Recall Crusader Targets Hermosa Council Again

A Hermosa Beach political activist has served recall notices on four of the five City Council members, saying they disregarded voters’ wishes by placing a development measure on the ballot next November.

The activist, Parker Herriott, has filed recall notices in the past against five previous council members--twice against two of them--but never collected enough signatures to get on a ballot.

Herriott’s latest recall petitions say that the four council members--Jim Rosenberger, Etta Simpson, Roger Creighton and Chuck Sheldon--should be recalled because they “cannot be trusted to abide by and honor election results.”

In statements filed with the city clerk’s office, all four council members defended their decision to put the measure on the November ballot.

In an interview, Herriott said he is upset because the four council members decided to ask voters in November whether the city’s only vacant beachfront property, known as the Biltmore Site, should be zoned and sold for a hotel development.

Voters previously rejected four other hotel proposals for the site--the last time in 1985 by a tie vote. Many residents believe, however, that voters rejected that project because it involved public financing. The current proposal does not.

Two Other Options

In their replies to the recall notices, Rosenberger, Simpson and Sheldon noted that the council put two other alternatives for the site on the November ballot, asking voters whether the property should be sold as residential or commercial. The measure that receives the highest number of yes votes--as long as it has a majority--will be enacted by the council.

When the council put the three measures on the ballot, it rejected a last-minute proposal by Herriott to ask voters whether the site should be zoned open space and retained as a city park.

Councilwoman June Williams, the only member spared a recall notice from Herriott, was the only one to favor putting the open-space measure on the ballot and the lone vote against calling for a vote on the hotel option.

Rosenberger, who is serving in the largely ceremonial post of mayor, said in his statement: “Will Rogers is purported to have said that he ‘never met a man he didn’t like.’ The same cannot be said of recall petitioner Parker Herriott. His actions over the past several years involving other recalls and lawsuits (all futile) would, seemingly, qualify him for the distinction of never having met a council person he liked.”

City Clerk Kathleen Midstokke approved the recall petitions last week. Herriott must collect signatures of 20%, or 2,540, of the city’s registered voters within four months. If he does, an election would probably be held next May, Midstokke said.

The terms of Rosenberger and Simpson expire in November, 1989; Creighton and Sheldon were elected last November. All terms are for four years.

In his statement, Creighton extolled the virtues of maintaining the right to be self-governed. He ended by writing: “Parker’s notice to recall states his thoughts. I find his thinking so tortured it is undeserving of a response.”

In 1985, Herriott put all five council members then in office on notice of recall, but he stopped circulating the petitions before he had collected enough signatures.

In April, 1987, he served then-Councilmen Tony DeBellis and John Cioffi for the second time with recall notices, but Herriott acknowledged this week that he never bothered to circulate the petitions. If a recall election would have been held, it would have been at the same time DeBellis’ and Cioffi’s terms expired. Cioffi did not seek reelection; DeBellis did, but was unsuccessful.

“I didn’t put the effort forward,” Herriott said of his two previous recall efforts. “There were other things in my life that were more important than the City Council buffoons.”

‘Mistakes Were Made’

And, as for the petitions, he said, “There were deadlines to meet; there were mistakes that were made.”

In an interview, he said he takes credit for the fact that the other council members whom he served with recall notices are no longer on the council. “Even a recall notice has a way of calling attention to what the City Council is doing that people may find objectionable,” he said.

Asked if he planned to circulate the petitions for the recall of the four current council members, he said, “Sure. Absolutely. There’s no doubt.”

Herriott also has published a legal notice stating his intent to collect signatures to put an initiative on a future ballot that would preserve the Biltmore Site as open space. The only way that could happen is if all three Biltmore measures fail.

He has until early March to collect enough signatures to put the open-space issue to a vote. If he collects signatures of 15%, or 1,905, of the registered voters, a special election will be called. If he collects only 10%, or 1,270 signatures, the issue would be voted on at the city’s next general election--November, 1989.