Local Elections : Six candidates are on ballot for three at-large seats on the five-member City Council : Preserving City’s Village Character Is Key Issue : 7 Vie for 3 Council Seats in Laguna

Maintaining the village character of Laguna Beach at a time when nearby south Orange County communities undergo rapid development has emerged as the main issue in the seaside city’s council race this fall.

Three of the council’s five seats are at stake, with incumbents Robert F. Gentry and Dan Kenney both running for another term. Joining them on a three-candidate slate is Lida Campbell Lenney, who is seeking the seat being vacated by Bobbie Minkin, who is not running for reelection.

A last-minute write-in campaign by Don Black brought the number of candidates in the race to seven. They are:

Don Black, 54, a local attorney who decided to run for the council about three weeks ago “because none of the other candidates was talking about real issues within our city limits,” he said. A write-in candidate, Black said he would try to remove the “mystery and mistreatment” that he says residents and business owners suffer when they present plans to the city. “The city’s too tough on anyone who wants to make a change,” Black said. He said the city should join the Joint Powers Authority of the San Joaquin Hills Transportation Corridor, but he opposes building a freeway there. “We should be a member of everything that has anything to do with development near Laguna,” he said.

Robert F. Gentry, 47, an associate dean at UC Irvine, said the main issue of the campaign “is all of the growth occurring in south Orange County and how it is going to impact Laguna Beach.” The City Council should address the issues of preserving its art colony, open space and downtown while keeping the oil industry off the coast, Gentry said. “What’s going on outside Laguna affects Laguna,” he said. “We have to know who the players are, in the county, and at the state and national levels.” The new residents in surrounding communities, he said, will mean more daytime tourists in town, “and they are interested in quick food, frozen dessert, a souvenir. If we let that rampantly develop, we’ll become the Coney Island of the West Coast.”

Dan Kenney, 45, a hospital pharmacist, said the main theme of his campaign has been his performance during the past four years as a council member. “I made a bunch of promises, and they have been kept,” Kenney said, citing the completion of the Glenneyre Street parking garage, preservation of open space and a more open style of government as some of the council’s accomplishments during his tenure. “One of the reasons that there are no glaring campaign issues this year is that, by and large, people feel they have a voice and have been listened to,” he said. The main task during the next four years, he said, will be preserving the “small-scale, village character of Laguna Beach” by implementing a downtown specific plan.

Lida Campbell Lenney, 53, is a teacher and free-lance writer. She said her basic concern is what the surrounding development may do to Laguna Beach’s environment. “I’m opposed to the San Joaquin Freeway,” she said. “There’s no way that could come through here without creating smog like in the L.A. Basin.” Lenney said she is also concerned about drug abuse in the schools, a lack of child-care services in the city and a shortage of housing for senior citizens. She said she supports the concept of a downtown plan to keep resident-serving businesses in town. But, she added, “the downtown business people need to be successful to stay here.”

Maggie Meggs, who declined to give her age, is a local columnist and community volunteer. A member of the City Council in Grass Valley, Calif., about 20 years ago, Meggs said her No. 1 priority would be to put traffic lights along Laguna Canyon Road. “People come down that road like they were let out of prison,” Meggs said. She said she would also work to provide more housing for senior citizens close to downtown, and she would pressure the county to build a facility for the homeless--”something near Anaheim, preferably. I want, mostly, to bring Laguna back to what it was--an art colony. No more developments by the Irvine Co. Or else I’ll put a cannon up and blow them all to bits.”

Rickey Slater, 52, a custodian, is running for the City Council for the third time since moving to Laguna Beach 27 years ago. He said his main concerns are “finding a place for the homeless--not necessarily in town,” providing more affordable housing for low-income residents and senior citizens, and keeping the beaches clean and safe. Slater, a fixture at meetings of the council, Planning Commission and Design Review Board, said he is “more knowledgeable of the people who need help--they know they can talk to me, they won’t talk to the City Council members.” Slater said his support comes from “grass-roots people and business people.”

Clayton Vernon, 25, a financial consultant, said he is running “to refocus the council on neighborhood issues. They’ve been too involved in national issues . . . like gay rights and environmental issues that aren’t relevant to our area, like toxic wastes, rather than keeping the downtown area clean.” Vernon said he would try to improve the city’s neighborhood watch program, and he would ask the council to evaluate the performance of City Manager Kenneth C. Frank.