Tax Hikes, Fees Among November Ballot Issues

Voters in Hermosa Beach, Hawthorne and El Segundo will decide Nov. 3 whether to raise their taxes.

Hermosa Beach voters also will decide four other ballot issues, including measures that would impose a special fee on movie theaters and limit building heights throughout the city.

Voters in Hawthorne, Rancho Palos Verdes, Rolling Hills Estates and Hermosa Beach will choose new city council members Nov. 3. In Rolling Hills Estates the challengers include a father-and-son-in-law team, and all of the council races are being contested.

There are 27 school board and community college district seats up for election, but in 17 of them only one candidate has filed for the office. In those cases, the school board will decide whether to appoint the candidate to the seat rather than hold an election.

Here are the details:

Hermosa Beach

Voters in this small beach city will be asked to raise the utility users’ tax from 6% to 10%, a measure that will take effect only if a separate ballot proposal to purchase the Santa Fe Railroad right of way also is approved.,

To improve its chances of success, the tax measure is a “general tax,” which requires only a simple majority for approval and can be used for any purpose. (A “special tax” specifying purchase of the right of way would have required a two-thirds vote.) Council members have promised to use the $666,000 the tax would raise for the right of way.

The initiative proposing the purchase of the right of way mandates that the city buy the 20 acres for open space and parkland and “use its best efforts to raise funds needed for acquisition.”

In another attempt to raise funds to buy the right of way and other open space, the council has placed an initiative on the ballot requiring all funds the city receives from oil drilling--except the business license fees and any money regulated by the state Lands Commission--be put in the city’s Park and Recreation Facilities Fund.

The money would be used to acquire, maintain or improve surplus school sites or other properties available for open space and parkland uses. A two-thirds vote is required for approval.

Voters will get the chance to tax theaters through the business license tax initiative. If approved, theaters would be taxed $100 for their first $20,000 of gross receipts and $1.50 for each additional $1,000.

The last Hermosa initiative would limit building heights for new office and commercial developments to current height levels unless variances are approved by the voters. The maximum heights allowed are 35 feet for office buildings, 30 feet for buildings in C-1 zones and 35 feet in C-2 zones. A simple majority vote is required.

Hermosa Beach voters will also elect two City Council members and the city treasurer. City Clerk Kathleen Midstokke, 36, is unopposed and will get a second four-year term in the part-time office.

Four candidates are vying for the two City Council seats. Councilman Tony DeBellis, 40, who is planning manager for the City of Inglewood, is running for a second four-year term. Other candidates are civic activist Roger Creighton, 49, an equipment operator and warehouse manager; Michael Neiman, 28, a marketing manager, and Planning Commission Chairman Chuck Sheldon, 44, a computer marketing executive. Mayor John Cioffi will not seek reelection.

Candidates for city treasurer are former Councilman Gary Brutsch, 45, a management consultant; Sandra I. Hughes, 45, escrow company owner, and Elaine C. Doerfling, 43, a businesswoman. Doerfling and Hughes filed nomination papers after the Aug. 7 deadline was extended for five days because the incumbent, Norma Goldbach, did not file.

In the Hermosa Beach elementary school board race, incumbents Margaret O’Brien and Carol G. Reznichek are not seeking reelection. Joe Mark, 49, an appointed incumbent whose term would expire in November, 1989, is running for a four-year term. Housewife Georgia Tattu, 43, is running for Mark’s unexpired term. Susan Meyer, 42, teacher and wife of just-resigned City Manager Greg Meyer, is running for the third available seat.

Hawthorne

A ballot initiative will ask whether a new tax should be imposed on homeowners based on the width of water mains on their property to raise $300,000 for a new paramedic unit. The assessment would range from $16 for water mains less than an inch wide--standard for most single-family homes--to $2,844 for a 10-inch diameter water main. The only one in the city that wide is at Northrop Corp.

Three candidates filed by Wednesday’s deadline to run for two Hawthorne council seats: incumbents G. Steven Andersen, 45, and Ginny McGinnis Lambert, 55, and “concerned community citizen” Eleanore I. Carlson, 47, a college job placement administrator. Mayor Betty J. Ainsworth, 61, has been challenged by Kathleen Corsiglia, 40, a nurse who describes herself as a “neighborhood advocate.”

