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FIRST TERM AS MAYOR 213

Conservancy and SCOPE all raised objections to plans to build 200 homes within
a Significant Ecological Area and cut down 149 oak trees. The school impact was
not clear to the public; apparently Newhall Land was going to set aside a site
which would be bought by one of the school districts out of development fees.
It took ten years for that project to get underway, with modifications. 39
Developers turned out en masse to ask for exclusion from our latest sphere of
influence proposal. It was later clear that the city was asking for too much, but
LAFCO’s lack of cooperation in giving good advice or helping to find a
reasonable compromise was also at fault. The developers might have shown more
willingness to work with the city, but Jill Klajic’s campaign was not helping. 40
On the same day we were losing at LAFCO, and Newhall Land was losing in
the Regional Planning Commission, November 14, 1991, Gil Callowhill died at
home of a heart attack. Gil had moved to Saugus in 1972, the year he retired as
a manager for an industrial pump company. He had worked tirelessly as a
volunteer, had been active in the Canyon County formation movement, and had
been elected supervisor in 1976. He had also run for the city council in 1987, had
served in the Santa Clarita Civic Association, the Highway 126 Improvement
Committee, SCOPE, SCV Chamber of Commerce, Independence Day parade
committee and as an elected director of the Castaic Lake Water Agency. Gil was
extraordinary in that he never spent money to campaign, and he won office five
times by simply walking door-to-door, talking with people. Gil was tight with the
taxpayers’ dollar and was often a minority of one against growth, but never
allowed his views to get in the way of his relationships with people. 41
Jim Van Horn, a long time council member of Artesia and a LAFCO member,
pushed Newhall Land to give a population figure for their planned developments
west of I-5, much of which was referred to as West Ranch at the time. Gary
Cusumano provided a figure of 50,000 to 100,000, the first time we had been
given a population figure. In spite of that we were making progress with the
annexation and development of the commercial site in which Best Buy was
developed.
One of the little known duties of a council member was to take turns serving
as a director of Sanitation Districts 26 and 32, little known special districts
responsible for the treatment of sewer effluent. A three-member board comprised
of one supervisor and two council members ran those sanitation districts partially
in the city and partially in the county. They were part of the hidden governments
of Los Angeles County, along with the lighting districts, the mosquito abatement
district and the like. Charles Carry and a bunch of able bureaucrats ran the
operation. Operations personnel, who were to risk their lives in a big way to stop
a disaster that could have resulted from the Northridge Earthquake in 1994, ran
the sanitation plants.
Board members were given their agendas in advance, and were expected to
approve everything by the numbers. If we did not fool around, a meeting could
be completed in forty-eight seconds. This is not to say we did not do our
homework. We did, often with the help of city staff. Charles Carry did not know