U.S. Congresswoman Loretta Sanchez is urging Tustin officials to do “the moral and ethical thing” in their dispute with Santa Ana over the former Tustin Marine base before she’ll go to bat in getting the base turned over to local officials.
“The Navy has delayed (the land transfer). I just haven’t gone to them to speed things up,” Sanchez told the Business Journal. “Now, as a congresswoman I could go in and talk to them to get the transfer done faster. I have not done that because I do believe that Tustin needs to come to the table and work this situation out.”
Tustin and officials from two Santa Ana school districts are at odds over reusing part of the 1,584-acre base for education purposes. Tustin backs a proposal from the South Orange County Community College District to create a business training and incubator facility called the Advanced Technology & Education Park.
Officials from the Santa Ana Unified School District and Rancho Santiago Community College districts, who held a press conference last week to push their cause, want to develop a joint elementary and high school at the base that would offer some college courses to juniors and seniors.
Sanchez, a Democrat from Garden Grove and one of two Californians on the House Armed Services Committee, is a key player in the dispute. In addition to sitting on the committee that oversees the nation’s military budget, Sanchez also has pull with the White House, at least for now.
But Sanchez, whose district stretches from parts of Anaheim to the Tustin base, isn’t playing the role of impartial arbitrator. She’sbacking her constituents in Santa Ana, who contend they need the base land to ease school overcrowding.
“Tustin is just looking out for its best interests and I understand that,” Sanchez said. “But (refusing to allocate land to Santa Ana) is not the moral and ethical thing to do from a sense of here are these kids that need schools and they don’t have any.”
Sanchez is looking out for Santa Ana’s interests by doing nothing to prod the Navy into moving faster on transferring the former base to the city of Tustin.
“We as the federal government will not turn over the base until the first criterion of taking care of public purpose has been met,” Sanchez said, referring to an educational reuse of the base.
Along with the former El Toro base, the Tustin Marine base is one of the biggest parcels of undeveloped land left in Orange County. The Navy announced its plan to close the base in 1991 and officially shuttered it more than a year ago.
Tustin began planning on how to divvy up the base in 1992, holding more than a dozen public meetings since that time. The city’s plan calls for a mix of industrial, public and residential uses of the land.
Rancho Santiago officials believe they had been slighted when Tustin initially passed over the college district’s 1993 land application in favor of South OC Community College District’s development plans for part of the now-closed base.
“We applied for the land before they did,” said Rancho Santiago chancellor Edward Hernandez.
The exchange over the base land has been at times heated.
“The base is not a grab-bag for anyone who wants to use it,” Tustin City Manager William Huston said.
Because 75 acres of the base falls within the Santa Ana Unified district, Sanchez said school officials there could use their power of eminent domain to lay claim to the land. But she said she’s urging officials to work out a compromise.
“When all is said and done, Santa Ana Unified has the power to condemn the property and take it over,which is expensive. Ultimately (the land) ends up in the hands of Santa Ana Unified anyway,” Sanchez said. “They need to work this out, because the sooner they work this out, the faster I can go and fight for them to get it turned over, the faster we can get this whole process done.”
Rancho Santiago and Santa Ana Unified came close to scoring a victory late last month when state Sen. Joe Dunn and Assemblyman Lou Correa got legislation passed that would have guaranteed the Santa Ana districts space at the base. But the bill languished in the Senate.
Sanchez said she expects to see new legislation from the Democratic legislators early next year.
“They’ll get Lou Correa and Joe Dunn to put in new legislation that will be the first bill up in the new session in January,” Sanchez said. “That (bill) will do what they tried to do before they ran out of time last month.”
In the meantime, Sanchez is urging Tustin and the school district to come to terms.
“Things could take a week if Tustin comes to the table and does what they should be doing,” said Sanchez. “Or it could take four or five years.”
Whether a deal can be hashed out sooner rather than later is unclear, though. According to Tustin officials, they passed on the Santa Ana districts’ original 1993 proposal because they were unclear about the districts’ ultimate intention for the land.
“Previous discussions between Rancho and South Orange County suggested that Rancho wanted to reserve the option to sell its share of land,” Tustin’s Huston said. Some estimates value Tustin base land at more than $1 million per acre.
Rancho Santiago’s Hernandez has insisted the schools want the land for “critical public education purposes.”
Rancho Santiago runs Santa Ana and Santiago Canyon colleges,two of California’s smallest community college campuses,and has to lease facilities in its service area to provide many of its programs, Hernandez said.
South OC’s Advanced Technology & Education Park has a commitment from California State University, Fullerton, to bring upper-division engineering, computer science and digital communications to the park, complemented by courses from Saddleback and Irvine community colleges. The Technology Park also plans to offer training facilities for automotive design, film and biotech.
Late last month, South OC Community College District said it had received a grant,worth nearly a million dollars,from the State Chancellor’s Office to develop the Technology Park. The district also announced its selection of an architect to develop a hangar building complex on the site.
Don Goodwin, South OC district vice chancellor in charge of developing the planned Advanced Technology and Education Park, said the district is confident its plans for the base will prevail, even if legislation is passed in Sacramento giving Santa Ana land there.
“The bill said that the city would provide them with 100 acres, not specifically excluding land the city of Tustin already allocated to South Orange County district,” he said. n
