Recently, Laurene Weste wrote a commentary in the local advertising circular entitled “Residents Get More, Pay Less Inside City” which contained the same old arguments from the city about Annexation. She points out that 27 annexations have been completed into the City of Santa Clarita because the City “offers local government representation, more and better municipal services, and lower taxes.”
Once again the City is not telling the whole story! Based on a series of meetings between the West Ranch Town Council and the City of Santa Clarita the differences are not that great. If one does a comparison, an honest comparison, of the services between the County and the City you’ll find that the County has better services in some areas and the City has better services in other areas.
For instance, let’s look at Sheriff Services in the City and the unincorporated County areas. First, the City of Santa Clarita has 15 Deputies per shift for the city which has a population of approximately 177,000. That would be roughly one Sheriff Deputy for every 11,800 residents.
The flip side is that the unincorporated areas surrounding the city have a population of approximately 49,375. The non-city areas have 15 Sheriff’s Deputies (yes, 15!) not the 2 you “heard” were patrolling the unincorporated areas. There are 9 Deputies working in radio cars serving West Ranch, Castaic, and unincorporated Canyon Country, 4 are assigned to Pyramid Lake and Gorman, 1 in Community Relations, and 1 is assigned as a School Resource Deputy.
But wait there’s more, we have an Off Highway Vehicle (OHV) patrol which consists of 2 Sergeants and 6 deputies and as of April 24th 3 COPS Deputies. As a side note, the West Ranch Town Council and the Stevenson Ranch Civic Association lobbied for, and the Sheriff received, state grant money to fund the OHV patrol.
Now, let’s divide 49,375 by 6 assigned Deputies (we won’t include the OHV patrol, the COPS Deputies and only part of the regular Deputies for the most populated West Ranch/Castaic areas) to the unincorporated areas and you get roughly one Sheriff Deputy per 8230 residents.
Laurene failed to mention that crime has been trending down in the unincorporated West Ranch areas and trending up in the City of Santa Clarita. Also, her assertion that “the city has faster police response times for emergency, priority and routine calls” is false since the City’s own Chief of Police has stated publicly that the Sheriffs’ response times are the same valley wide.
She also failed to mention that the 27 annexations completed so far by the City were communities with no meaningful commercial tax base. The majority of those annexations have cost the city more in services then has been taken in tax dollars. This is what sets the West Ranch communities apart from the ones the City has already annexed; we have a massive commercial tax base. This is what the City wants to get their hands on but they apparently don’t want to have meaningful negotiations for.
The City management and its leadership still don’t get the fact that they have to be honest with communities they are interested in annexing. Why does the City want Stonecrest? So they can get the Cemex mine and its tax revenue. There is no intention of stopping the mining activity it will continue at “historical levels”. Why doesn’t the City talk about the fact that they can annex some privately owned land to get to the Cemex Mine in stead of the Stonecrest community? Simple, that private land is owned by some local constituents who have mining rights as well. You won’t hear about that in the local advertising circular!
If you live in the unincorporated areas and want to hear more facts about annexation and the current tactics the City is using you should attend your local monthly Town Council meeting. There is a reason why the City of Santa Clarita wants some of the unincorporated areas; Sales Tax Revenue! That’s fine, but if they want to annex the West Ranch communities they will need to come to the table and have a meaningful negotiation, something they have not been willing to do yet. Any negotiation and agreement must be put in writing and must be fair and honorable to our communities. Of course residents have the option of giving their community away for nothing if they chose that path too. That is something that Laurene and the rest of the City government would love to see happen.