4 Candidates Seek 3 La Canada Seats : Mayor’s Husband in Council Race

La Canada Flintridge Mayor Barbara Pieper won’t be running for reelection to the City Council after an eight-year tenure. But there may be another Pieper on the council after April’s municipal election.

The mayor’s husband, Darold, will be among four candidates vying for three council seats to be filled in the April 8 contest. It’s his first bid for election to the City Council.

Also on the ballot will be incumbent Councilmen Ed Krause and O. Warren Hillgren, who will be seeking their fourth terms. Both have served on the council since the city’s incorporation in 1976.

The fourth candidate is Joan Feehan, a homemaker and civic activist who is a first-time council candidate. If elected, she will be only the second woman--Pieper is the first--to serve on the City Council.

The period for filing candidacy papers ended Tuesday.

Council members are elected for four-year terms. The two other seats on the five-member council are now held by J. Bixby Smith and John Hastings, whose terms will end in 1988.

Besides electing council members, voters will decide on a measure that would require voter approval for zoning changes in residential areas for projects that are two acres or larger.

All of the council candidates said they are opposed to the proposed measure, which was put on the ballot because of residents’ concern over development along Foothill Boulevard, the city’s main thoroughfare and only commercial zone.

Some residents fear that plans to expand the Sport Chalet sporting-goods stores into a shopping center could harm the semirural atmosphere of the community. If approved, the measure would in effect remove zoning decisions on large development projects from the jurisdiction of the city government.

Last-Minute Decision

The Piepers, residents of La Canada since 1971, said that Darold Pieper’s decision to run for the council was made at the last minute. Darold Pieper, 41, has served on the city’s Public Safety Commission since 1977.

“Over the Christmas holidays, a lot of my friends approached me and told me that I ought to run,” said Darold Pieper, the managing partner of a Los Angeles law firm.

His wife said her decision not to seek a third term in office has long been planned. “I decided a couple of years ago that two terms is a substantial amount of time to devote to public service,” she said.

A social studies teacher now on leave from La Canada High School, Barbara Pieper is working full time for Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich’s U. S. Senate campaign. She said she expects to be active in statewide Republican Party politics and has no plans right now to run for any elective office.

Feehan, 54, has lived in La Canada Flintridge nearly 18 years and was involved in the community’s drive for cityhood.

She is a member of the La Canada Trails Council, an advocacy group that oversees maintenance of the city’s extensive system of hiking and riding trails. Also, she is past president of the Women’s Assistance League of Flintridge, a philanthropic group, and for many years was an active PTA member. She is the mother of five children.

Feehan said she believes that her civic participation has given her the experience to be an effective council member.

“I’ve had such an old and longstanding connection with the city that I really feel that I can make some contribution to the work that the council has done,” she said. “I love this place up here. I’d like to see it continue in the direction that it has been going.”

Incumbents Hillgren and Krause cited continuity as the major reason they wish to serve a fourth term on the council. Krause, 84, said he is running again because “the more important things are to be done in the future.”

Krause is a retired licensed public accountant who has lived in La Canada Flintridge 36 years. He said several people told him that “if I didn’t take out candidacy papers, they would draft me.”

Krause also is chairman of the Los Angeles County Fire Commission and is a technical adviser to the Southern California Rapid Transit District’s board of directors.

Among his objectives for a fourth term, he said, are getting sound walls built along the Foothill and Glendale freeways where they pass through the city, establishing a citywide sewer system, getting development of Foothill Boulevard under way and maintaining a balanced budget.

27-Year Resident

Hillgren, 61, has lived in the city 27 years and runs a real estate management company that oversees his own property holdings. He is past president of the La Canada Flintridge Chamber of Commerce and Community Assn. and was on its board of directors for 15 years.

Hillgren said there are “important issues to come before the City Council that require the experience of people” who have served in city government. Chief among those issues, he said, is the future of commercial development on Foothill Boulevard.

“We can’t allow it to exist as it is and develop it on a piecemeal basis,” he said. “If we don’t do it properly, we’ll go downhill.”