ELECTION ’90 TEMPLE CITY : Council Challengers Seek Change but Incumbents Stress Continuity

An eight-way battle for three City Council seats on April 10 pits council experience against new ideas and faces.

The three incumbents, Tom Atkins, Ken Gillanders and Mary Lou Swain, say their years of council service offer continuity for the city and legislative clout with state and county authorities. But the challengers say the council has become stagnant and unresponsive, and that it’s time for a change.

Of the incumbents, Atkins, 59, who began his council career by serving out a partial term starting in 1977, is running for his fourth full term. Gillanders, 57, is seeking a fourth four-year term; Swain, 58, is after her third.

Challengers are Anthony Falzone, a sales technician for a bakery supply company; Charles L. Henne, an Internal Revenue Service auditor; Mary Louise Manning, a homemaker; Bobbie McGowan, a teacher, and Cathe Wilson, a manufacturers’ representative.

Falzone could not be reached. Most of the other challengers said their complaints about the city’s rapid growth and redevelopment are due to the council’s unwillingness to address citizen concerns.

“I feel a change is needed to bring in new ideas,” said Wilson, 57. Manning, 39, agreed, saying that if elected, she would introduce an ordinance to limit council members to two terms. Wilson and Henne said they would back such an ordinance. But the three incumbents said setting a two-term limit would hurt the city by robbing it of their accumulated experience.

To replace council members after two terms would prevent them from reaching positions of influence on county or state associations, said Gillanders, an insurance claims manager. He represented the city on the Southern California Joint Powers Authority for six years before being elected the authority’s vice president.

“If you don’t have some old hands, we’re going to end up being token officeholders with no say at all” in regional organizations, said Atkins, president of Atkins Roofing Inc. in Baldwin Park. “This is not an area for beginners.”

Swain, a retired general manager of Cools Candies, also stressed the importance of experience. She regularly attended council and planning commission meetings for two years before she first ran for the council, Swain said. She said few of the challengers regularly attend council meetings and therefore may not be familiar with how the city operates.

Incumbents dispute charges they are not responsive to residents. Swain said the council listens to residents, but she added that it’s impossible to please everyone. She noted that all council members are listed in the telephone book. The one exception is Mayor Patrick Froehle, a Los Angeles policeman whose number is unlisted for safety reasons.

Like most of the other challengers, McGowan, 50, said she is unhappy about rapid growth and changes that she said are stripping the city of its suburban charm.

“Our business area has become an eyesore,” McGowan said. “Condos are encroaching on single-family homes.” She criticized a redevelopment project that would displace businesses and residents near the corner of Rosemead Boulevard and Las Tunas Drive. Condemnation of private property to make way for the project rubbed most challengers the wrong way.

“I’m not against change,” McGowan said. But she said the city should do everything possible to help local businesses stay, such as offering lower permit fees or subsidized utilities.

“Houses are going up all over town,” said Henne, 50, who wants to adopt a building moratorium to discourage outside developers.

But incumbents defended the development projects. Atkins said the council kept the Las Tunas redevelopment project small so that only one house with six rental units would be condemned.

Swain added that during the past two years the council has reduced density, cutting the number of units allowed in areas zoned for residential, multifamily use from 36 units an acre to 18.

All the candidates condemned recent racially motivated attacks against Spencer and Patricia Stewart, a black couple who reported a cross burning on their lawn, followed by other incidents, including a rock through their window and cut telephone wires.

Manning said the city should sponsor educational seminars on race relations, and Henne said the city should help residents recognize and accept the city’s growing ethnic diversity as an advantage for the community.