Council to Consider If It Will Retain 2 on Port Panel

The San Diego City Council will decide whether to request the resignations of San Diego Unified Port Commissioners Louis Wolfsheimer and Bill Rick when it holds its first meeting of 1990.

Councilman Bob Filner said he will urge his colleagues to ask the two long-time port commissioners to honor promises to step down when the council meets Jan. 8.

The council agreed to consider the item in a 6-1 vote that came at the end of a six-hour session Monday. Council members Abbe Wolfsheimer, John Hartley, Wes Pratt, Linda Bernhardt and John Hartley joined Filner in scheduling the matter. Councilman Bruce Henderson opposed it, and Mayor Maureen O’Connor and Councilman Ron Roberts were absent.

The meeting will thrust the full council into a budding dispute between Filner and O’Connor over the city’s representatives on the seven-member Port Commission, the wealthy agency that built the city’s new $165-million bayfront convention center.

Reappointed almost a year ago to new four-year terms, Rick and Wolfsheimer promised to step down when the convention center was completed. But last week they sent a letter to O’Connor suggesting that they would stay on the commission for as much as nine more months in anticipation of the filing of a $60-million lawsuit against the Port District by the convention center’s general contractor, Tutor-Saliba Corp.

Filner’s request was prompted by that letter.

Filner claimed that the request was orchestrated by O’Connor, whom he said has been unable to assemble a five-vote majority on the council in favor of appointees she favors. The mayor’s spokesman, Paul Downey, denied the claim.

In interviews, Rick and Wolfsheimer said they would be happy to resign immediately if the majority of the council requests it.

“I don’t want to be the center of controversy,” Wolfsheimer said. “I thought I was doing a favor” for the council.

But Filner insisted that the two should honor their commitment to step down.

“If they’re so anxious to serve, they could be advisers to the Port Commission,” he said.