W. Hollywood Voters to Settle New Civic Center Dispute Tuesday

The most pitched and divisive political battle in the city of West Hollywood’s five-year history will be settled Tuesday when voters decide whether to build a $23-million civic center in West Hollywood Park.

The groups behind two competing initiatives bear similar names, and each claims to be the savior of the park, but comparisons end there. The Save Our Parks Coalition ballot measure would ban the city from building in the park. An initiative sponsored by People for West Hollywood Parks calls for the civic center, complete with offices and council chambers, to be built in the park.

Opponents of the civic center, led by Councilman Steve Schulte, call it an extravagant, wasteful monument to a city government barely 5 years old. They say it is a potentially expensive boondoggle that will reduce the city’s already tiny park acreage and could cost a lot more than $23 million.

Councilman John Heilman is leading pro-civic center forces who say it will provide a much-needed home for city government, revive a park beset by crime and drug problems, and eventually save the city millions of dollars in rent for office space.

Schulte and Heilman--who frequently clash on other issues--stop short of calling this a referendum on their respective styles, but they acknowledge that the civic center fight has exacerbated the tension between them.

Opponents of the project hope a vote in their favor would also have a coattail effect of encouraging fiscal responsibility and chipping away at a Heilman-led council majority that “doesn’t listen to its people.”

“Our issue from the beginning was strictly the park, not (council elections) in 1990. But it is also an outrageous amount of money that we don’t have, a squander of reserves. We are going to be in debt if we build this,” said Save Our Parks Coalition Chairman Tom Larkin. “This is a vote begging (the council majority) to listen. If we win, things will change; they will have to start listening to their constituents.”

Opponents have said the proposed civic center would remove invaluable park space in violation of a city law. The project would remove a public swimming pool and public auditorium with no plans to replace them, and opponents say a proposed landscaped area within the complex cannot be considered recreational space.

But City Atty. Michael Jenkins has issued a lengthy legal opinion finding that the Schulte-sponsored initiative illegally prevents the city government from exercising its right to govern public property. On the basis of that opinion, Heilman and Councilwoman Helen Albert have said that they do not intend to be bound by the Schulte initiative if it passes. If both pass, the measure with the most votes would be implemented.

From the beginning of the battle, anti-civic center forces have claimed the “grass-roots” turf on the issue. Their proposition to keep the civic center out of the park was placed on the ballot with a petition last spring containing over 3,200 signatures, after missing on a first attempt.

The Heilman-sponsored initiative was placed on the ballot by a 4-1 vote of the City Council after the Schulte measure qualified.

Opponents say that pro-civic center forces have reached outside the city to find precinct walkers and people to work their phones, indicating a campaign struggling to find converts within its own community.

Students at the UCLA Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning found notes offering $7 an hour to work for the pro-civic center forces stuffed in their mailboxes last week. The flyers, put out by a consultant for the pro-civic center side, begin: “Attention for those interested in money . . . “

“We haven’t had to pay anybody at this point to do anything except our mail,” Schulte said. “I think it shows how much trouble they are having getting their people out.”

Heilman denied that the flyers indicated a lack of support for the civic center, and said it is often the case that voters who are satisfied with the status quo--in this case the council majority--are harder to mobilize.

“A lot of people think (the council members) are doing a good job, and they are not as easy to recruit as angry people,” Heilman said.

The most recent financial disclosure statements, up to Oct. 21, indicate a relatively inexpensive campaign so far. The pro-civic center forces report receiving just over $5,000. The opposition reports nearly $7,000.

But with a series of slick mailers, often costing as much as $2,000 to distribute, coming from each side, it seems likely that last-minute donations and reports will swell the cost of the campaign.

Opposition mailers have been focused primarily on park preservation, but much of the early effort attacked the fiscal aspects of the expensive project and raised the specter that the city would have to assess new taxes to pay for its “palace in the park.”

“They tell people there will be no new taxes for this, but they have already gotten the business license tax, and the increased parking meter fees. They are taking from one pot to put in the other,” Larkin said.

As the election nears, the opposition has latched on to a number of side issues to win support, and pro-civic center forces have fought off assaults from many sides. When the Schulte camp mobilized a number of senior citizens and a gay swim team that use the public pool that would be destroyed under the civic center proposal, Heilman began talking about how it could be replaced. Though a pool was originally included in the plans, it was scrapped when the plan ran into budget restrictions.

“They never even thought about the pool until we made it an issue,” Schulte said.

But Heilman and others accuse the opponents of trying to open a non-existent Pandora’s box of complaints just to run contrary to the city government. He cited a recent news conference at which opponents advocated building a slightly less expensive, far less elaborate, City Hall at Johnson’s Tow Yard on the other side of town.

“They oppose everything. They are not concerned with making the city a better place. They are just negative rabble-rousers,” Heilman said.

Despite the heated rhetoric, accusations, and mudslinging in the campaign, both Schulte and Heilman downplay the political significance of the election beyond the issue of saving the park or building the civic center.

But with both men facing re-election next April, some believe the civic center fight will indicate the direction of West Hollywood government in the future. If the civic center is built, many believe it could provide an impenetrable fortress for Heilman and his supporters heading into the spring elections. If Schulte prevails, many civic center opponents think it could be the first brick removed from a long-standing majority wall.