El Toro Ballot Proposal Dropped

Supervisor Chuck Smith withdrew a proposal late Monday that would have asked Orange County voters in November to authorize another vote on the fate of the closed El Toro Marine base.

Smith’s move came as Board of Supervisors Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad picked up support for her plan to ask voters to urge the Navy to completely clean the base before it is sold to private developers.

The flurry of interest in new measures was triggered by the Board of Supervisors’ Friday deadline to place items on the Nov. 5 ballot.

Smith said he dropped his proposal after failing to draw enough support. He wanted a countywide referendum on Irvine’s plans to add homes and other developments to an urban park at El Toro. In March, voters backed a measure calling for a park at the closed base instead of a commercial airport.

Irvine wants to annex the 4,700-acre base, adding 3,400 homes and 2.9 million square feet of office space to plans for a university, cemetery, golf and sports fields. The Navy announced in April that it would sell the base to the highest bidder under Irvine’s annexation plans.

“Suddenly, some members of this board are selective about what they want the voters to ratify,” Smith said in a statement.

Supervisor Todd Spitzer said public support is behind the Irvine plan. “For the board to put on an initiative without a groundswell of public support was going to be a failure,” he said.

However, Spitzer said he will back Coad’s proposal for a November advisory vote on an environmental cleanup at the base. He said he has long called for the Navy to do a thorough examination of contamination and to clean up the soil before any acreage is sold--the intent of Coad’s measure.

Smith said he wasn’t sure how he would vote on Coad’s measure. He said he shared her frustration, however, because the Navy prohibited the county from testing soil at El Toro and based its cleanup plan on the base being used as an airport, not a park.

Supervisor Jim Silva didn’t return calls for comment Monday.

If the park zoning voters approved in March “is the law of the land, we need to make sure the land is cleaned up for it,” Coad said.