Turnout Low in Beverly Hills, Culver City Elections

All three incumbents up for reelection in the Beverly Hills and Culver City Unified School districts were returned to office Tuesday in elections marked by low voter turnouts.

In Beverly Hills four candidates competed for two seats. School board President Fred Stern, a financial consultant who captured a second term on the board with 1,814 votes, led the field.

Dana Tomarken was elected to the second open seat with 1,797 votes. She will replace retiring school board member Jerry Weinstein. Unsuccessful candidates were Lora Klinger, a former teacher who lost a bid for a school board seat two years ago, with 1,742 votes and Rhea Kohan, a novelist, with 1,461 votes.

In Culver City four candidates ran for three school board seats. The two incumbents were reelected, but with fewer votes than Julie Lugo Cerra, an adult-school teacher who came in first with 1,009 votes.

“I believe I will bring logic, leadership, fairness, energy and a positive approach to the board, “ Cerra said during the campaign. She could not be reached Wednesday.

Incumbent R. G. Knopf was reelected with 949 votes and incumbent Kay Lyou with 937 votes. Thelma Ayres placed fourth with 253 votes.

In Beverly Hills, 3,131 voters, or about 15% of the more than 20,000 registered in the city, cast ballots in the election, according to the county registrar’s office. Figures were not immediately available for Culver City, which has 18,000 registered voters. Board members in both cities were elected at-large.

Stern said that despite the low turnout and the narrowness of his victory, his reelection and the election of Tomarken was a “vote of confidence” in the district’s efforts to balance its budget. School officials predict that the district will have a deficit of $3 million to $5 million in its $25-million budget for 1986-87. Stern said that the most pressing issue in the campaign was the budget.

“It wasn’t a landslide victory, and it was not a mandate, but it was a victory,” Stern said. “I don’t consider this a personal triumph. I think it is a vote supporting what the Board of Education has been doing. It is a vote of confidence in the responsible, reasonable approach to solving the problems facing the district.”

Both Stern and Tomarken were endorsed by the other board members, Frank Fenton, Mark Egarman, Betty Wilson and Weinstein.

Tomarken, former executive director of the Beverly Hills Education Foundation, a nonprofit organization that raises funds for the district, attributed her victory to her refusal to “attack” the present school board on the way it has handled its financial crisis.

“It is easy to attack, but people want to know what you are going to do with the problems at hand,” she said. “I presented a positive approach to the problems facing the schools.”

Both Tomarken and Stern support further exploration of the financial options the district is considering, including a tax on each parcel of land in the city, an increase in the production of oil from wells operated on the high school campus and the leasing of land used now for the high school parking lot.

School officials said more difficult options would include increasing class size, closing schools and eliminating some educational programs.

Stern said the board’s most immediate concern is settling contract negotiations with the teachers’ bargaining representative, the Beverly Hills Education Assn.

School officials reported progress in negotiations on Monday and expect to resume talks next week. Earlier this week the district settled negotiations with the clerical and maintenance workers of the California School Employees Assn. The terms of the agreement call for a first-year increase of 3.8% in salaries, including $500 in benefits, school officials said.

Culver City officials reported few surprises in Tuesday’s election. Knopf, Lyou and Cerra were expected to win easily. Cerra will replace retiring incumbent H. Lynn Brown.

“I guess the voters were essentially satisfied with the way we conducted business on the board,” Knopf said. “Issues that have torn other boards apart--such as teacher negotiations and what to do with surplus school property--were not issues here. I hope it will be business as usual for the next four years.”

Ayres, a homemaker, was mildly critical of the board in her campaign. She said the election results would have been different if she had spent money on the campaign. “I did not spend any money on the campaign and the results show,” she said.