Mayor Surprises La Canada by Announcing His Resignation

With three years left to serve in his term, Mayor Thomas Curtis announced Monday that he will resign from the La Canada Flintridge City Council in April.

The announcement, made at a City Council meeting, caught council members, city staff and the small audience by surprise.

“Does someone see my teeth on the floor? I think I just dropped them,” Councilwoman Barbara Pieper said after hearing Curtis’ decision.

“I’m speechless,” Councilman J. Bixby Smith said.

Reasons Given

Curtis said his decision was based on increasing demands on his time. “Because of the demands now placed upon me by my growing law firm,” Curtis said, “and by the demands of my wife and sons, who would like to see me once in a while, it will be impossible to continue on as a member of the City Council beyond the expiration of my term as mayor in April.”

Curtis was elected to a four-year term on the council in April. He had been appointed to the council in 1980 to fill a seat left vacant by the resignation of Councilman George Parrish. The mayor’s job is a yearlong position that rotates among the council members. Curtis became mayor in April.

The mayor said that although he had been considering such a move over the past month, it wasn’t until Monday that he decided to announce his resignation from the council. Curtis said he made the announcement in order to give the other four council members adequate notice.

“I wanted to give the council the maximum amount of time to make a smooth transition,” Curtis said.

Filling the Vacancy

The council will be able to fill the vacant position either by calling a special election or by appointing someone to replace Curtis for the next three years.

A partner in the Pasadena law firm of McDermott and Trayner, Curtis, 35, said he plans “just to keep practicing law and spend more time with my family.” In the meantime, he said, the council has a “full slate of items to deal with between now and April.”

One of the more pressing items on that slate is the continuing controversy over the proposed expansion of the Sport Chalet sporting goods stores on Foothill Boulevard. Representatives of the store bowed to angry residents in October when they scrapped original plans and withdrew an application for a zoning change.

The protesting residents fear that Sport Chalet owner Norbert Olberz’s plan to expand his three stores into a large sports-related shopping complex would be a threat to their semi-rural way of life and bring increased traffic and crime to the largely residential community.

Homeowners’ Association

The issue appeared to be heating up again, however, as the Homeowners’ Assn. of La Canada Flintridge, formed last year primarily to combat the Sport Chalet expansion, began a petition drive to place a “residential preservation” ordinance on the November ballot.

The proposed ordinance is an attempt to forestall large development projects by requiring a vote of the citizens to approve zoning changes that would permit more dense uses than currently allowed.

The association, which launched its drive Monday, has six months to collect 1,500 signatures in order to qualify the ordinance for the November ballot.

At Monday’s council meeting, Curtis addressed the Sport Chalet issue in a discussion of the duties of a citizen’s advisory committee that is to be formed to study commercial development on Foothill Boulevard. The mayor proposed forming the committee in October after residents bitterly attacked the Sport Chalet expansion at public hearings before the City Council

Curtis said the committee, which is expected to have 15 members, will be responsible for preparing a report for the city Planning Commission that will make recommendations on the development of Foothill Boulevard. To do that, Curtis said, the committee will be authorized to conduct public meetings and request reports from city staff members.

Exchange of Information

Once the report is finished, Curtis said, committee members will be expected to meet with developers to discuss proposed projects and “ensure that the impacts of the developments are pointed out to the developer. No one will be under any obligation. This will purely be an informal exchange of information.”

Committee members are expected to be announced at the Feb. 19 City Council meeting. The mayor said 26 residents have applied. Other members of the community interested in being considered have until Feb. 4 to give their resumes to the city clerk.

In addition to the committee’s input, Curtis said he will request proposals from professional consultants to conduct a study of commercial development on the boulevard, where businesses are concentrated along a four-mile stretch. The mayor said he would like the reports from the advisory committee and the consultant completed within six to eight months.

The homeowners’ association was originally skeptical about any such committee selected by the mayor, whom they consider a proponent of the Sport Chalet expansion. But association members said they may reconsider their position now that they have learned that the committee will address the entire issue of development along the boulevard and not just the Sport Chalet project.

“All of a sudden it’s the total corridor, which is a whole other thing,” said Wilfred Grifka, an association board member.

Grifka said that whatever position the association takes on the advisory committee, it will continue its efforts to halt large-scale development. “We’ve started on the initiative and there’s no reason to stop it,” he said. “We’ve seen nothing in the way of communication so far that would cause us to stop.”