Political ‘Berlin Wall’ Goes Up in Pomona : Politics: The council is bitterly divided. Tempers are flaring, recall drives are mounting and the city’s government is in turmoil.

These days, Pomona is a city in turmoil.

Eight department and division heads, including the city administrator and police chief, have been fired, resigned or quit since May.

Weekly City Council meetings have turned into all-out warfare, with Councilman C.L. (Clay) Bryant refusing to look at Mayor Donna Smith--and Smith sporting a button calling for Bryant’s recall.

Local clergymen, seeking to intervene and promote council harmony, have been told to mind their own business.

And community activists are comparing the situation--unfavorably--to that in Eastern Europe.

“Over in Germany,” said one local leader, “they are tearing down a wall that’s been up for 28 years. But here, we’re building a wall right in the middle of the town. . . . Is it going to take us 28 years to tear this wall down?”

The superheated situation has developed as a result of the Pomona municipal election last March, in which a new City Council majority took shape. Charging that the city for decades had been run by a handful of unresponsive old-timers, the three-member coalition, led by Bryant, has taken to shaking things up in a big way.

In addition to the top-level openings, dozens of lower-level city employees have also departed, forcing the city to go to a private temporary employment agency to draft workers to answer phones and type correspondence.

Talk about sweeping changes, the council has even booted the Pomona Valley Humane Society, contracting for dog-catching services with a newly formed, for-profit company.

Some political observers say they have never seen anything like it, and they question the impact on municipal employees, services and the image of the troubled city of 120,000.

“The bills get paid because there is an established procedure,” says George Hart, associate professor of political science at Cal Poly Pomona. “But everyone in that situation sort of hunkers down and does whatever is required . . . and doesn’t do anything more.

“Because if you show your head, you’re likely to get it blown off.”

Hart, currently on leave from his post as director of Cal Poly’s public administration program, says the chaos appears so severe that he would advise his graduates to get jobs out of town.

“I would say there are better opportunities in other cities,” Hart said. “The problem is that if you were very lucky and skillful, you could come out looking like a real hero (in Pomona). But if not, it would be a very difficult situation.”

Mayor Smith says the bickering has left the city with a “black eye” that sends “messages to developers . . . that our act is not together.”

Just how bad are things in the hub city of the Pomona Valley?

Last Monday, the council held its weekly meeting at a southside Catholic parish hall as part of a community outreach effort. Despite the sanctified surroundings, nobody seemed reluctant to cast the first stone--nor subsequent brickbats, epithets or innuendoes.

Before the stormy 4 1/2-hour session concluded, several council members charged that Pomona was a “police state” run for decades by “good old boys” who had engaged in “sweetheart deals . . . and unrevealed corruption.”

Mayor Smith countered that council members were acting like parents who beat up their children in public.

Spectators in the standing-room-only crowd also jumped into the fray, accusing various elected and appointed city officials of using “McCarthyism” and “Nazi-like” tactics.

So far, nothing, including a pair of letters from a group of Catholic priests, has made a difference.

Nell Soto was the only councilwoman to respond to the letters. “I told them off,” she recalled. “I said, ‘Who tells you how to run your church?’ ”

A group of church leaders also sought to persuade Smith and the four other council members to attend a full-day, professionally run teamwork-building clinic. But the participants canceled the session after a reporter for a local newspaper showed up to document the atypical attempt at harmony.

Finally, the church group gave up, and members now say they believe that team-building would prove fruitless in the current political climate. For it to work, said Pat Irish, one of the group’s organizers, participants “have to have some trust and basic appreciation of each other’s worth.”

It’s all a far cry from the golden era of the one-time agricultural center, home of the Los Angeles County Fair. In 1946, the 23-square-mile city, named after the Roman goddess of fruit, was a homogeneous middle-class suburb, singled out by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as one of the two fastest-growing communities in the United States. The city’s municipal government attracted eager young college graduates intent on learning the ropes of management under the tutelage of city administrator Fred Sharp. Sharp, who reigned from 1949 to 1974, helped plan the city’s park-like Civic Center complex and the downtown Pomona Mall, one of the nation’s first.

