County Role Shrinks
by Larry Gilbert

Question of the day. Do we truly need a full-time Board of Orange County Supervisors?

Recently I read about a new OC CEO and his or her suggested compensation. Part of the discourse relates to our shift away from large, unincorporated areas as newer cities have been formed in the past 25 years.

With 3.1 million reported residents in the county I did some quick research and can report that there are less than 125,000 current residents in the 15 isolated islands. For those unfamiliar with all these unincorporated communities, let me list their names.

Coto De Caza, Cowan Heights, Emerald Bay, Ladera Ranch, Las Flores, Lemon Heights, Midway City, Modjeska, North Tustin, Orange Park Acres, Rancho Mission Viejo, Red Hill, Rossmoor, Silverado and Trabuco Canyon.

That said, there are other functions served by the county starting with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department which, in addition to providing public safety in the unincorporated areas, also serves 12 of our cities under individual contracts.

We recently approved annexing a small area into Mission Viejo where the developer preferred having a Mission Viejo address to help sell these homes. Not too long ago the county asked RSM to annex Coto de Caza as they are within their "sphere of influence." RSM declined the request.

A long time ago we were asked to annex both Ladera Ranch and Las Flores. Mission Viejo declined the LAFCO request as neither of these areas penciled out. We were told that the County wanted to get out of providing public services to these unincorporated areas. I'll wrap this up and simply ask readers to share their thoughts.