Told No Room on the Base, School District Finds Clout

What at first appeared to be a futile attempt by the Santa Ana Unified School District to acquire a chunk of the former Tustin Marine base for a high school has become a reality check for Tustin officials on the growing clout of Orange County Democrats.

In recent months, Assemblyman Lou Correa (D-Anaheim) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove) have gone to bat for the school district in its request for 75 acres in the base’s southwest corner, which fall within the district’s boundaries.

Santa Ana Unified officials sought their help after Tustin officials renewed their insistence that the land, prime for commercial development, was too important to give up. The base lies within Sanchez’s district and Correa represents the bulk of the area encompassing Santa Ana Unified.

The force of Santa Ana’s lobbying hit home, Tustin officials said recently, when their representatives asked Sanchez to coax the Navy into moving faster on the base. Sanchez said she would--after the Santa Ana school site controversy was resolved.

“There are twice as many kids in Santa Ana in portable classrooms than the entire school population in Tustin,” Sanchez said, explaining her attempts to mediate a solution on the school district’s behalf. “Santa Ana schools are overburdened, and it is my hope that Tustin and Santa Ana Unified can come to an agreement that will address the overcrowding in Santa Ana.”

Late last month, Tustin officials were caught unprepared by opposition from Correa to a bill that would allow the city to streamline bidding for the design and construction of roads, sewage system upgrades and other work needed to redevelop the base. Though the bill passed the Senate, Correa persuaded his colleagues in the Assembly to hold off on the urgency measure.

The reason: the Santa Ana school site controversy.

“I’m concerned that this issue gets resolved before anything else is moved forward,” Correa said. “I understand [Tustin’s] issues, but we need more space for Santa Ana. We have no more land to build [new schools]. Those are equally important concerns.”

Although Tustin officials have declined to comment directly on the controversy, their concern is apparent. Sanchez, as a high-profile Democratic member of Congress and vice chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, is well-positioned to help break any bureaucratic logjam in the Clinton administration over the base’s development. She was elected in 1996 as the county’s first Democratic House member since 1984.

Similarly, Correa, as Orange County’s only Democrat in the Assembly, has the ability to call on his colleagues in the Democratic legislative majority to help pass, or hold up, legislation. Correa was elected in 1998.

John Palacio, president of the Santa Ana school district’s board of trustees, makes no apologies for calling in the heavy artillery. Schools should be given a priority in base reuse, he said, including all three districts that originally applied for space there in 1996. Tustin Unified eventually was given three school sites and Irvine Unified got one.

“We need the space and we should have it,” Palacio said. “We have no intention of giving up.”

The school-site issue has so vexed Tustin officials that City Manager William A. Huston prepared a four-page memo detailing the Santa Ana district’s request and why the city said no.

Among the reasons: Giving up the land would undercut the city’s economic plan and add millions of dollars to the cost of preparing the base for redevelopment. The city also is planning no new homes whose potential students would attend Santa Ana schools. And Santa Ana will reap about $3 million a year in new taxes from the commercial development on the site, which it could use to buy land closer to student populations, the city said.

Santa Ana Unified prepared its own list of reasons why it should get the site. Chief among them: Crowding has filled schools beyond capacity and there is little hope of finding enough land elsewhere to build a new high school. The district needs space so badly that it has proposed a controversial plan to build a new high school on 22 acres it owns at Centennial Park, which houses the Discovery Museum of Orange County.

At least one activist group has questioned Tustin’s motives in denying Santa Ana a high school site. Arturo Montez, chairman of an education task force for the state chapter of the League of United Latin American Citizens, said the city’s plan favors two more homogeneous school districts over Santa Ana Unified, where nine out of 10 students are ethnic minorities.

“This [development] is going to impact Santa Ana,” he said. “We’re very sensitive to those needs.”

*

Times correspondent Ana Beatriz Cholo contributed to this report.