When it comes to conspiracy theories, count me in. I just wouldn't have expected to find one in the unincorporated, quiet little bedroom community of Rossmoor.
But there's a good one brewing in the enclave of roughly 10,500 people nestled between Seal Beach and Los Alamitos, where voters will decide in two weeks whether to become a city.
An apparently sizable number of locals favoring cityhood wonder why the union representing the Orange County Sheriff's Department is so actively opposing them. Why did the association pay for a telephone survey of residents a few months ago and why has it continued to pay for mailers and signs and phone banks urging residents to vote against Measure U on Nov. 4?
Isn't it obvious? The association opposes cityhood because that might end Rossmoor's reliance on the Sheriff's Department for patrolling the community. Once it attains cityhood, Rossmoor might decide to join with Seal Beach or Los Alamitos or create its own police force.
Ah, if it were that simple, we wouldn't have a conspiracy theory.
Pro-incorporation leaders are convinced that the deputies association opposes them as part of a vendetta against Board of Supervisors Chairman John Moorlach, in whose district Rossmoor lies and who has led the fight to rein in the costs of deputies' pensions.
As the theory goes, whatever the union can do to upset Moorlach, it will do. The theory extends to the rest of the board, a majority of which apparently favors incorporation, as well.
Eric Christensen is co-chairman of the Rossmoor pro-cityhood group and a corporate attorney. He says the deputy association's dislike of Moorlach and the other supervisors is the only motive that makes sense.
"The union, in my belief, is using us as a pawn in the fight against the board," Christensen says.
Association president Wayne Quint dismisses that accusation, saying the union has gotten involved several times in the last decade in annexations, incorporation and taxation issues. In Rossmoor's case, residents will have to approve a utility tax as a condition for cityhood. The ballot will offer either a 7% or 9% option.
"I don't see this tax being enough to enhance or improve public safety," Quint says, "and that's why we oppose it."
Why not let Rossmoor voters worry about that? Why is that a political issue for deputies? Especially when Quint concedes he's not saying that Rossmoor will be less safe if it incorporates, only that it won't be more safe.
