Torrance’s Search for City Attorney Over; Santa Barbara Lawyer Hired

After a statewide search that lasted for months, the Torrance City Council has chosen Santa Barbara County Counsel Kenneth L. Nelson as its new city attorney, effective Dec. 1.

Nelson will replace Stanley E. Remelmeyer, who is retiring Nov. 30 after serving as city attorney for 32 years.

His selection was formally approved Tuesday night, although he was offered the job late last Friday after council members conducted interviews with three finalists at a closed-door executive session.

Nelson will be paid $95,500 a year plus a 10% benefit package and use of a city car. A former city attorney in Hawthorne, he was selected from a large field of candidates interested in the top legal job in the South Bay’s largest city.

Remelmeyer said it “speaks awfully well for us” that someone like Nelson would give up a “very prestigious position” in Santa Barbara--a place many believe is “close to paradise”--to serve in Torrance.

He said Nelson is “a solid person and a solid lawyer” who is “intellectually honest and has got quite a track record.”

Mayor Katy Geissert said Nelson has “a very distinguished and diversified background” and a reputation as a good manager.

The 51-year-old attorney has been the chief legal adviser to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors since January, 1981. Prior to that, he served for 10 years as city attorney in Hawthorne.

In an interview, Nelson said he sees the move back to the South Bay as “going back home again.”

Nelson said he did not seek the Torrance job, but was approached by the city’s executive search firm and asked to apply. “They found me,” he said. “The idea of doing something different” was important to him, Nelson said. He said he accepted the job because “Torrance is a very important city,” and they offered “a better economic package.”

Nelson said one of his strongest interests is redevelopment, which he called “a wonderful tool” that “makes almost everyone happy.”

He noted that Torrance, which has an active city redevelopment agency, is changing as a result of what he called “positive development. . . . Some of the old smoke-stack industry is gone.”

While in Hawthorne, Nelson was active in efforts to move the Century Freeway route out of the middle of the city to its northern boundary.

Nelson got his professional start on the legal staff of the Los Angeles Department of Airports. He said he acquired “a lot of background on airport noise and development problems”--another issue of importance to Torrance.

In Santa Barbara, Nelson said he has had considerable experience dealing with on-shore development associated with oil drilling off the coast. However, he said, he had very little knowledge of Torrance’s recent experiences with explosions and fires at the Mobil Oil Corp. refinery, the city’s largest private property owner and taxpayer. “I know it’s a problem,” he said.

Nelson’s only experience in the private sector was a two-year stint from 1969 to 1971 as assistant West Coast regional counsel for ITT Corp.

He was president of the County Counsels Assn. of California last year and is a former president of the Inglewood Bar Assn. He is married to an attorney, Maria J. Nelson, and has two adult children.