MOST UNCIVIL : Slow-Growth Backers in Manhattan Beach Say Foes of Initiative Are Harassing Them

Manhattan Beach politics, usually civil, has turned catty.

In recent weeks, supporters of a slow-growth initiative have sparred verbally with opponents in supermarket parking lots and the City Council chambers, charging that they are being harassed as they work to qualify the measure for the ballot.

On one side of the spat is Mayor Bob Holmes, who initiative supporters say is guilty of crashing one of their meetings, improperly using city stationery to attack the measure and behaving boorishly. The mayor says he has done nothing wrong and never meant to be rude. The dispute has split the council, with two of its members supporting the initiative.

Councilman Gil Archuletta, who supports the measure, finds the bickering on both sides regrettable. “I am surprised people would stoop so low in Manhattan Beach, which I have always considered the jewel of the South Bay,” he said. “I am appalled by these types of actions taking place in our nice, quiet city.”

The most public battlegrounds have been the parking lots of the city’s supermarkets. Last Saturday morning, volunteers for both sides were at Ralphs market in the Manhattan Village mall to catch the crush of weekend shoppers. Opponents were passing out flyers denouncing the measure, while initiative supporters were gathering the signatures needed to place it before the voters.

At mid-afternoon, police were called to the market by initiative supporter Bruce Ponder, who told officers that a member of the opposing camp kept butting in as he tried to talk to shoppers. No arrests were made.

“I just flat out am not going to take this harassment,” Ponder proclaimed afterward.

A self-employed management consultant, Ponder is a spokesman for the Neighborhood Protection Committee, whose hard-core membership consists of about 20 residents, plus volunteers. The members banded together late last year and drafted the initiative.

The group, which won’t say how many signatures it already has, needs to collect 2,240 registered voters’ names--or 10% of the city’s total--by Monday to qualify the measure for the county ballot in June. The deadline for the April municipal election ballot has already passed.

Unhappy with recent council decisions on development issues, Ponder and other members of the group argue that the measure is needed to keep the community’s residential neighborhoods intact and to control commercial development.

“This is not a no-growth measure,” Steve Alexander, the committee’s other spokesman, said. “It is just about putting some reasonable limits on construction.”

If it becomes law, the initiative would impose a 26-foot height limit on new buildings in the city except for the so-called “beach area” and the Manhattan Village mall. It would also shrink that beach area, where homes can now be built to a maximum height of 30 feet.

The beach area is now officially defined as all property west of Valley Drive. However, the initiative would redefine it to include only property west of Highland Boulevard.

“We want to put some saner guidelines down there so we don’t have a valley of the giants,” Alexander said.

Opponents of the measure argue that existing height limitations are already adequate. Commercial buildings downtown, including the beach area, are now limited to 26 feet, while those along Sepulveda Boulevard may not exceed 30 feet.

Opponents also contend that it is wrong to redefine the beach area. “In the beach area the lots are smaller,” Holmes said. “That is why for over 40 years the people have been allowed a higher height limit than in other parts of the city.”

City officials say they have not determined how many property owners--living in the beach area between Valley and Highland--would face a reduction in how high they could build their homes. But Holmes and other initiative opponents put the number at about 1,000.

They say that they decided to immediately denounce the initiative rather than to see if it qualified for the ballot. As such, they formed a political action committee, Residents Opposed to the Neighborhood Protection Initiative, to write and distribute flyers and newspaper advertisements critical of the proposal.

Local Ad Campaign

The group Thursday took out a full-page advertisement in the city’s weekly paper, The Beach Reporter. It urged residents who signed a petition to put the initiative on the ballot but have changed their minds to contact the city clerk and have their names taken off.

The ad provided readers with coupons to fill out with their name and then mail to the clerk.

The trench warfare at supermarket lots, though, is what has led proponents to cry loudest, some charging that their rights have been infringed.

Slow-growth advocates contend that on a number of occasions, they have been harassed by opponents who wait until they are talking to a shopper, then interrupt. Included among those who behaved that way, according to James May, was Holmes. May said the mayor stepped between him and shoppers four times over a 90-minute period one afternoon several weeks ago.

“Whether it was legal or not, it was rude,” he added.

“What they are trying to do is stop the circulation of the petition and keep the matter off the ballot,” spokesman Alexander charged. “I think it’s a violation of the democratic system.”

Holmes and other initiative opponents concede that they have approached shoppers but deny they have harassed anyone or been discourteous.

“They have a First Amendment right to ask a person to sign a petition and the opponents have a First Amendment right to ask them not to,” said Steven Mitchell, one of the opponents. “I don’t consider two sides representing their views to the citizens of the city as harassment.”

The district attorney’s office, at the request of initiative supporters, is investigating to determine if election laws have been violated.

The two sides have clashed elsewhere. In early January, supporters held a meeting at the county lifeguard building in town to tell supporters how to properly obtain voter signatures.

Terri Mamane, who helped organize the meeting, said some of the measure’s opponents showed up, and were politely told that the meeting was private. But some of them refused to leave, she said.

Those outside “pounded on the windows with their fists--we could not hear the speaker,” Mamane said. “We decided that since they were not going to let us have our meeting we had to let them in. I thought, ‘What is going on here, this is supposed to be America.’ Not only that, Manhattan Beach residents are, for the most part, educated people.”

‘Informational’ Meeting

Holmes was among those opponents who attended the meeting but was not involved in the window-pounding incident. He later defended his right to be there because a flyer written by the measure’s supporters described the meeting as “informational” in nature.

“I could only draw the conclusion that it was a public meeting in a public facility,” Holmes said, adding that he sat in the front row and “didn’t say boo.”

During a heated City Council session last week, Holmes was accused by the measure’s proponents of improperly using city stationery to criticize the initiative. They asserted that by using the stationery, Holmes was giving many residents the impression that all council members oppose it.

Besides Archuletta, Councilwoman Jan Dennis supports the measure. Holmes and council members Connie Sieber and Larry Dougharty oppose it.

The mayor said he used the stationery as a cover sheet for a newsletter that he regularly sends at his own expense to more than 400 residents. He expressed doubt that residents would infer from the letter that his views represented those of other council members, even though their names appeared on the letterhead.

“It has been the practice of past mayors to use stationary with the names of city officials on it,” Holmes said. “We do not have personalized stationary.”

Initiative supporters say they will continue their signature-collecting efforts this weekend at local shopping centers and are confident they will succeed.

“We have absolutely no fears at this time about qualifying the measure for the ballot,” he said.

Holmes, meanwhile, said that he will not venture out Saturday or Sunday to talk to local shoppers. “I am praying for rain,” he said.