Tustin’s Dilemma: To Vote or Not to Vote : Politics: City Council candidates hold back as a court fight rages over whether an April 10 election will be legal.

With just weeks to go until the April 10 City Council election, the biggest issue on voters’ minds is whether the election will actually happen.

Eight candidates are vying for three seats as city officials continue a court battle to determine the legality of the election date.

Many of the candidates have held off on posting signs or printing brochures until it looks fairly certain that voters will be casting ballots in April.

“We’re all geared up and ready to go,” said candidate Charles E. (Chuck) Puckett, 46, a former planning commissioner and district sales manager for Beatrice-Hunt/Wesson. “We’ve really been in a state of flux. . . . We didn’t know whether a lot of the material we ordered was going to be able to be used.”

Competing for two four-year seats on the council are Puckett; Carole Bryant, 41, an accountant and owner of a manufacturing company; incumbent John Kelly, 28, manager of a tuxedo store; Dennie E. Pederson, 42, manager of facilities construction for the Northrop Electronics Systems Division, and Leslie Ann Pontious, 44, owner of a travel agency.

Kelly is the only incumbent because Councilwoman Ursula E. Kennedy decided not to run again.

Three candidates are vying for a two-year seat left vacant by the resignation last November of former Councilman Ronald B. Hoesterey. They are John Norman Butler, 34, a real estate broker; Berklee A. Maughan, 52, a retired financial executive; and Jim Potts, 36, a business owner and sergeant with the Irvine Police Department.

The biggest issue in the campaign so far has been the behavior of the council, which is often bitterly divided.

Five of the candidates--Puckett, Pontious, Pederson, Butler and Potts--say they want to return respectability to the tumultuous council, which they say has become a laughingstock.

They say there have been too many arguments about national issues in the council chambers. During the past year, the council has discussed gun control, pornography, abortion and other subjects brought up by Kelly and Councilman Earl J. Prescott.

“We need to bring some respect and intelligence back to the City Council,” said Pontious, who resigned as chair of the Planning Commission to run for City Council. “We need to concentrate more on our local issues and take care of the city because we have important decisions to make that will affect the future of Tustin.”

But Maughan, Bryant and Kelly say the bickering on the City Council has been healthy discussion.

“The spirit of debate is what made this country great,” said Bryant, founder of Sanity in Government Now, a nonprofit group that campaigned against Measure M, the countywide, half-cent sales tax initiative defeated last year. “It’s also what makes it prosperous and safe. The pendulum swings to the left, it swings to the right. But in the long run, it usually ends up somewhere in the middle.”

Kelly said that all the issues he has raised have been local. For example, he said, abortion has local significance because there is an abortion clinic in town. He said it is important for such discussions to be held at the local level.

“I believe in bottom-up government rather than top-down,” he said.

Tustin Residents Action Committee, a group led by presidents of the city’s powerful homeowners’ associations, opposes Kelly and has endorsed three candidates--Potts, Puckett and Pontious.

TRAC’s chairman, Carl Kasalek, has sharply criticized Kelly for campaigning for reelection while trying to make sure the election doesn’t happen in April.

“I want the voters to know that I am vehemently opposed to the idea of holding April elections like this,” Kelly said. “It makes more civic and economic sense to hold elections in November. It saves time, and more people vote.”

Although the council majority voted to move municipal elections from November to April last fall, the issue has refused to die. The timing of elections divides the candidates almost as sharply as it has divided the deadlocked council since Hoesterey resigned after voting to move the election to April.

Kelly, Prescott and Maughan have fought to prevent the April election. They say they support November elections because they attract more voters and cost less for the city to run. Bryant agrees with them, although she has urged Kelly and Prescott to allow the scheduled election to proceed for the sake of peace.

Butler, who ran for council in 1986 and 1988, said he is not certain when the elections should be held.

“There are pluses and minuses to having an election at either time,” he said.

But the other candidates--Puckett, Pontious, Potts and Pederson--side with Kennedy and Mayor Richard B. Edgar, who say April elections allow greater focus on local issues, which are lost in the shuffle of state and national campaigns in November.

Pontious said she would be open to considering holding the elections in June as a compromise.

The issue has gone as far as the state Court of Appeal, which issued a preliminary ruling last week that appeared to give City Clerk Mary E. Wynn the authority to proceed with the April 10 election. Opponents have until Tuesday to respond.

Improving traffic--a crucial issue for Tustin because the city is wedged between the Santa Ana and Costa Mesa freeways--is a declared goal of all of the candidates.

If elected, Puckett said, he would push for the extension of Newport Avenue through to Edinger Avenue to relieve traffic on Red Hill Avenue.

Pederson said he would focus on improving traffic and keeping the city’s growth and expansion at a slow and careful pace.

Bryant ties much of the traffic problem to diamond lanes, which she has consistently opposed. She said she will also push for stronger support of the Police Department.

Kelly, who bills himself as a tax opponent, wants to curtail aircraft noise pollution. Already he has proposed that the city buy state-of-the-art equipment to monitor noise rather than relying on county figures.

Potts sees growth as a major concern and is calling for a moratorium on high-density construction to study East Tustin’s growth impact on traffic and student enrollment.

Maughan, a vocal Kelly supporter, said he wants to see more everyday involvement by residents and less power for the city manager. Last fall, he proposed setting up a Problem Resolution Center to deal with city problems, but the council majority rejected the idea.

Butler said he plans to work on traffic problems by trying to route traffic around the city instead of through it. He also wants to implement a recycling program that would be easy for the residents to participate in and cost-effective for the city to run.

Although there are several candidate forums and much campaigning left, Puckett commanded an early lead in fund raising, according to papers filed with the city clerk. He has raised more than $4,000, with Bryant in second place at just under $3,000. The other candidates were trailing, at last official reports. Pontious and Pederson filed statements that indicated neither plans to raise or spend more than $1,000.