Recall Is ‘Power Play’ by Builder, Curtis Says

Mission Viejo City Councilman Robert A. Curtis, targeted for recall after barely a year in office, on Friday attacked the effort to oust him as “an arrogant power play . . . to totally dominate our city” by the developer of the planned community.

Curtis, 33, was responding to charges contained in recall papers served on him by a group of three Mission Viejo residents at Monday’s council meeting. In the recall notice, they accuse him of lies, unethical conduct and single-mindedness in the pursuit of a controversial plan to annex Aegean Hills, the neighboring community in which Curtis used to live.

At a news conference Friday in the City Council chambers, Curtis, who is a lawyer, vehemently denied the charges and said he will file a libel action against the citizens’ group that made them.

Curtis asserted that the driving force behind the recall attempt is really the Mission Viejo Co., which he said objects to his stance on matters relating to growth and development.

Mission Viejo Co. company officials Friday denied any involvement with the recall effort.

The five-member City Council is now renegotiating an agreement with the company for a development to be built within the city limits. The county had already approved an agreement for the project with the developer before Mission Viejo became a city on March 31, 1988.

“I am the target of recall because I am not subservient to (the Mission Viejo Co.’s) wishes,” said Curtis, who was flanked at the news conference by family members, friends and political supporters such as Mission Viejo Mayor William S. Craycraft and Assemblyman Gil Ferguson (R-Newport Beach).

“The company wants to increase density and traffic in the city over the next 10 years. . . . They want the taxpayers to foot the bill for the roads and schools necessary to support their developments.”

A spokeswoman for the Mission Viejo Co., which sent an observer to the news conference, hotly denied that the company was behind the recall effort.

‘Diversionary Tactic’

“First of all, I think he is insulting the people who are behind the recall effort,” spokeswoman Wendy Wetzel said. “It is a diversionary tactic to make us the issue. Councilman Curtis’ actions in office are the issue.”

Helen Monroe, leader of the recall campaign, also denied that the Mission Viejo Co. has had any influence on her group’s activities.

“We are not and never have been working for them,” said Monroe, a credit manager who is forming a group called Coalition to Recall Councilman Curtis. “We are all individual citizens. Our one idea is to try and have Mission Viejo be a progressive city.”

Residents Leonard Kraus and George DuBato signed the recall papers along with Monroe.

The group has 120 days to gather signatures from at least 20% of the city’s registered voters--about 8,000 people--in order to force a special recall election. Such an election would cost about $50,000, an amount Curtis has called excessive and a waste of taxpayers’ money. Curtis’ 2-year term will expire in 1990.

Proposal Rejected

Monroe, who is a former chairwoman of Mission Viejo’s Citizens for Cityhood Committee, was also a leader in a group called the Citizens’ Action Committee, which received heavy support from the Mission Viejo Co. in the effort to prevent the City Council from annexing Aegean Hills.

The Aegean Hills proposal was rejected by the County Local Agency Formation Commission at a meeting March 1, after the City Council had voted 3-2 to withdraw its support for the proposal.

Council members Victoria C. Jaffe, Christian W. Keena and Norman P. Murray withdrew their support after a revised financial report showed that annexing Aegean Hills would not bring Mission Viejo as much new revenue as had been thought originally. Craycraft and Curtis remain avid supporters of the annexation, however, and the council has remained bitterly divided over the issue.

One of the grounds for recalling Curtis, the recall leaders charge, is that he militantly promoted the Aegean Hills annexation “for his own political purposes” by, among other things, promoting the spending of thousands of dollars of city money for lobbyists and studies relating to the proposal.

Jaffe raised the question of expenditures related to the Aegean Hills proposal at a special meeting April 8. At the time, she accused Curtis of having directed the staff to conduct a $6,800 telephone survey of Aegean Hills residents without authorization from the full council.

Other Questions

Jaffe also asked staff members about other “questionable” expenses related to the annexation issue, but former City Manager William O. Talley and Community Development Director Clint Sherrod responded that they would not answer before they could retain private attorneys. The meeting was continued until an unspecified date so that the attorneys could be hired.

Curtis has denied that he acted without the council’s authority on anything relating to the Aegean Hills proposal. He accused Jaffe of wasting taxpayers’ money by calling special meetings on the subject of these expenses.

The recall papers also accuse Curtis of being a “carpetbagger” who moved to Mission Viejo solely to run for office. Curtis has said he moved to Mission Viejo from Aegean Hills in order to be eligible for office, but he says that he has lived in or near Mission Viejo since 1967 and that he attended local schools.

Recall leaders also accuse him of having lied in order to establish residency by filing for candidacy on Aug. 26, 1987, but not moving into his Mission Viejo residence until the next day.

Curtis called that statement a falsehood and vowed to clear his name in the lawsuit he says

Unlikely Supporter

Curtis received support Friday from an unlikely source--Robert Breton, a Mission Viejo council candidate who finished sixth in the balloting in the November, 1987, incorporation election. Breton, who filed suit afterward challenging Curtis’ election, later was named by Curtis to the city Planning Commission.

Although he does not support Curtis politically, Breton said, he opposes the recall process in this case.

“None of this that I have seen are recallable offenses,” said Breton, who is now chairman of the Planning Commission.

“I think it’s going to drag our city through a blood bath. It will drain the morale of staff, and it will tear our city apart.”