21 Council Hopefuls Gear Up in Bid to Serve 2 Proposed Cities : Elections: Candidates offer programs, betting that El Toro and Laguna Hills will be incorporated on March 5.

They come from varied backgrounds--homemakers, accountants, businessmen, attorneys, teachers and community volunteers. The youngest is 22 and the oldest 56.

But as these 21 residents of El Toro and Laguna Hills prepare their campaigns for city council seats in what is expected to be Orange County’s two newest cities, they all share a common goal: that the transition from county to municipal self-rule go as smoothly as possible.

“I came from Los Angeles because the quality of life was not good and decent,” Laguna Hills council candidate David Stabbe, 51, said recently. “I just don’t want Laguna Hills to get as screwed up as the rest of the cities and the state and the federal government.”

Unlike previously unsuccessful attempts to carve out cities in south Orange County’s Saddleback Valley, no organized opposition has surfaced to the March 5 cityhood elections in El Toro and Laguna Hills. If the referendums pass, as they are expected to, the areas will become the county’s 30th and 31st cities.

If approved, 58,000 residents will be included in the city of El Toro and 23,000 citizens will reside in Laguna Hills.

Although most of the candidates favor cityhood--many of them either founded or actively participated in the petition-gathering campaigns to get the issues on the ballot--at least one contender said recently that he is not too fond of the idea. But Laguna Hills candidate William Simmons, 46, said that if incorporation is inevitable, he wants to be on the council to make sure that money is not squandered on “beautiful city halls” or other trappings of office and bureaucracies.

The best council members, he added, may not be those who worked on the cityhood plan.

“Maybe they are like the best people who design cars, but they are not necessarily the best drivers,” he said.

But other candidates who meticulously worked out the details of the cityhood plans and fought the county’s attempts to thwart their efforts said their knowledge of the issues gives them the expertise to become the first council members of the new cities.

And five candidates already have experience at being elected to the city councils in the area--councils that never took office because voters rejected the creation of the proposed cities.

Laguna Hills candidate Craig Scott, 37, for example, won a seat to the council in 1988 for a city that would have covered Saddleback Valley, including El Toro and Laguna Hills. But voters rejected that proposal because opponents were either against cityhood in general, or opposed to creating such a large city.

A year later, Laguna Hills residents elected Scott and four others to the council, but defeated the creation of the city.

“My neighbors and friends have twice elected me,” he said in a recent interview. “I’ve not had the opportunity to serve. I trust this time we will have a city and my fellow citizens will allow me to serve.”

Most of the candidates acknowledge that the task of running the first city governments in these areas will be great--that municipal finances will have to be watched carefully as they embark on the journey of independence.

The proposed city of Laguna Hills will be only five square miles, but with the sales tax-rich Laguna Hills Mall located inside the incorporation boundaries, the city’s revenues are expected to run about 30% over expenditures. With so much cash in hand, council members will have to resist the temptation to waste tax dollars.

“The public has to very carefully choose the five people that will run the city for the first two years because the first two years will set an economic and fiscal tone for years to come,” said Laguna Hills candidate Randal Bressette, a 37-year-old financial planner.

Candidate Joel Lautenschleger, 46, added that the city will have to concentrate on providing basic city services. “I don’t think it should be providing social services,” he said.

The proposed expansion of Laguna Hills Mall will also be an issue for some candidates who are concerned about traffic congestion, and most contenders said they will push immediately for the annexation of north Laguna Hills, which was left out of the current proposal as part of a compromise with county officials.

In both proposed cities, the candidates’ hopes of what they will be able to accomplish under self rule appear to some to be wide-eyed.

Most expect that they will be able to increase police protection by contracting directly with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department for a specified level of service. As unincorporated areas, they said, the patrols are shared with neighborhoods that fall under county jurisdiction outside of El Toro and Laguna Hills.

They also talk about preserving their neighborhoods, maintaining a family-oriented quality of life, increasing parks and recreation facilities and not raising taxes.

Discussions during this campaign also could range from the larger question of how the new cities will participate in regional issues such as health and transportation, to smaller neighborhood problems.

In Laguna Hills, for example, David Leland, 38, is worried that neighboring Laguna Beach reportedly has one of the highest rates of AIDS per capita, and vows to oppose anti-discrimination city ordinances proposed by gay activists.

“As a nation, we need to address the desire of the homosexual community to pursue its agenda in the way it has,” Leland said. “I do not mind what they do in the bedroom. I do have a problem when it’s taken into the public school system,” he added, referring to fair-employment practices allowing gays to teach in public schools.

In El Toro, candidate Marcia Rudolph, 50, wants the city’s sidewalks to be cleaned regularly. But she said she is equally committed to blocking efforts to allow commercial airline use at the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station.

And Bob Forsberg, 44, said he will be touting a trash-recycling plan that does not require residents to separate the garbage.

The redevelopment of El Toro Road and traffic congestion there are issues that have been raised by some candidates, as well as the growing presence of graffiti near Aliso Creek that warns them of increasing gang activity.

In an effort to unify an area that has been seen as a collection of self-contained neighborhood associations, several candidates said they hope to remove what has become a divisive issue in the area--a tax-assessment district created by the county to finish the development of three parks.

Under the current program, those homeowners living closest to the parks are assessed a special fee for the facilities. But candidates say that some residents have criticized the plan because other neighborhoods will also benefit from the parks but are not required to pay.