Top Stories of 2011: City Hall Fights the Power

City government in Fountain Valley is something of a different animal. The contentious five-hour meetings that are often standard in other cities just don't happen. And it might be easy to confuse that sort of efficency with complacency. But try to meddle with the city's affairs from the outside, whether from the state or county level, and you'll awaken a sleeping giant.

While partisan politics almost never comes into play in city government, it's no secret that Fountain Valley's council leans to the right, and its members aren't exactly charter members of the Jerry Brown Fan Club. So when the governor came up with a plan to close the state's budget shortfall by shutting off the redevelopment fund faucet, the council was all the more inspired to fight back.

Brown eventually signed into law a new budget that included an alternate redevlopment program under which cities would pay to opt in. A slighty divided council begrudgingly voted to participate, but not before a presentation by city staff that depicted the state as a pickpocket stealing redevlopment money, and referred to the opt-in money as a "ransom."

The Fountain Valley council also fought closer to home—with the county—over proposed redistricting maps. The proposed maps sought to divide the city, which had previously been entirely within Supervisor John Moorlach's District 2, between two supervisory districts.

The move to split Fountain Valley was seen as a benefit for District 1 Supervisor Janet Nguyen because the proposed split would put a predominantly Asian area of the city into her district. The Board of Supervisors eventually voted to approve the split by a 4-1 vote, with Moorlach voting against it. Then-Mayor Pro Tem John Collins spoke out against the measure.

"I'm here today to say how disappointed I am in your decision," he said. "Your body put together a committee, and that committee had 10 meetings out in the community and examined all the possibilities. Your body ignored the three recommendations and went on to adopt something that was brought up at the last minute. I've heard rumors that this was a political design, and that concerns me. Fountain Valley is being separated almost in half for other reasons, when this other committee said, 'No, keep it whole.' I'd hope you would consider that and go back to the committee's recommendations."