Lakewood Council Member Retiring After 12 Years

Jacqueline Rynerson, who helped the city to incorporate nearly 40 years ago, is retiring after 12 years of service on the City Council, three of them as mayor.

Rynerson is not running for reelection in April, leaving Councilman Larry Van Nostran as the only incumbent on the ballot. Two seats are open this year on the five-member council.

“It’s been a wonderful experience,” Rynerson said of her three council terms. “It’s been great but the time comes when you leave.”

The councilwoman, who will turn 69 this year, said that she and her husband, Dewain (Bud) Rynerson, a retired supervisor at the Long Beach Naval Shipyard, want to travel more and spend time with their children and grandchildren. The couple have three sons, one daughter and eight grandchildren.

Rynerson is the second veteran female official in the area whose name will not be on the ballot this spring. Cerritos Mayor Diana Needham, who also has 12 years of council service behind her, said she would not seek reelection. A court last month upheld a Cerritos referendum limiting council members to two consecutive terms.

The Rynersons moved to Lakewood in 1952 and she became secretary of the Lakewood Civic Council, a hotbed of the anti-annexation fever that kept the community from being swallowed up by Long Beach.

The civic council developed what became known as the “Lakewood Plan.” Under the plan, Lakewood incorporated in 1954 by pioneering a system that allows municipalities to contract with Los Angeles County for such services as fire, police and code enforcement.

“The idea was that we would try to do a more modified kind of government,” Rynerson recalled. It was difficult, she said, for a new community to find the money to build such things as fire and police facilities.

“It started a wave of incorporations,” she said of Lakewood’s experience. “If you look at history and see how many cities incorporated after the Lakewood Plan you’ll find quite a lot.”

Rynerson also served on the committee that developed the city’s park system and has been active in a broad range of civic and community groups, including Friends of the Library, the PTA and the League of Women Voters.

She has represented the city in the Southern California Assn. of Governments, the League of California Cities and the National League of Cities. She has also received many honors, including the “Woman of Distinction” in 1987 from the Lakewood/Long Beach Soroptimist Club.

Service on the City Council, Rynerson said, has been fascinating. “Until you’re on the council, you can’t begin to realize the variety of issues you deal with. You’re always learning.”

The most difficult council decision she has had to make in recent memory, Rynerson said, was on the city-generated plan to build a commercial office development on the site of the old Standard Oil tank farm in the northwest corner of Lakewood.

City officials, Rynerson said, designed the development to generate what they assumed would be welcome tax dollars. Residents of the area, however, crowded into City Hall, protesting commercial development and calling for single-family housing on the site.

The council, which ultimately agreed to put housing there, was taken aback by the community reaction, Rynerson said. “We did a lot of soul-searching because we really wanted to be responsible.”