The long simmering issue of finding a municipal home for the small beach front unincorporated Orange County community of Sunset Beach moved toward resolution last night at the Huntington Beach City Council meeting.

Even though there was a clear majority of Sunset Beach residents speaking at the meeting against the proposal, the Huntington Beach City Council voted 5/2 to direct staff to prepare documents needed to annex Sunset Beach. Not that the speakers at the meeting necessarily are representative of the residents at large, but by our count, about 26 speakers were opposed to annexation and 7 were in favor.

Last year the Local Agency Formation Commission, aka LAFCO, the county agency which oversees such matters, voted to put Sunset Beach under the “sphere of influence” of Huntington Beach (see related article below)
. This was another step toward the ultimate disposition of Sunset Beach, and the independent minded Sunset Beach residents were not entirely happy about that.

But, county policy is to eliminate the so called unincorporated “islands”. John Moorlach is the Orange County Supervisor who represents all of West OC. “Huntington Beach residents are also my constituents, so I’ve got two sets of constituents and Sunset Beach where there is a house divided, “he told OC180NEWS before the meeting. Moorlach, who was at the Huntington Beach meeting last night, is also a member of LAFCO.

”When LAFCO voted if Sunset Beach should be in the sphere of influence of Huntington Beach, I voted no – I voted for my constituents, but now the train is really moving and it’s kind of hard to keep saying no,” Moorlach said. “We’re trying to get islands annexed, that’s just a fact.”

Thus, when LAFCO voted to put Sunset Beach under Huntington Beach’s sphere of influence, the Sunset Beach residents asked Seal Beach to take them. But, Seal Beach wasn’t interested. The next option for Sunset Beach was to attempt incorporation on their own. The trouble is that there are only around 1,200 residents in Sunset Beach and it’s pretty hard for so few residents to cover the costs of running a city.

“Sunset Beach has done all of their research to figure whether or not they can be their own city, the numbers don’t bode well – it doesn’t add up,” Moorlach told OC180NEWS. But the money has to come from somewhere. “Once you say if you want to be an independent city, you have to vote for the following utility users tax – we were proposing 9% for Rossmoor {which the voters rejected by a wide margin two years ago} – I would probably venture to guess it’s going to be pretty far north of that percent for Sunset Beach residents,” Moorlach said.

A majority of the Huntington Beach City Council agreed the finances demonstrate Sunset Beach could not make it on their own and that incorporation into Huntington Beach was only a matter of time.

“If they don’t want to be part of Huntington Beach, then that issue should have been addressed by them before Huntington Beach opened its eyes – like a waking bear – and said, ‘maybe it fits,” said Moorlach.

The Huntington Beach City Council directed staff to proactively communicate with Sunset Beach residents to address their concerns and a subcommittee of the council will work to facilitate a smooth transition, which could happen by year’s end. Smooth or not, the majority of Sunset Beach residents at the meeting were not buying it.

“For Sunset Beach, they’ll be angry for a while, and then before you know it…” Moorlach said, “I think overall, it will be beneficial to the residents. They’ll get much better – much closer service. They’ll be able to take care of a lot of issues that they’ve been frustrated with.”