Times do change. By the mid-1960s, downtown shopping traffic had dissipated with the advent of suburban malls. And an influx of economically disadvantaged people, many of them black or Latino, flocked to Pomona’s aging, inexpensive housing, straining the city’s purse strings.

Over the years, community leaders made repeated attempts to turn the fiscal situation around, some of them not well thought out. In the mid-1980s, the city gave an outside promoter exclusive rights to a prime 4.6-acre downtown site for, of all things, an Inland Pacific World Trade Center. Plans for the 12-story, $96-million complex fell through after city officials belatedly discovered that the developer, H. Thomas Felvey, had a lengthy history of legal and financial problems. The lot, across from City Hall, remains vacant.

Officers Needed

These days, the smog-ridden city is also struggling with a gang and drug-enhanced crime problem. By last week, 42 homicides had already been reported, the most ever in one year since Pomona was founded 101 years ago. Recruitment is currently under way for 19 additional police officers.

For the last two decades, Bryant has been a persistent critic of municipal policies. Rejected in four races for mayor, Bryant, 69, has nonetheless won three terms on the City Council. He has used the forum to launch an unceasing series of vituperative attacks on issues and institutions including the trade center, the Police Department and the city’s daily newspaper, The Pomona Progress-Bulletin.

When Bryant battles, it’s no holds barred.

In 1986, the retired Navy and NASA safety officer charged that council members had illegally conducted secret sessions on financial negotiations concerning the World Trade Center. Bryant’s solution: Pomona police should arrest the council members. When that failed, Bryant took his case to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, which also refused to handcuff the council members.

Two years earlier, Bryant publicly accused Pomona police of repeatedly beating minority residents, allegations that resulted in a U.S. Commission on Civil Rights investigation. Bryant issued the charges less than two weeks after he was arrested by Sgt. Gary Elofson on suspicion of drunk driving.

‘Set Up’ Alleged

Critics of Bryant, contending that he trumped up the brutality allegations, say the case typifies the councilman’s propensity for allowing personal vendettas to color his political judgments.

Bryant, who passed a blood alcohol test and was not formally charged, counters that he was “set up” by the police because of his political activities. Ever since, Bryant has sought to have Elofson fired.

Until his reelection last March, Bryant was always in the council minority. That changed with the election of Tomas Ursua, a Latino who had served as a plaintiff in a lawsuit alleging that Pomona’s at-large council elections have proved discriminatory to minorities.

Bryant formed a working bond with Ursua and Councilwoman Nell Soto, and at the first regular business meeting after the election the trio voted to fire City Administrator A. J. Wilson, who had previously served as city manager in Santa Ana, Kansas City and St. Louis.

Explaining the move at the time, Ursua said, “There’s been an old-boy network running this city for 100 years. I guess when you replace a 100-year-old junta, the best thing to do is show a little bit of decisiveness.”

The council proceeded to hire an interim administrator, Andrew Lazzaretto, but the one-time Burbank city administrator quit after only five weeks on the job. City Fire Chief Tom Feehas has since served in the post.

Strapped for cash to beef up city police services, the council coalition also eliminated three top-level staffers--two deputy city administrators and an executive assistant. Then, supporting a move by the fourth council member, Mark Nymeyer, the council fired Police Chief Richard M. Tefank after he refused to fire several management-level police officials.

Tefank’s dismissal has drawn a harsh reaction from Mayor Smith, who cast the sole council vote against the 18-year veteran’s ouster. Police groups, ranging from Pomona’s rank and file to the San Bernardino County Police Chief’s Assn., have also protested.

At a recent council meeting, Detective Raul Camargo, president of the Pomona Police Officers Assn., showed up to question council members about Tefank’s dismissal. Bryant responded by labeling Camargo “a psychiatric case” who had cost the city $20,450 “for his regular trips to the shrink in Irvine.” Bryant also disclosed that an internal police investigation was under way because a fired employee had accused Camargo and Elofson with sexual harassment.

Two weeks ago, the two officers filed a federal lawsuit against Bryant, accusing the councilman of violating their civil rights as a result of his disclosures.

