Beverly Hills Mayor Reflects on Troubled Year in Office

Beverly Hills Mayor Charlotte Spadaro, accused by colleagues of a lack of leadership, took a painful look back at a troubled year in office and wondered if it had all been worth it.

“If I could have seen ahead what was going to happen to me, then I might have made a different choice,” she said in a recent interview. “When I’m asked whether I am going to run (for the council) again, I’m not sure that I would.”

Spadaro, 45, whose term as mayor expires April 21 and whose council term ends in 1988, said she views herself as someone who has tried to make government accessible to the people.

During her year as mayor, she established citizens committees on school funding, traffic and parking, disaster preparedness and the city’s drinking water.

She led the move to develop a sister city relationship with the French resort city of Cannes. Under her leadership, the city’s payment to the schools was increased from $1.2 million to $4 million and the hotel bed tax was increased from 7% to 11%, raising $2.2 million. And the council approved a tough ban on smoking in restaurants, the first in the state.

But her stewardship was also marred by personal tragedy--the death of her mother and separation from her husband. She missed several meetings and left other sessions early. Of 14 abstentions recorded in 1986 (the council voted 140 times), 13 were by Spadaro and one was by Councilman Robert Tanenbaum. Eleven of the 13 involved rent control. Spadaro said she was advised by the city attorney not to vote on issues concerning rent control because she owns an apartment building in Beverly Hills and her vote might represent a conflict of interest.

She also abstained from voting on a resolution supporting the Los Angeles County drug abuse program, and again on a bid for construction of police and library facilities at the Civic Center. She said the public needed more time to make its opinion known on the construction issue.

Her abstentions prompted Councilman Maxwell Salter to call her the “great abstainer.”

A lack of leadership, critics say, has characterized the tenure of Spadaro, the city’s 32nd mayor.

“I can’t say she has been the best mayor,” Councilwoman Donna Ellman said. “When Charlotte leaves there will be no grandiose speeches. It has been a year in which the city has coasted. No way am I going to say it has been an exciting year with a lot of exciting leadership. Her unwillingness to come to conclusions doesn’t serve the community.”

Ellman’s view, in part, reflects the ideological differences on the council. Ellman, Salter and Councilman Benjamin Stansbury are the majority on many issues, supporting the Civic Center, the ill-fated effort to establish a museum in Greystone mansion and the parcel tax to support the schools. Spadaro frequently voiced opposition with Tanenbaum.

“It has been a difficult year with a preponderance of new council members who have widely diverging ideologies and goals for the city,” Stansbury said. “It has been a period of sorting out and digesting a method of coming to a consensus between us.”

But agreements have not come easily.

Stansbury, who said he has been “frustrated” by a lack of order at some of the council meetings, called Tanenbaum a “turkey” during one heated study session. At another meeting he asked the mayor to have the police throw Tanenbaum out of the council chambers because he would not let Stansbury speak.

Spadaro was selected mayor by the council in 1986 under a traditional rotation system.

Spadaro’s difficulties began to surface in the fall, when the city began taking up such major issues as school funding, the proposed Greystone museum and the construction of police and fire facilities at the Civic Center.

Spadaro said the “stress of public life” contributed to her separation from her husband. Her mother’s death in September was a difficult time.

“I tried not to miss many meeting, but I did not feel very well for a while,” she said. “I had to leave some meetings early--some people understood and were helpful, others were not.”

Tanenbaum said it’s important that Spadaro be credited for the job she has done. “Some people will find fault for what she has not done,” he said, “but she has been under tremendous personal pressure following the death of her mother and that takes time to bounce back from.”

Still, the timing of her exits, without warning during important meetings, had angered several council members. Spadaro, who as mayor presides over the sessions, simply hands over the gavel to Stansbury, the vice mayor, and excuses herself. She has left meetings involving negotiations over the city’s cable TV contract and an important joint meeting with the school district over school financing.

“I figure she is getting up to go to the can, but she never comes back,” Salter said. “It really doesn’t matter anyway, because if she stayed she would probably abstain.”

Tensions on the council hit their peak last month after Spadaro failed to sign a controversial order approved by the council to demolish the city’s historic La Cienega Water Treatment Plant. A community group used the delay to obtain a temporary court injunction blocking the order. Spadaro opposed the demolition order, but she signed it after several council members said they would seek her resignation if she did not. A judge will decide Friday whether to grant the community group a preliminary injunction to delay the demolition.

Tanenbaum, who normally supports Spadaro, accused the mayor of attempting a pocket veto of the demolition.

Spadaro was first elected to the council in 1984, after a campaign in which she spent a record $108,000. Six months earlier, she had lost a reelection bid for a second term on the Beverly Hills Board of Education. Her loss was attributed to a letter signed by all five of her fellow board members urging residents not to vote for her. Ironically, voter backlash against the letter was believed to be one of the reasons she captured a seat on the council.

As a councilwoman, Spadaro said she has championed the cause of those she describes as being locked out of city government. In 1984, she opposed the initiative that would have allowed hotel developers to exceed the city’s three-story height limit. The measure was defeated by 67% of the voters.

She had initially opposed the city’s parcel tax initiative, but reluctantly gave her support to the measure as a compromise after the city agreed to increase its payments to the school district to $4 million. However, her support came too late for her to officially endorse the tax measure on the March ballot. The measure fell short of the necessary two-thirds vote.

“It was somewhat of a difficult choice,” Spadaro said. “The parcel tax is not the best tax because it would have taxed the owner of a condominium the same amount as the owner of a $10 million mansion. That is why it was defeated.

“I really do feel that my finger is on the pulse of the people,” she said. She criticized Stansbury and Ellman as being professional politicians who have been in office too long and have lost touch with the public. Stansbury and Ellman are in their third council terms. Salter and Tanenbaum were elected in April, 1986.

“Some people become professional politicians running over and over again. I can understand people running for two terms, but not for more than that,” she said. “It takes away the whole idea of citizen participation. I just wonder why those people don’t make their contribution and get on with their lives.”