, people don’t bother suing them.To a similar effect, people aren’t going to fight homeowners associations.

An interesting viewpoint on all of this is the idea of partial consolidation, because we do have partial consolidations in Orange County. For example, look at fire services. The Orange County Fire Authority serves 23 of our 34 cities. Two thirds of Orange County is served by this Fire Authority. The Orange County Sheriff's Department serves 13 of our cities. When crime is up, the sheriff is in trouble, but when crime is down, the sheriff is in good shape. This is the case even in cities that have a police chief, because people believe that the sheriff has the power to order the police chiefs around. This all goes to show that the level of civic education in our society is frightening. I can't tell you the number of times that I was in a supervisor's office and we would get a call to have us order the city council to do something. It doesn't work that way. That would be like the Vietnamese Communist Government calling the State Department and asking them to order the city of Westminster to take flying South Vietnamese flags down. When the Vietnamese Communist Government understands as much about our government structure as our citizens do, that's a frightening problem. So I think that any sort of consolidation would have to occur at the special district level and perhaps the school district level just because those are the areas of government that people are least familiar with, and this way we could abolish things that they don’t understand. I just don't see how people would be willing to abolish things that they do understand. And so with that, I think we'll move on to a question and answer session.