Jack van Haaster recounts difficult choices council has had to make

By: LAURA MITCHELL - Staff Writer | Saturday, April 9, 2005 10:55 PM PDT ∞

MURRIETA ---- Murrieta was barely a year old, had 24,265 people and a new police department in 1992 when Jack van Haaster was first elected to the City Council.

In the early days, the residents were frustrated, van Haaster said. They wanted their own police department, they wanted parks and services, he said.

But those things come with a price tag and the city struggled to balance its budget in the early years, van Haaster said.

Flash forward to 2005. Murrieta's budget is more stable. The population has increased to about 80,000. The residents want more police officers on the streets and more parks.

And although van Haaster's name will be on a ballot again this year, he's not running for his first council seat, he's fighting for his political life.

He and Councilmen Kelly Seyarto and Doug McAllister are the targets of a recall campaign. An election is set for May 3.

Unlike a regular election, they are not running against anyone. Voters will be asked to decide if each of the councilmen should be allowed to retain his seat or be ousted. If more than 50 percent of voters opt to recall a councilman, the challenger running against him who receives the most votes will take over his seat. Retired U.S. Air Force Col. Rick Gibbs and helicopter pilot Casey Evans are running to replace van Haaster.

Disciplined spending

The councilman said he always encouraged the city to be conservative with its budget.

Even in these relatively good times, the city is still conservative, van Haaster said. There are a lot of complaints and a lot of questions about why the city doesn't widen a road or buy this park or fix that flooding. The reality, however, is that the city has a limited amount of money to spend on such improvements, he added.

"It's just like your home budget. You have a great desire, but limited resources," van Haaster said.

Once a year, the council holds public hearings and decides which projects get funding. In the past, the council has chosen to fund projects, such as the Jefferson Avenue corridor, that may not meet the most pressing need, but will help to attract business, van Haaster said.

Once those businesses are in, they bring the revenue needed to help meet the other needs, he said.

The city did that when it bought the 36-acre block that is now Town Square at Jefferson Avenue and Kalmia Street, van Haaster said. But now the city has a police station, is building a senior center, which is scheduled to open in July, and has land to build a new city hall and a library, which is expected to begin construction this year, he said.

"I tout that as an accomplishment," van Haaster said. "I was involved in the negotiations to buy that land."

He said that buying the land for Town Square and similar accomplishments show he has the foresight to plan ahead for the city's future needs.

County Supervisor Jeff Stone said van Haaster is an asset to Murrieta because of his experience and knowledge as well as the leadership roles he has assumed outside the city.

Council members do not just attend local meetings, they participate at the regional level on bodies such as the Riverside County Transportation Commission and the Southern California Association of Governments to help bring state and federal money to their cities.

"Jack has had a number of leadership roles in those organizations and helped position Murrieta to acquire funding for infrastructure," Stone said.

As a member of the Riverside County Transportation Commission, van Haaster helped get $7.3 million in state grants to pay for construction of the California Oaks Road and I-15 onramps.

"I had successfully lobbied through RCTC to get our project fully funded," van Haaster said. He was the chairman of the 15-member commission in 1999.

The work was supposed to start in the coming year, but the state took the money away to solve its financial problems, he said. However, that project is still the first in line to get funding when the state puts the money back in, van Haaster said.

He also pushed for the city to have its own library system, which entailed going to Sacramento to lobby for legislation that would allow Murrieta to break away from the county system in 1998. The break allowed Murrieta to keep a portion of property taxes set aside for libraries.

As part of the county system, Murrieta was not planned to have a library in the near future, but since the split, the city was able to plan and soon build its own library, van Haaster said. And the city got a $6.4 million grant from the state to do it, he said.

Preschool controversy

Recall proponents don't argue van Haaster's accomplishments, but say that he, Seyarto and McAllister consistently vote in favor of developers' projects over the objections of residents. They also blame the three councilmen for out-of-control growth, traffic congestion and a lack of public services.

Van Haaster in particular, they say, betrayed the public trust when he met privately with four of five planning commissioners to discuss his daughter's proposed preschool and voted to pave the road in front of the site. Shortly after the controversy arose, van Haaster apologized for his lack of judgment in the matter. Recall advocates, however, dismiss the apology as politically motivated.

"From a purely political point of view, I should have avoided doing what I did," van Haaster said. "I guess that's my downfall ---- I don't think politics."

He said he did not meet with the commission to try to influence them, but that he sees commissioners on a regular basis and that is when the preschool project came up in conversation.

The mayor's daughter, Rachael van Haaster, requested last year to build a 394-child preschool at the corner of Vineyard Parkway and Douglass Avenue. The Planning Commission approved the project in May, but that decision was appealed to the council, which ultimately decided the matter.

Van Haaster abstained from voting on the issue and a tie vote of the council was not enough to stop plans for the project.

Which is just how it was set up, said Ed Faunce, spokesman for Rescue Murrieta.

"Van Haaster gets to cry his crocodile tears and pretend to be repentant, but he got exactly what he wanted," Faunce said.

That's why people are outraged, he said. The three councilmen are not acting as public servants, they are acting like rulers, Faunce said.

Growth

Recall proponents say the traffic congestion at Murrieta Valley High School, and in other areas around the city is an example of the consequences of uncontrolled development in Murrieta.

"That's a challenge," van Haaster said. "How do you phase things?"

Planning experts and traffic engineers have said that when the city reaches its ultimate population, according to the general plan ----- the city's primary growth document ---- all the pieces will be in place: the roads will be widened, the signals will be in and the flood control will be installed, he said.

The general plan forecasts that when all major parcels in the city are developed, the city's population will be roughly 110,000.

"It would be nice to have been able to stop at 40,000, but (the city's budget) does not balance out at 40,000," van Haaster said.

