Unity on El Toro Now Key

Progress? Maybe. Hopefully. Within six hours of our election results being declared in the wee hours of March 6, the Navy released a statement promising to honor Measure W’s new non-aviation zoning requirements but declaring its new intent to begin a sale of the base.

This action has provided a sense of urgency to resolve our local conflicts or suffer a disposal process that bypasses our normal decision-making authority. If we fail to work together as a county now that Measure W is law, if the county turns its back on its land-use oversight responsibility, if we hold hidden agendas to continue to fight for an aviation use in spite of Measure W, then we risk allowing the Navy to dispose of parcels of the base in an irresponsible manner that could cost the county taxpayer for years to come.

To avoid this outcome, the Board of Supervisors, in its role as the federally designated Local Reuse Authority (LRA), must focus on three major policy objectives.

First, we must protect the county general fund. Since the passage of Measure A in 1994, the county has spent in excess of $40million planning aviation at El Toro using revenue from the John Wayne Airport enterprise fund. Under Measure W, aviation reuse has been killed and all John Wayne funds have been severed forcibly. They can be legally used only to plan an aviation system, which included El Toro.

However, the general fund is now vulnerable on two fronts. To continue servicing the master lease agreement between the Navy and the county, the general fund will have to absorb the loss, which is $7million a year through 2005. Also, the board must decide whether to commence using general fund dollars to plan for any non-aviation reuses at the base.

In order to stop the bleeding of the general fund, Supervisor Jim Silva and I recently met with top Navy officials and insisted that if the county is to continue to work with the Navy in its disposal efforts, the federal government will have to reassume the caretaker functions of the base while honoring all of our tenant agreements. If the Navy agrees, it will save the general fund nearly $25 million. Their risk in not doing so is having the Local Reuse Authority walk away, which could cause three years of delay to the Navy.

The county should not now expend funds to plan a non-aviation reuse. Instead, the county should encourage the city of Irvine to fund a non-aviation master plan consistent with Measure W and submit it to review by the LRA. Irvine has earned its credibility in planning non-aviation at the base. Our county planners can review these plans and advise the LRA without additional general fund costs. This is the process that has worked well for years as with any other development project. We should not have a double standard review process just because the development happens to be El Toro.

Second, we must keep our commitment to appropriate land-use planning and the intent of Measure W. As the Navy begins selling off either the whole base or parcels, there is a great risk that good land-use planning will suffer as individual developers eye opportunities that are not overseen by a local government. By joining with the city of Irvine to oversee the disposal process, the county will be meeting two strong goals: first, making sure the use itself generates sufficient taxes to pay for services such as sewer and roads; and second, to encourage land uses consistent with Measure W that will give incentive to Irvine to annex the base.

If the county fails to engage in this process, it is cutting its own throat--it is guaranteeing a disposal process that creates an unincorporated county island in perpetuity without sufficient tax dollars to cover expenses.

Third, we must regain the credibility lost during the El Toro reuse debate by expanding the voices of those most affected by prospective reuses. Prior to Measure A, the LRA consisted of both the county and the cities of Lake Forest and Irvine. A task force is needed to bring these cities back to the table. We need the good thinking of those cities, which have spent years planning for non-aviation and whose ideas changed county opinion in favor of non-aviation.

On April 16, the board again will discuss El Toro’s future. The Navy has committed to work closely with the LRA if the LRA delivers on a local master plan, which honors Measure W and brings warring factions together. By now it is obvious that the Navy will dispose of the base with or without us. Under federal law, the Navy gets to decide what it believes is the highest and best use for the base. They are turning to us for our input. Now is not the time to walk away.