Owner Said Unwilling to Lease Pasadena Site for State Parole Office

The owner of a controversial site for a parole office here says he has no intention of leasing the building to the state Department of Corrections, City Manager Donald F. McIntyre told the city Board of Directors this week.

McIntyre said the owner of the building at 468 N. Rosemead Blvd. told city Development Director William Reynolds that he has lined up other tenants and will rent to them instead of leasing the building as a parole office. The property owner could not be reached to confirm McIntyre’s report, and Reynolds is on vacation.

Mayor William E. Thomson Jr. said the city has received conflicting information from the landlord and the Department of Corrections, which claims to have completed negotiations on rental terms. “I am not confident of anything at this point,” Thomson said.

Officials of the Youth and Adult Correctional Agency in Sacramento assured the city last week that they would not sign a lease on the building until the city of Pasadena and Hastings Ranch homeowners, who have strongly protested the proposed location, had time to find an alternative.

Jerry DiMaggio, regional administrator with the Department of Corrections, said the Rosemead Boulevard building is the department’s preferred site on a list of five possible locations in Pasadena.

Disclosure last week that City Director Jess Hughston, who represents the Hastings Ranch area, had welcomed the parole office to Pasadena created a storm of protest.

In a Feb. 6 letter to a Department of Corrections official, Hughston said that the Police Department had only minor objections, that other directors had left the site decision up to him and that the site would be convenient in many ways.

Since then, other directors have said that Hughston did not consult them; the Police Department has declared its opposition to the site, and Hughston has said that he erred in writing the letter. Contents of the letter were not known by the public until it was released by city officials last week.

“I know I made a mistake,” Hughston said this week in an interview. He said he had not anticipated community concern about the parole office and had been “completely misled about the gravity of this situation.” He said that once he realized the problems the parole office would present at that location, he reversed his position. “I now believe I was wrong,” he said.

Jim Plotkin, who lives in the Hastings Ranch area, asked the city board Tuesday to conduct a public hearing on Hughston’s actions and consider censure or some form of reprimand. City Atty. Victor Kaleta said there is no procedure in the city code for board members to censure their colleagues.

No Action Expected

None of the directors defended or criticized Hughston at the meeting. Afterward, Thomson said he did not expect any move to censure or reprimand Hughston. Director Rick Cole said the Feb. 6 letter, accepting a parole office without consulting the public, represented a rare exception to Hughston’s strong commitment to open government, and he sees no inclination on the board to pursue the matter.

Harold Britton, president of the Lower Hastings Ranch Homeowners Assn., said that although members were upset when they read Hughston’s Feb. 6 letter, the group does not plan to take any action against him but will concentrate its energies on keeping the parole office out of the residential area.

The Pasadena office would replace an office on Garvey Avenue in Alhambra, near the border with Monterey Park, that will be closed by Oct. 1 because of complaints by nearby residents and by the two cities that crime has increased in the neighborhood.

DiMaggio said the Department of Corrections agreed to the move without conceding a correlation between crime and parole offices.