LOCAL ELECTIONS / BALLOT MEASURES : Centralized-Jail Plan Would Delay Construction, Foes Say

SANTA ANA â€”  In an effort to persuade voters to defeat Measure A, which would restrict all new jail construction to Santa Ana, city officials and other opponents denounced the initiative Friday as bad public policy.

At a press conference, city officials said the passage of Measure A on Tuesday would do nothing to relieve the county’s already overcrowded jail facility.

“If this measure passes, we’re saying to drug dealers, you have 20 solid more years of continued business in Orange County,� Mayor Daniel H. Young said. “If we want to have the ability to put these drug dealers away, we need to have a jail. Measure A would delay any construction for years.�

The city may take legal action if the measure passes, Young said.

Young said Measure A would delay construction of any new jail because the county would have to readjust its plans to fit Santa Ana. Over the past seven years, the county has spent $6 million in developing plans and sites for a new jail. The county is under a court order to ease overcrowding at the current jail in Santa Ana. The 3,200-acre Gypsum Canyon site was chosen as the best alternative last year by the County Board of Supervisors.

Measure A, which voters will consider next Tuesday, was placed on the ballot by residents of Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda who oppose the county’s plan to build a 6,000-inmate jail in nearby Gypsum Canyon, a remote area neighboring Riverside County.

The group, Taxpayers for a Centralized Jail, gathered more than 100,000 signatures in a 1988 drive to qualify the measure for the ballot. The measure has been heavily criticized as being racist because it would place all future jails in the mostly Latino community of Santa Ana. On the ballot, the measure asks whether all future jails should be built in the county seat, but does not mention Santa Ana by name.

The proposed 6,720-bed Gypsum Canyon facility, if moved to Santa Ana, would most likely require that at least 50 acres in the newly developed downtown area be razed to make room, Councilman Miguel A. Pulido Jr. contends.

Pointing to two aerial maps--one showing rural Gypsum Canyon, the other showing Santa Ana’s downtown packed with buildings--Pulido decried the initiative as being “self-serving� only to Anaheim Hills and Yorba Linda residents.

“If we are going to put jails in Santa Ana today, what’s tomorrow going to bring us?� Pulido said.

Young also challenged Measure A’s supporters to specify a location in the city where a facility such as the currently proposed 6,720-bed jail could be built.

“We all know this is a cynical measure. We all know there is no room for such a jail,� Young said.

Rick Violett, the initiative’s chairman, said it was not up to supporters of the measure to find a site for a jail.

“We’re sending a message to the supervisors and telling them to look at an alternative site instead of plunking it in somebody’s backyard,� Violett said.