Residents Reject Cityhood Measure : Incorporation: Recession, bureaucracy cited as reasons for failure of proposal for county’s 89th city.

HACIENDA HEIGHTS —  Dismayed supporters of an incorporation measure that failed Tuesday blamed the recession and a nationwide anti-government backlash.

Those against a new city said there just was no need for another layer of bureaucracy.

Bottom line: Hacienda Heights will remain unincorporated.

The measure voted down in the hillside bedroom community sandwiched between the Puente Hills and the Pomona Freeway would have made Hacienda Heights the 89th city in Los Angeles County.

It was the first cityhood proposal in the county to fail since 1983, when voters in Diamond Bar rejected incorporation. That election was followed by successful cityhood elections between 1987 and 1991 in Santa Clarita, Diamond Bar, Malibu and Calabasas.

“People are afraid of change,” a somber Jim Baker, chairman of the Hacienda Heights Cityhood Committee, said as he awaited the results Tuesday night. “They’re disillusioned with the political Establishment, from the international level right on down.”

With all precincts reporting and some absentee and provisional ballots still uncounted, voters rejected incorporation 53% to 47%. The vote was 5,929 against and 5,245 for.

About 23,000 people were eligible to vote in the community of 52,354.

Even some proponents conceded that--unlike the new cities of Malibu and Chino Hills in San Bernardino County, where a sewer project and growth issues galvanized voters--there was no “burning issue” in Hacienda Heights.

They had argued that cityhood would provide local control over Hacienda Heights’ tax dollars, money that otherwise would be used to subsidize other county areas.

They also believed that incorporation would give Hacienda Heights a stronger voice in efforts to fight expansion of the nearby Puente Hills Landfill.

The cityhood committee raised $30,000 and printed 12,000 mailers. The opposition was less organized and poorly funded.

“Just because there might be more revenues than expenditures doesn’t mean you have to go out and become a city,” said anti-cityhood resident Vern Grimshaw.

He added that the failure to incorporate “was not due to the efforts on the part of anti-cityhood (activists). People have lived in Hacienda Heights and like the way it is.”