TUSTIN : Group Has New Plan to Unite Council

A residents group that formed out of frustration with the City Council has new plans for bringing harmony to the tumultuous council.

Tustin Residents Action Committee leaders say they are tired of council meetings where heated debates, angry exchanges and bitter accusations are commonplace. The resulting negative publicity may discourage business investment in the city and affect property values, the leaders say.

“There are a lot of residents in Tustin who don’t want to be the laughingstock of Southern California and, quite frankly, we are,” said one of TRAC’s leaders, Guido Borges, manager of a family owned travel company in Tustin and president of Laurelwood Homeowners Assn.

The group has printed a brochure calling for “a council composition that promotes a professional atmosphere in the council chambers.” A monthly newsletter also is planned.

The group first formed as Citizens for a Responsible Tustin City Council after the Sept. 18 council meeting, at which Councilman Earl J. Prescott turned his back on the audience for 20 minutes. Prescott later explained he was in pain.

After that meeting, group members called for the resignation of Prescott and John Kelly and contemplated a recall campaign. But now the group has changed its name and strategy, said chairman Carl Kasalek.

The group plans to hold a candidates’ forum and support three candidates in the April election, Kasalek said. Several of the group’s leaders are presidents of local homeowners associations with historically high voter turnout.

Kelly is not impressed by the group’s plans.

“It’s just like that bogus group they had before,” Kelly said. “I don’t want to comment on it until they do something of substance.”

Perhaps that is because the group believes that one way to turn things around is to remove Kelly from office in the coming election. His seat will be open, along with that of Mayor Pro Tem Ursula E. Kennedy and the unexpired term of Councilman Ronald B. Hoesterey, who resigned last month.

Hoesterey’s resignation leaves the council open to deadlocks, with Mayor Richard B. Edgar and Kennedy on one side, and Kelly and Prescott on the other. For instance, the council recently deadlocked on whether to make developers pay for street improvements in areas along the border between Santa Ana and Tustin. Before Hoesterey’s resignation, the two cities had given preliminary approval to the plan.

Prescott and Kelly disagree with that decision and with developer fees in principle, calling them a form of taxation. TRAC members, along with Edgar and Kennedy, support charging developers for the road improvements.

Members of the residents group also say Kelly and Prescott are hurting the city financially, even turning businesses away. For example, controversy stemming from Kelly’s and Prescott’s objections led to the demise in October of a proposal to build a 105-room hotel just south of the Santa Ana Freeway at Newport Avenue.

More than issues, though, TRAC leaders object to the style of Kelly and Prescott, which they say is argumentative and unprofessional.

“There are a lot of people who are so upset and so furious,” Borges said. “We’ve tried to take this emotion and turn it into something positive.”