San Diego Plans New Honor for Martin Luther King Jr.

Elected officials said Wednesday they would move quickly to name some other street or structure for slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. after a citywide vote to strip his name from a major downtown thoroughfare.

National and local black leaders said the decision by 60% of the city’s voters to replace Martin Luther King Way with Market Street was racially motivated. They warned that the decision could lead to the same kind of boycott aimed at Arizona, where Gov. Evan Mecham rescinded a state King holiday.

“Frankly, it shows that racism is alive and well in the ‘enlightened’ state of California,” said Althea Simmons, Washington lobbyist for the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

But Mayor Maureen O’Connor disagreed, saying that San Diegans voted for tradition and to express dissatisfaction with the way the council handled the issue.

The ballot measure to strip King’s name from the street was organized by a group of downtown merchants who said they were not properly notified before the City Council approved the change in April, 1986. They also contended that Market Street was a historic name used for the street since 1915 and said the name change confused their customers and was inconvenient.

O’Connor said she and her fellow council members would move quickly “but cautiously” to name something else after King, perhaps an unfinished downtown convention center or some other public building. San Diego tourism officials said Wednesday that they received no complaints or cancellations because of the vote.

Meanwhile, two Democrats and two Republicans were elected Tuesday to four open seats on the eight-person San Diego City Council.

The new council members--architect Ron Roberts, political aide Wes Pratt, lawyer Bruce Henderson and history professor Bob Filner--won in one of the most expensive council races in city history. As much as $2 million may have been spent in the primary and runoff campaigns for the $45,000-a-year posts.

Turnover on the council has raised questions about O’Connor’s ability to hold a working majority, but the mayor said she expects to be able to work well with the new council members who will take office next month.

Transportation officials were laying plans to spend the $2.25 billion they will receive over the next 20 years as a result of voter approval of the county’s first sales tax increase.

“We’re ecstatic,” said former state Sen. James Mills, chairman of the Metropolitan Transit Development Board. “It’s very difficult to get people to vote for an increase in taxes. It’s the hardest thing you can do politically.”

Sales Tax Increase

Fed up with growing freeway congestion, 53.1% of San Diego voters approved Proposition A, raising the sales tax to 6.5% from 6%. The money will be split among mass transit projects, highways and local road improvements.

A big winner is the county trolley system, which will use its share to add 33.6 miles to its current 20-mile network. Also coming in for funds are commuter rail services, new highways, better local roads and mass-transit discounts for seniors, the disabled and students.

Elsewhere around the state, Del Mar voters handily rejected what would have been the nation’s toughest anti-smoking ordinance. The proposed law would have banned smoking in all public places, including streets, alleys, sidewalks and other outdoor areas. Nearly 65% of those voting rejected the proposal.

In southern Orange County, the groundwork was already being laid Wednesday in Mission Viejo for a smooth transition into cityhood on the day after 57% of the voters there agreed to incorporate their planned community.

The five charter council members of the new city met to discuss what to do before March 31, when the city, which will be Orange County’s 37th municipality, formally is founded and municipal services are transferred from the county to the city.

Mayoral Race

In San Francisco, mayoral front-runner Art Agnos savored his unexpectedly strong finish in Tuesday’s primary but wasted little time marshaling his army of 1,700 precinct workers for a monthlong runoff campaign that early opinion polls indicate he will win by a wide margin.

Meanwhile, Agnos’ runoff rival, Supervisor John L. Molinari--who ended with about half of Agnos’ 48% share of the votes--took measures to combat his opponent’s margin. He fired several top campaign workers and pledged to fight “those who represent darkness and doom,” an apparent reference to Agnos.

San Francisco voters, meanwhile, opposed a proposal to return to district elections; 56% decided in favor of continuing citywide elections for the 11-member city Board of Supervisors.

Voters in San Mateo County, south of San Francisco, agreed to join the Bay Area Rapid Transit District. The 61% favorable vote, which allows the county to open negotiations with the mass-transit agency, is the first step toward extending the BART subway to San Francisco International Airport.

Alameda County officials breathed a sigh of relief on learning that fully 79% of voters there agreed to let the county spend all the tax money it has raised, ignoring a spending cap imposed by the 1979 Gann initiative.

Palo Alto voters, having handily dispensed with a nuclear-freeze proposal that would have forced the city to shun suppliers who also worked on nuclear weapons projects, also supported an increase in the city’s Gann limit with a 57.2% majority.

Others More Successful

Other nuclear-freeze proposals, however, were more successful. Nearly 55% of San Francisco voters approved an ordinance calling on the city to oppose “and, if possible, prevent” commercial activities involving nuclear hazards. The measure is intended to prevent the nuclear-armed battleship Missouri from being based in the city.

In perhaps the most interesting anti-nuclear vote, 57% of Santa Barbara’s voters approved a measure calling on Mayor Sheila Lodge to write a letter to President Reagan, a sometime resident of the Santa Barbara area, calling on him to respect existing nuclear arms control treaties, work for further such measures--and abandon his “Star Wars” program in favor of increasing social programs at home.

“To have a measure like this, the first in the nation, passed by his neighbors is a pretty resounding blow to the Reagan policy,” said Chris Brown, spokesman for Sane Freeze, a sponsor of the measure. “Symbolically, it’s very important that the first time the American people had a chance to vote on Star Wars, they said ‘no.’ ”

Times staff writers Leonard Bernstein, Barry M. Horstman, Anthony Perry, Mariann Hansen, Dana Nichols and Norma Kaufman contributed to this article.