Local Elections : Rolling Hills Estates Council : Bitter Fight Emerges as Family Ties, Business Partnership Are Challenged

Politics doesn’t usually raise much dust in Rolling Hills Estates, but things are different this year. The field of six City Council candidates includes three men whose close family and business relationships are being challenged by the others and a planning commissioner who jumped into the race as a write-in candidate.

On Tuesday, voters will choose three council members, who serve four-year terms without salary.

On one side of the acrimonious campaign are: Dan E. Butcher, a 70-year-old contractor; his son-in-law, financial consultant Carl Woodrow Robertson II, 43, and Councilman Peter M. Weber, 58. On the other side are: Mayor Hugh H. Muller, 59, Councilman Warren A. Schwarzmann, 65, and Planning Commissioner William H. Ailor III, 42.

Ailor said the catalyst of his late entry into race was his belief that the two in-laws and Weber are too closely allied to be independent voices on the council. The Butcher and Robertson families live in the same house.

Ailor is running on a slate with Muller and Schwarzmann, sharing the same campaign committee and making the same charges. They have been saying that Weber and Robertson have a business relationship, which has prompted Weber to write a letter to their campaign threatening to call for a county district attorney’s investigation if the assertion is not dropped.

Business Relationship Ended

Weber and Robertson were partners in an oil and gas venture in Kansas last year, but both say their business relationship has ended. Weber has been on the council for more than 13 years. He backed Butcher when the contractor ran unsuccessfully for the council two years ago and acknowledges that the three are friends. But all insist they are running separate campaigns and are independent people.

Muller and Schwarzmann have each held office for more than nine years, and Ailor has been a commissioner for five years, serving one year as chairman.

Robertson said it feels as if he, Butcher and Weber are running against the political Establishment, since their opponents have been endorsed by the two council members not up for reelection.

“The incumbents are worried about us,” he said.

Weber said the issue over his ties with Butcher and Robertson is aimed specifically at getting him out of office and has been instigated by Councilman Jerome Belsky, with whom he has clashed. Belsky was Butcher’s major target two years ago when the two ran and Belsky was reelected.

“It is just a vendetta,” Weber said.

Replied Belsky: “As usual, he doesn’t know what he is talking about.”

Belsky said he has endorsed the incumbents and Ailor because of their abilities: “Schwarzmann and Muller have done an outstanding job on the council, and Ailor is an outstanding member of our Planning Commission.”

Muller, Schwarzmann and Ailor argue that the council would be damaged by the election of three people who could not guarantee independent decisions because of their ties.

“Even if they were perfectly straightforward and independent in their thinking, it would be difficult to convince the citizens this were true,” Schwarzmann said.

As it did two years ago when he ran, Butcher’s ownership of 7 1/2 acres of open land in Rolling Hills Estates has been raised as an issue by his opponents. Over the years, his development proposals have been turned down by the city, and two years ago Butcher said he was going to sell the property. This year, he said it is for sale and he has no plans of his own for it.

City Sued Over Drainage

Butcher is suing the city, saying it is responsible for the drainage problems on the property which stem from work the city allowed to be done at the nearby Rolling Hills Country Club. He said he is not seeking monetary damages but wants to establish who should control the drainage.

Said Schwarzmann: “It is not good to have on the council people involved in real estate development and other activities involving control of property in the city.”

“The idea that Dan (Butcher) and I are running together to control the city is baloney,” said Robertson, who charged that Ailor came into the race out of loyalty to council members who appointed him to the commission.

Ailor acknowledged that Muller and Schwarzmann asked him to become a write-in candidate, but said his decision was based on his belief that the relationship between the opposing candidates makes “it virtually impossible for these three candidates to provide independent, unbiased approaches to issues of land use and development.”

Weber insists that he played no role in Butcher and Robertson becoming candidates, and he said he believes he can overcome any damage that may have come from assertions about their ties: “I’ve been around a long time, people know I’m an independent man, I am not a part of any groups. My basic concern is common sense and fairness.”

The repeated charges have so angered the three that Weber wrote a letter to the Committee to Elect Muller, Schwarzmann, Ailor saying that he and Robertson no longer have business ties and that if that assertion continues to be made, he will ask for a district attorney’s investigation.

Butcher, a community resident for 34 years and owner of a Torrance building company, said he had no plans to run but changed his mind “at the last minute” because of school closures by the Palos Verdes Peninsula Unified School District. He believes that the school-age population will grow, making the schools needed.

Robertson also is talking about school closures, which has prompted some of their opponents to say that they sound as if they’re running for the school board, not the council.

While acknowledging that the council is not the agency running the schools, Butcher contends that “the city has plenty to say about (school closings) if it wants to.”

Responded Schwarzmann: “He says we can make it difficult for the board to sell property. I was not elected to the council to make school board decisions more difficult.”

3 Schools Shut

The district has closed seven schools since 1980 and six of them have been leased, sold or put to other district uses. The future of a seventh one that was shut in June, 43-acre Dapplegray Intermediate School, has not been decided by the school board. It has become a major concern in the city. Some advocate that the city should acquire the land--which would require a voter-approved bond issue. Others say the city should settle for 10 acres of open space under a development agreement being negotiated that would take effect if the property were developed.

Dapplegray has become an election issue, with the Muller-Schwarzmann-Ailor ticket favoring the agreement out of skepticism that bonds would be approved, and the other side urging that a bond issue be attempted to allow purchase of the entire site.

Butcher’s announced plans to spend $6,000 to $7,000 on his campaign have drawn criticism from the other side, where candidates say their joint campaign committee plans to spend $3,000. Robertson said he will spend up to $1,500, and Weber about $1,000.

Robertson, who has lived in the city for five years and owns a financial consulting business in Torrance, said he managed Butcher’s campaign two years ago and decided then to run for the council on his own.

Robertson said that with his four years in the Navy, 10 years in the Navy Reserve, a stint as an auditor with the U.S. Treasury Department and accounting and bookkeeping experience, he has “a lot to offer the city,” particularly in the area of city finances. He has served on the city traffic circulation subcommittee, but has never run for office.

‘Different Point of View’

Ailor, an engineer at Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo and a city resident for eight years, said that as a resident of the town home and condominium area at the top of the Peninsula, he represents a “different point of view” than other council members who live farther down the hill.

He said that as founder and chairman of a planning group that looks into common issues of the four Peninsula cities, he is an advocate of the cities working more closely together.

Muller, Schwarzmann and Weber all say they want another term to finish the tasks they have begun.

Muller, a resident of the city for 17 years, has just sold his aerospace coating company in Placentia and remains board chairman. He said he is concerned about traffic safety and restoring views that have been lost because of overgrown trees.

The council has passed guidelines to accomplish this voluntarily, but Muller wants them in ordinance form. “I still have some things to do,” he said.

Said Schwarzmann, a city resident for 25 years, “I’ve been effective on the council, able to maintain the quality of life and atmosphere in the city that I enjoy, and I feel I can continue to do that.” He is an electrical engineer who works on satellite communications at TRW in Redondo Beach.

He said the city has built a courteous staff and the council has “listened to citizens, responding to what is best for the city.”

Weber, a 27-year resident of the community and a senior vice president at Capital Bank in Torrance, said: “There are a few things I would like to see take place,” including development of a golf course atop the county sanitary landfill on Crenshaw Boulevard, a decision on development of the old Chandler quarry, where an ambitious housing proposal has been on the drawing boards for a long time, and settling the future of the Dapplegray school site.

“My concern is fiscal responsibility,” he said. “The city is in good shape. It has not incurred any debt, and it is the policy of the council not to.”