El Segundo

Voters will consider a proposed 4% utility users’ tax that would provide $1.5 million this year to bridge a budget shortfall. Residential users would provide only 5% of the estimated revenue, with commercial users paying 35% and industry paying 60%. The tax on water, gas, electricity and telephone services would cost a family of four living in a house about $60 a year, city officials said. Utility bills for a single person living in an apartment would increase by about $40.

Five candidates will compete in the El Segundo Unified School District, where school board member Richard D. Work will not seek reelection. Joining incumbent Alan D. Leitch, 42, in a race for two board seats are Dennis Martin, 48, public librarian; George L. Ray, 64, educator and businessman; Patricia Pjerrou-Paynter, 38, editor and graphic artist, and Andrew M. Wallet, 34, an attorney.

R. H. Estates

Two business associates who are also father and son-in-law are challenging longtime City Council incumbents in Rolling Hills Estates, where three seats are up for election. General contractor Dan Butcher, 69, and son-in-law Carl Robertson, 43, a financial consultant, are running against incumbents Hugh Muller, 59, Warren Schwartzman, 64, and Peter Weber, 58, all of whom have been on the council nine years or more.

Rancho P. V.

Mayor Mel Hughes, 47, Councilman Douglas Hinchliffe, 48, and John McTaggart, 57, are running for reelection. They are opposed by Alan J. Carlan, 57, an aerospace project manager, and Kathleen Snell, 40, whose filing statement says she works in police administration.

El Camino College

El Camino College District Area 2 Trustee Delmer Fox, 65, of Torrance and Area 3 incumbent Gerald M. Hilby, 58, of Manhattan Beach, are unopposed for reelection.

Area 1 incumbent Patrick Scott, 59, of Inglewood, will face challengers Steven Klein, an Inglewood financial analyst, and Mildred McNair, who describes herself as an Inglewood administrator and educator.

School Districts

The South Bay’s most crowded school board race is in the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified district. Running for two seats are incumbent Jack H. Bagdasar, 64, and Eric Engstrom, 21, a University of Southern California pre-law undergraduate from Rancho Palos Verdes; Steven Kuykendall, 40, Rancho Palos Verdes businessman; Barbara (Mimi) Horowitz, 45, a community leader from Rancho Palos Verdes; Joseph P. Sanford, 49, a Palos Verdes Estates resident who described his occupation as banking, and Brigitte Schuegraf, 54, a physicist and art educator from Rancho Palos Verdes.

Incumbent Martin C. Dodell is not seeking reelection.

In at-large elections for two seats in the Centinela Valley Union High School District, Area 3 incumbent Michael A. Escalante, 65, and Area 4 incumbent Ruth S. Morales, 63, are being challenged by fellow Hawthorne residents Chet B. Gean, a minister, and Steven Douglas Swain, 27, an engineering computer specialist.

In the Hawthorne Elementary School District, Eleanor Neville-Escalante, 66, a retired Hawthorne school principal, is challenging incumbent Louis Broderson, 48. Neville-Escalante is the wife of Centinela Valley Union Trustee Michael Escalante. Incumbent Buddy Takata, 57, is unopposed.

Manhattan Beach Elementary School District Trustee Priscilla Schillinger is not seeking reelection. Running for the two available seats are incumbent Kathy Campbell, 41; Mary Rogers, a businesswoman, and Barbara J. Dunsmoor, a self-described parent-educator.

The following school board members will run unopposed in November:

- South Bay Union High School district incumbents Armando Acosta, 30, William J. Beverly, 37, and Tom Downs, 62, an appointed incumbent whose term expires in November, 1989.

- Torrance Unified board members Owen H. Griffith, 59, and David Sargent, 49.

- Lawndale Elementary board members Diane Bollinger, 50, and Patsy A. Roth.

- Lennox Elementary appointed incumbents Mary E. Davis and Carmen Martinez.

- Wiseburn Elementary board members Bruce C. Carl, 39, and Richard C. Wilson, 55.