Residents of Murrieta have always said they want parks, roads, sewer and strong public safety, he said. But bringing that level of service requires a comparable level of sales tax dollars, van Haaster said.

In order to bring in those taxes, the city had to invite national retailers such as Lowe's, Home Depot and Best Buy, to come here, he said. But those retailers require a certain number of people to maintain their business, and 40,000 residents does not fit into their business plan, van Haaster said.

If the city slows growth, the rate of growth of income from taxes and developers' fees also slows, he said. The city only pays to maintain roads ---- developers' fees pay for traffic signals and widening of roads, freeway bridges and on- and offramps, van Haaster said.

Traffic

To alleviate some of the city's traffic headaches, some critics have asserted that the council should be more willing to front the money to put in key traffic signals, knowing that Murrieta will ultimately be reimbursed by the developers who would have had to pay to put the signal in.

Van Haaster acknowledges traffic is a problem and sometimes the city can step in and speed up the process.

And the city is doing just that, he said, at Washington Avenue and Nutmeg Street, which is often congested with Murrieta Valley High School traffic in the morning and afternoon. But, generally, the city has a very limited amount of money to advance for signals or other capital improvement projects, van Haaster said.

The council's approval of a shopping center proposed for the southeast corner of that intersection was one of the hot issues behind the recall effort.

Van Haaster, Seyarto and McAllister approved the project June 1, and rezoned residential land to commercial to make it happen, angering residents who live near the intersection. The council's vote was overturned in Riverside Superior Court last month.

One of the reasons the three councilmen said they approved the shopping center project was because the developer would help put in the signal.

Van Haaster said people ask why the city didn't advance the money for the signal earlier, but money is only one part of the project, the city also needed to get the land to put the signal on. The previous owners of the property would not give the city permission to put in the signal, he said.

Murrieta could have used eminent domain, which gives government agencies the right to forcibly purchase land it needs for the public good, but "we don't do that arbitrarily," van Haaster said.

The city didn't use eminent domain because, for the past four or five years, officials thought they were on the verge of getting what the city needed as a condition on different projects proposed for the property, he said.

When the shopping center was approved, the city was able to get all the releases required to put in the signal, van Haaster said.

Critics have also complained that the city is doing too many road and flood control projects at once, leaving some areas of town an obstacle course for drivers to navigate on a day-to-day basis.

For 11 months, crews have been working to install a storm drain on Washington Avenue, as well as widen that road. At the same time, Ivy Street has been torn up to put in a flood-control channel there.

Van Haaster said the projects were not supposed to start at the same time but, with the imminent flooding that comes with the rainy season, the council felt it was important to get the work done as soon as possible.

The Washington Avenue and flood control projects were both delayed from their original start dates because the city had to wait for Southern California Edison, Verizon and other companies to move their utilities out of the way, according to City Engineer Jim Kinley.

Verizon needed to move a large utility bank in front of their office on Washington, which caused almost a year delay on the road improvements there, Kinley reported to the council a year ago.

Van Haaster said once the two projects were ready to go, it would have been irresponsible to delay the work.

"If we had stalled a flood-control project and a catastrophe occurred ... that would have been inexcusable," he said.

Open space

Recall proponents say the city does not have enough parks and open spaces ---- and is quickly losing available land to development.

Van Haaster said he was the key proponent in helping the city get several important pieces of land that will soon be transformed into parks. He said he brought to the city's attention a 250-acre site that was available in 1996. The city bought the property for $1.6 million, sold 60 acres of it to the school district for Vista Murrieta High School, donated about 100 acres as habitat and is turning the rest into the Los Alamos Hills Sports Park.

Van Haaster also said he helped the city buy a historic site in Old Town that eventually became a park.

"I was a key proponent in negotiating the 10-acre site bordered by Second Avenue, and Kalmia, New Clay and B streets," he said.

The land was once the site of the historic train depot and first schoolhouse, both built in 1885. But a developer bought the land and in 2000 proposed building 36 homes on the property. Residents wanted the city to buy the land and turn it into a park dedicated to Murrieta's history.

They put the question to the voters as a November 2003 ballot measure and got enough votes to change the zoning on the land from residential to public use. The city had bought the land before the ballot measure was approved.

Van Haaster said he was already negotiating with the property owner before the residents began collecting signatures.

Ayleen Gibbo, chairwoman of Citizens for Historic Murrieta and proponent of preserving the land, said she doesn't think van Haaster supported the city purchasing the site because he was one of three councilmen who signed the ballot argument against the measure, saying such measures give cities little flexibility in negotiating land deals.

"I don't know if he was negotiating at that time to buy the property ... maybe when they saw we were getting enough signatures, they quickly wrapped up the deal."

Vision

Van Haaster said he is working to bring more jobs to the city so residents won't have to drive two to three hours a day to jobs in Orange or San Diego counties.

He said he meets regularly with large corporations based in San Diego and Orange counties to encourage them to bring their businesses here, even if they start with a satellite office. Many of their employees live here so it makes sense to open a small office here, van Haaster said.

Providing additional jobs so fewer residents have to commute is one of a number of things the city is being proactive about, he said. Some of the other complaints he said he hears from people, such as road improvements or flood control, will be taken care of as part of the city's growth, as called for in the general plan.

"I believe in the general plan process and I believe in the general plan," van Haaster said.

There is some suffering in the city now because road work, flood control and other projects are catching up to increased number of residents, but that was intentional because money was diverted to encourage economic growth along Jefferson and Madison avenues, he said.

The road work, flood controls and job growth will balance out as the city reaches its ultimate planned population in the next five years or so, van Haaster said.

"We just need to get through it as a community," van Haaster said. "Our future is not just bright, it's golden."

Contact staff writer Laura Mitchell at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2621, or lmitchell@californian.com.

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