Though Adjacent to Simi, Sinaloa Is Not Attached : Residents of the unincorporated area guard their freedom from city government and revel in natural beauty, tranquillity

In a town that prides itself on careful construction and uniform design, the narrow roads and mishmash of homes in the Sinaloa neighborhood are a Simi Valley planner’s nightmare.

Perched atop a grassy slope between the Sinaloa golf course and Sinaloa Road, the secluded hamlet houses decades-old dwellings in a rainbow of colors, from mud brown to fiery red to bright green.

In Sinaloa, modest bungalows squat alongside rambling mini-mansions sprawled on large, sometimes overgrown lots. Driveways of the neighborhood’s more than 250 homes lead onto narrow, curving lanes, many lacking the curbs, gutters and street lights required in most of the city.

The reason Sinaloa is allowed to flout city regulations is simple. Although surrounded by city property and receiving city water and sewer services, Sinaloa is unincorporated county property.

Its seven streets are paved by county workers and patrolled by sheriff’s deputies, but its residents are barred from voting in City Council races or serving on neighborhood councils.

Sinaloa’s independent status is the legacy of stubborn longtime residents who 25 years ago successfully warded off cityhood, which they feared would bring higher taxes and intrusive government.

A quarter of a century later, the tiny pocket of county property retains a rural wildness long vanished from much of the city.

The contrast is especially stark along Sinaloa Road, which borders the neighborhood. To the east, tidy homes are tucked behind a six-foot cinder-block wall that stretches unbroken for blocks. To the west, on the Sinaloa neighborhood side, aging eucalyptus trees tower above a patchwork of bougainvillea- covered picket and chain-link fences.

Residents, many of whom have lived in the neighborhood three decades and more, have no desire to change the neighborhood’s non-city status.

“It’s just one more level of government you have to put up with,” said Dean Seymour, who built his Sinaloa home in 1956 and fought against cityhood. “That is something I can definitely do without.”

Elaine Price, who moved to Sinaloa with her husband and their four children 17 years ago, said the lack of cityhood attracted them to the area. “Nobody bothers us, we can do what we want,” she said. “We don’t have to mow the lawn if we don’t want to.”

Sinaloa’s resistance to the rules of Simi Valley has led to an unusual, and sometimes uneasy, relationship with the city.

“The city basically takes the position that if people don’t want to be a part of Simi Valley, we don’t want to force them,” Mayor Greg Stratton said. “It’s illogical and imperfect, but that’s how they want it.”

One ongoing controversy centers around a brush-filled, 30-foot-deep pit that was once Sinaloa Lake.

In 1983 city officials who feared that the man-made, clay-bottomed lake would flood called in state inspectors to check its sturdiness. Much to the horror of lakefront property owners, the state ordered that their private reservoir be drained.

“It was the state that made the decision,” Stratton recalled. “But we were kind of the rats that called the police, as it were.”

One furious resident referred to the draining of the boomerang-shaped, 12-acre lake as a “rape and a murder.” A group of lakefront property owners, who feared their home values would plummet, sued the state for $15 million. Two years ago a federal judge dismissed the suit, saying that state employees were just doing their jobs.

Sinaloa residents still mourn the loss of the lake, which served as a swimming and fishing hole and a tranquil setting for picnics and afternoon walks.

“Everybody built these little docks and you’d go out and sit and look at the water or jump in,” remembered 35-year resident Diantha Ain, who lives at the end of Laguna Terrace. “People had little boats and they would catch bass, bluegill and catfish. It was wonderful, like living on a resort.”

More recently, tensions have mounted over a proposal to build an Iceoplex ice-skating rink at the corner of Madera Road and Royal Avenue, just down the hill from the Sinaloa neighborhood.

Several years ago Sinaloa residents fought plans to build condominiums on the property, and some are no more pleased with the plans for an ice rink, which they worry would increase traffic and noise at the already congested intersection.

“When we moved here it was so quiet, at night you could barely hear a sound,” said William F. Hill, a retired optometrist who has lived in the neighborhood for 32 years. “Now that has changed, and every new development adds to that change.”

Others, like resident Allan W. Jacobs, say they don’t mind the ice-rink proposal, but are vehemently opposed to any other commercial development on the property.

