Slow-Growth Backer Named to San Gabriel City Council

It’s bury-the-hatchet time in this city, which has been shaken for the past year by rancorous political rivalries.

Three new councilmen, who were elected on a slow-growth platform, were joined by an old nemesis on the council Tuesday in selecting a fourth slow-growth activist to fill a vacancy in their ranks.

Ted Anderson, who managed the campaign that brought the new slow-growth majority to the council, was unanimously selected to replace former Mayor Janis Cohen. Cohen resigned April 21 in protest of the new councilmen’s unilateral decision to hire a controversial transition team.

“This shows that the campaign is water over the bridge,” said Anderson, who is a human services administrator with the National Council on Aging. “Now we can get on with the business at hand.”

Solid Majority

With Anderson on the council, the city’s numerous slow-growth advocates have a solid four-man majority. Mayor John Tapp and Councilmen Frank Blaszcak and James Castaneda were elected on a slate endorsed by the grass-roots group Citizens For Responsible Development (CFRD).

But in a surprise move at Tuesday’s council meeting, it was holdover Councilman Sabino Cici who nominated Anderson for the council.

Cici had been a major voice in opposing the winning slate in the April election, which many political leaders described as the dirtiest in memory. Anderson managed the campaigns of the three successful candidates for the grass-roots organization, which Cici had characterized as a group of “radical extremists.”

But at Tuesday’s meeting, Cici was conciliatory. “We’ve been on opposite sides of the fence for the past 20 years or so,” he said of Anderson. “I might as well put him right next to me.”

Anderson was sworn in at Tuesday’s meeting.

Focus of Controversy

The council also selected J. Kenneth Brown as San Gabriel’s city attorney, a post which had been the focus of recent controversy. Brown, a partner in the Los Angeles firm of Brown, Winfield & Canzoneri, is the city attorney for Norwalk and Cerritos, and his firm represents Monterey Park.

He replaces Graham A. Ritchie, who was a campaign issue because of his outspoken opinions against CFRD initiatives. The three winning candidates had pledged to fire Ritchie.

But when Ritchie resigned under pressure two weeks after the election, the new council majority became embroiled in controversy when it appointed an Orange County attorney and a West Covina consultant, both with ties to development-minded Irwindale, as a “transition team.”

The surprise move, apparently agreed to secretly before the three new councilmen were sworn in, precipitated Cohen’s resignation and unleashed a flurry of criticism from some of their own supporters.

The two appointees--interim City Atty. R. Zaiden Corrado and consultant Xavier Hermosillo--resigned under pressure two weeks ago.

The selection process that led to Brown’s appointment was yet another indication of Cici’s new conciliatory attitude. He and Blaszcak both participated in the selection committee, which included City Administrator Robert Clute and citizen appointees Don Brittingham and Greg O’Sullivan.

“Councilman Cici was a tremendous help,” said Blaszcak, the committee’s chairman.

With Anderson on board, the council is expected to move quickly to update the city’s General Plan in an effort to stop further apartment or condominium development.

“That’s your road map,” Anderson said of the General Plan. “It shows what you anticipate your city to be.”

The city is five months into a one-year building moratorium that was overwhelmingly approved by the voters last December. The council and the Planning Commission are under pressure to revise the General Plan before the moratorium expires.

Odds-On Favorite

Anderson, who was selected from a field of eight candidates, had been the odds-on favorite to serve the two years remaining in Cohen’s term. A former planning commissioner, Anderson had run unsuccessfully for the City Council three times since 1962. He was an early candidate in the April election, but dropped out to manage the Citizens For Responsible Development campaign.

“I wanted to bring about a change,” he said. “I didn’t want to split the vote.”

Some citizens spoke out at the meeting for “a woman’s voice” on the council and for “broadening your base” by selecting a non-CFRD candidate. Five of the eight candidates had ties to Citizens For Responsible Development.

But at least one of the organization’s two co-chairman had endorsed Anderson before Tuesday’s meeting. “He was saying things years ago that we’re saying now,” said Gary Meredith, who shares the leadership of the group with O’Sullivan.

Cici indicated that he would not obstruct slow-growth policies advocated by his colleagues. He said he had favored slow-growth policies all along, though he had doubts about CFRD-initiated restraints on commercial development.

“But we’ve got a lot of common ground on the issues,” he said.