Lawndale Axes Chamber of Commerce Funds

Members of the Lawndale Chamber of Commerce are wondering how long their organization can survive now that the City Council has withheld the $70,000 it expected to receive from the city this year.

The money is nearly two-thirds of the chamber’s $110,000 budget for 1988-89, officials said.

Chamber Director Jerry Enis said Friday the chamber can survive the loss of the $70,000 “for a while,” but said he could make no promises about whether the chamber can go on with its Miss Lawndale Pageant in November.

During a break in a turbulent 6 1/2-hour meeting Thursday night, as chamber members gathered in groups, one chamber supporter privately proposed a recall of the three-member council majority that cut the chamber’s funding.

In an interview Friday, Chamber President Mel Greenstein declined comment on a possible recall drive, but said chamber officials will meet early next week to decide how to respond to the council’s action.

Councilmen Harold E. Hofmann, Larry Rudolph and Dan McKenzie prevailed over Mayor Sarann Kruse and Councilwoman Carol Norman to eliminate city financial support for the chamber.

This is the second time in two years that the council has debated chamber funding. In 1986, Hofmann, Rudolph and McKenzie outvoted Kruse and then-Councilman Terry W. Birdsall in cutting chamber funds. A month later the council reversed itself and voted unanimously to restore the funds.

In several pointed exchanges between members of the council and the chamber Thursday night, Hofmann complained that he has repeatedly been rebuffed by the chamber in requests to see the organization’s complete budget.

“I’m not going to support anything (for the chamber) until I get a budget,” he said.

Chamber officials have given the council a detailed accounting of expenses for four community events they put on under a $25,000 city contract, but they contend that their general operating budget is none of the council’s business. “They are totally separate,” Greenstein said.

Hofmann grilled chamber officials on how many members the organization has and how many are based in Lawndale. He said that of 194 names he obtained from the chamber through a city staff request, 48 had addresses outside of Lawndale. Chamber officials said at an earlier meeting that there are about 1,100 businesses in Lawndale.

A rival business group, which includes former chamber members who left the organization in a power struggle a few years ago, introduced itself to the council Thursday night. Members of the group--the Lawndale Businessmen’s Assn.--made a bid for the $70,000.

“We think we can do a better job than the chamber has done or is willing to do,” said Edmund Hloshyk, one of its organizers.

Neither the association nor the chamber received funding Thursday when the council, in a 4-1 vote, adopted a $7-million budget for 1988-89.

Norman cast the dissenting vote to protest what she described as unnecessarily harsh cutbacks made at a budget hearing in July. Hofmann, McKenzie and Rudolph, citing the city’s loss of $1.68 million last year in a disastrous securities investment, cut several items from the budget, including staffing and overtime in the city clerk’s office, a reorganization of the Public Works Department, employee training and a secretary to the city manager.

Still, the council majority ended up increasing the proposed budget by about $28,000 because $120,000 was added to beef up sheriff’s protection and establish a community safety program.

The city’s proposed budget contained two sources of funds for the Chamber of Commerce, both of which were deleted: $25,000 for four community events the chamber organizes for the city, and $45,000 from a 25% surcharge on the city’s business license tax.

The council, at a confrontational meeting with the chamber Aug. 11, asked the staff to evaluate whether the city could put on the events--the Miss Lawndale Pageant, Santa’s Sleigh, Man and Woman of the Year and Youth Day Parade--as inexpensively as the chamber.

Recreation Director Brady Cherry said Thursday he would not recommend that the city take over the events. To do so would take a great deal of staff time, he said, and the savings would be minimal.

But Rudolph said he is “not convinced” that the city could not do the events more economically. Even if no money was saved, city sponsorship would give local officials more control, he said in an interview Friday.

Rudolph also said he would like to restrict entry in the Miss Lawndale Pageant to city residents.

Marlise Richardos, Miss Lawndale of 1986, became Miss Lomita the following year and won the Miss California title. Last year, in what resident Nancy J. Marthens called Lawndale’s “Rent-a-Queen” contest, the Miss Lawndale title was won by Valencia Bilyeu, an Irvine resident.

The fate of the 1988 Miss Lawndale contest, billed as “not a beauty contest” but a scholarship program, was uncertain Friday with the elimination of the chamber’s $25,000 contract. Of that amount, nearly $15,000 was for the pageant.

“It hurts the girls, it hurts the city, it hurts the business community and the community at large when (council members) take that type of attitude,” Enis said. The chamber must decide next week what to do about the November pageant; it has already solicited applications and set a Sept. 15 deadline.

In addition, Enis said he believes the council acted illegally in eliminating $45,000 the chamber expected to receive from the 25% surcharge. That surcharge was agreed to by the business community in 1984 with the understanding that the money would be earmarked for the chamber, he said.

On Aug. 11, former Councilmen Birdsall and James Ramsey testified that this was the council’s understanding also when the surcharge was enacted in 1984.

Ramsey said he believes the withholding of the surcharge money from the chamber would be grounds for a lawsuit.

City Atty. David J. Aleshire told the council that it could draw up a contract giving the chamber money from the business license surcharge in exchange for such services as promoting the city’s economy. But he said the council cannot automatically turn over tax money to a private organization such as the chamber.

“We are not in the business of raising taxes for a private entity,” Aleshire said.