“We need places for our young people to go,” said Jacobs, a retired associate superintendent for the Simi Valley Unified School District. “What we don’t need is some big supermarket bringing in all kinds of traffic to a dangerous road.”

The project, which was approved by the Planning Commission at a marathon meeting in October, goes before the City Council later this month. Sinaloa residents have vowed to make their concerns clear to the council.

But the fact that Sinaloans are not city residents may play a role in the city’s decision on the project, Stratton said.

“They’re going to come down and yell at the City Council about their concerns over the skating complex, and of course the council is going to listen,” Stratton said. “But in the back of everybody’s minds there’s this little voice that says, ‘Yeah, but these people don’t vote.’ We try to treat them like equal citizens, but it is different, no matter how you slice it.”

Despite the political problems, Sinaloa residents said they have no desire to change their neighborhood’s status. Residents like the freedom of a neighborhood with lots big enough for back yard weddings and lax zoning laws that allow add-ons and home-improvement projects without excessive government restrictions.

Seventy-one-year-old Dean Seymour appreciates the fact that he can ride his semi-wild, dun Mustang horse through the streets of Sinaloa whenever he wants.

“It’s just a great place to live,” Seymour said. “I think I’ll die here.”

Seymour, who moved into the neighborhood in the mid-1950s, claims he has lived in Sinaloa longer than anyone else. But resident Tom Robertson has an even more impressive claim on the neighborhood.

Robertson’s father farmed the land in oranges, grapes and persimmons before it was transformed into a neighborhood.

The original farm, which the Robertsons called Sinaloa after a town they had visited in Mexico, stretched more than 500 acres. The Robertsons built the Sinaloa reservoir to help water the crops.

“It was a great place to grow up,” Robertson said. “Back then it was really wild, you could just roam free.”

Eventually the Robertsons subdivided the property and sold off the lots, some of which are still held by their original owners.

These days homes in the secluded enclave don’t come cheap. At the height of the real estate market in the late 1980s, some homes on one-acre lots were fetching close to $1 million, area realtors said. These days the fanciest houses go for between $500,000 and $750,000.

Vera Kratochwill and her husband, who moved to the neighborhood just two years ago, recently launched a complete make-over of their 30-year-old stucco home.

On a sunny weekday morning, paint-splattered workers swarmed about the house, scraping off old dark-brown paint and slapping on fresh coats of a color Kratochwill described as “warm sandalwood.”

“When I first came here I didn’t know my way around at all,” she said. “But people were very helpful and friendly. Once you settle in, it’s like a cocoon. You feel very cozy and protected.”

Crime is nearly nonexistent in the neighborhood.

Sinaloa is served by the East County Sheriff’s Station, located several miles west of the neighborhood on Madera Road.

One cruiser is responsible for county property scattered in and near Simi Valley, including Sinaloa, the Santa Susana and Box Canyon neighborhoods southeast of Simi Valley and the area between Moorpark and Simi Valley.

The area is wide ranging, which means officers have less time to cruise through each neighborhood, said Patti Dreyer, a senior deputy who has patrolled the area.

Although Sinaloa’s poor night lighting, overgrown brush and winding roads make the neighborhood less than ideal for patrol work, reported crimes in the area are few and far between.

Since 1988, there have been just 200 calls for service in the neighborhood--about 33 calls a year.

“Many of the people in Sinaloa have lived there for a long time,” Dreyer said. “They know each other’s habits and they look out for each other.”

For the children of Sinaloa, the neighborhood offers play land galore. They frolic in the overgrown lake bed, bicycle through the quiet, winding streets and splash in the community pool.

Best of all, they say, is a hidden pathway leading to the back of the Madera Elementary School campus.

“It’s pretty neat,” said 9-year-old Austin Westbay as he toted his oversize lunch box down the shady path on a recent afternoon. “You don’t have to walk out in traffic to get to school.”

Austin’s mother, Linda Westbay, said she and her husband scrimped and saved to afford the $350,000 Sinaloa home they bought two years ago.

“We had wanted to move here for years, for the peace and quiet, the natural beauty, the beautiful homes,” Westbay said. “Finally we were able to, and we couldn’t be happier.”