Wildomar council-elect moving forward

By: AARON CLAVERIE - Staff Writer
First council meeting could be held at area school | Saturday, February 9, 2008 10:05 PM PST ∞

WILDOMAR ---- There are still votes to be counted, but the leading candidates in the Wildomar City Council race are getting everything ready for July 1.

Once election results are certified, that's the date this community will become an incorporated city.

Part of the preparation includes putting together an agenda for a pre-incorporation meeting that will be held sometime after the election has been certified. The county has 28 days to certify an election and, as of Friday afternoon, there were still 100,000 ballots countywide to be counted, according to the Registrar's Office.

In Wildomar, the council candidates who were contacted in the days after the election, said they are moving forward because the incorporation question, Measure C, is leading by more than 1,000 votes, 2,901 to 1,843.

If the percentage of uncounted Wildomar votes mirrors the percentage of uncounted countywide votes, then there are about 1,400 Wildomar area votes left to be counted. More than 70 percent of those votes would have to be opposed to cityhood to skew the unofficial results.

The approval of Measure D, the ballot measure that divides a city of Wildomar into five council districts, also looks to be set. The measure, which was pitched as a way to ensure representation of areas such as "The Farm" in the northeastern section of the city, is leading by about 600 votes, 2,500 to 1,920.

The narrowest race is for the fifth city council seat.

The top four vote-getters after Bob Cashman are, in order of their vote totals, Bridgette Moore, Marsha Swanson, Scott Farnam and Sheryl Ade. The sixth-place finisher, Tim Underdown, is trailing Ade by about 100 votes. The seventh-place finisher, Harv Dykstra, trails Ade by about 200 votes.

It's possible Underdown, who ran on a slate with Cashman and Moore, could pick up the needed votes to leapfrog Ade, a community activist and longtime cityhood proponent. After the mail-in ballot totals were released early Tuesday night, Underdown was sitting in 10th place. He jumped to sixth after vote totals were updated early Wednesday morning.

Although the incoming council members will have to meet before the new city is formed, the date or location for that first meeting have not yet been set.

It's at such a pre-incorporation meeting that the council-elect will have a chance to broker a "good faith" deal with a city manager and possibly other future city officials, including a city attorney and a finance manager, Cashman said.

A "good faith" deal, a sort of oral contract, is the only way the city can bring in staff members because the people who take a Wildomar city job won't get paid until the city has funds.

The city won't be able to start accruing funds or spending money until incorporation is officially approved July 1, Cashman said.

Part of the reason the council-elect hasn't firmed up details on where the initial meeting will be held is because the results have not been certified.

"It is a possibility that the fifth council member could change," said Moore, a 40-year-old office manager. "I'm not implying I want or don't want a change, just that we want to be sure who is actually on the council before we have the first meeting."

Talking about possible sites, Moore said Mission Trail Library, site of county Municipal Advisory Council meetings, is too small.

"It's possible we will have the meeting at a local school, perhaps Wildomar Elementary," she said.

In advance of that meeting, the agenda will be posted at the Mission Trail Library to serve as notification in keeping with the state's open meetings laws, Moore said.

After the election is certified, the council-elect will be subject to the state's open meetings law, which requires a meeting of three or more of the council-elect members to be noticed in a public place.

The first thing the council is required to do at the July 1 meeting is adopt all of the county's ordinances, including zoning designations, said George Spiliotis, executive director of the county's Local Agency Formation Commission, which approved last year putting the incorporation question on the ballot.

Now that it looks like voters have approved incorporation, the commission's job is done.

"We don't get involved with any city operations once it's incorporated," Spiliotis said Friday.

The council can start changing the county ordinances after 120 days or earlier if the council enacts ordinances superseding a county ordinance.

The first fiscal year after incorporation is called a transition year. During that time, the county will provide the same services residents are used to, including police and fire protection. The city of Wildomar will have to pay the county back within five years for those services, but the transition year is intended to be a budgetary buffer that allows a new city to build up finances before it takes control of services the following year, according to the fiscal analysis referenced by the commission.

The city is expected to contract with the Riverside County Sheriff's Department and also its fire department for police and fire service and a host of other municipal services.

The city will need to contract these services, especially early on, because early budgets, according to the fiscal analysis, will be tight and benefits and salaries paid to city staffers generally account for the bulk of a city's budget.

Pete Weber, Lake Elsinore's treasurer, said paying the bills, especially the salary of a good city manager, will be very tricky.

The key will be bringing in an experienced financial officer who knows the ins and outs of government accounting, which, Weber said, is significantly different than personal or corporate accounting.

"They've got to start today. They can't wait until tomorrow," he said.

Contact Aaron Claverie at (951) 676-4315, Ext. 2624, or e-mail aclaverie@californian.com.

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