Meanwhile, a citizens’ committee has kicked off a drive to recall Bryant, who is in the first year of his latest four-year term. The committee has already staged several fund-raisers, including a cocktail hour that drew more than 100 Bryant opponents. The group is due to deliver its signed petitions in January.

Playing a highly visible role in the campaign is two-term Mayor Smith, who handily defeated Bryant two years ago for the mayor’s post in a race so bitter that Bryant at one point vowed to move out of town if he lost.

Elected as Reformer

Pomona’s first female mayor, Smith, 34, is a former Little League president who met Bryant when she invited him to throw out the first ball at a league game in 1984. Soon after, Bryant appointed her to serve on the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission. A year later, she ran for City Council, defeating Ursua in a runoff election.

Like Bryant, Smith, who runs an automotive electrical shop with her husband, was elected as a reformer, often dissenting from the majority council viewpoint. And like Bryant, she has a stubborn streak the length of the Pomona Freeway.

Over the last few months, Smith has vehemently taken exception to the firings of the top-level managers.

Calling Wilson “one of the best things that has happened to this city,” Smith predicted that “anyone with any brains is not going to apply for the manager’s job in Pomona.”

As for Tefank, Smith termed him “a man of courage.” And at a testimonial for the former police chief last week, attended by 200 people, the mayor presented him with a proclamation from “The city of Pomona, County of Los Angeles, state of disaster.”

Smith’s defense of Tefank has spawned counterattacks by Bryant and by Nymeyer, her sole council ally on most issues.

Smith’s statements, said Nymeyer, have “had the effect of yelling ‘fire’ in a crowded theater.”

Bryant, for his part, accused Smith of sticking up for Tefank because she owed him “a debt” for not arresting her two years ago.

Bryant was referring to an incident in which a Cal Poly Pomona sophomore charged the mayor with pointing a shotgun at him after he parked his car in front of her home late at night. The student, who is black, filed a report with Pomona police and a complaint with the Pomona Valley branch of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People.

Tefank’s department forwarded the case to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office, which declined to file charges because of insufficient evidence. In defending herself, Smith told prosecutors that she had believed the student was either a gang member or a drug pusher and that her gun was pointed toward the ground when she ordered him to go away.

In interviews, both Smith and Bryant vowed to stick to their guns. “There is nothing I can do about what the new council majority is doing,” says Smith, “but I don’t have to accept it.”

A recall election, which would likely be held next year, may make the feuding “get worse,” the mayor acknowledged. But she says there is no choice.

Accusing Bryant of berating city staffers as well as herself, Smith declared, “If Mr. Bryant cannot control a person or a situation, he seeks to destroy it. And that’s what we see happening.”

Bryant, for his part, denies that he treats staffers unfairly but vows that “radical change” will continue.

“To the (old-time power structure) it’s tumultuous,” he said. “To us, it’s planned reorganization, planned progress.”

Bryant said the council coalition will focus on fighting crime before tackling other pressing municipal problems. He added that he believes the recall effort against him will fail miserably because he and his allies are providing Pomona with responsive government for the first time in memory.

“Today we’re in a new ballgame and all of the good old boys and their favorites are livid with rage and frustration,” Bryant said. “. . . For the first time in Pomona history, the people of Pomona have felt that someone cares about them and that this City Council has a majority that is people-oriented.”

One of the few things Smith and Bryant seem to agree on is that Pomona is a city divided.

Last week, there was a slight glimmer of hope that there would be peace in the Pomona Valley in the foreseeable future. In a rare display of unanimity, the council, including Smith, voted 5-0 to appoint a new city administrator--Julio Fuentes of Azusa.

But within days, the mayor and council were at it again. At a steamy, seven-hour council session Monday night, Smith moved to censure Bryant for his verbal attacks on officers Camargo and Elofson.

As usual, her initiative went down in flames. But not before another heated exchange.

The censure effort, charged Smith’s erstwhile ally, Nymeyer, was “nothing more than one indication of (Smith’s) personal vindictiveness and animosity toward Councilman Bryant and her total inability to lead this city and this City Council in a constructive direction.”