ELECTIONS SOUTH PASADENA : No Fire, Brimstone to Excite the Voters in This Campaign

The usually fractious local political scene has remained surprisingly quiet in recent weeks as two incumbents, one former councilman and three political newcomers compete for three City Council spots in the April 10 election.

“It’s not a real fire-and-brimstone type of election . . . things are kind of sleepy,” one city official said.

“The issues are not burning,” another said. “It’s a lot lower-keyed than I expected.”

At public forums and coffee hours, candidates have sounded variations on the recurring themes of the proposed extension of the Long Beach Freeway, revitalization of the shopping district, city government finances and preservation of the community’s small-town atmosphere.

South Pasadena’s main issue for the last 30 years, the freeway, is less dominant in this election than in past years. Still, however, all candidates say they are against extending it.

The incumbents, James C. Hodge Jr., a dentist, and James S. Woollacott Jr., a retired title and land insurance company executive, maintain that their records during single, four-year terms should be sufficient for reelection. After 12 years on the council, Mayor Samuel G. Knowles isn’t running for reelection.

Often opponents on issues, Hodge, 40, and Woollacott, 72, each characterizes himself as an independent thinker. Hodge cites his continuing efforts to institute a design review committee to help in the city’s planning.

And Hodge suggests that he has charted a prudent course on the thorny freeway issue. The council recently unanimously supported what it called a “low-build” approach, but members stressed that didn’t mean they were backing completion of the Long Beach gap from the San Bernardino Freeway in Los Angeles to the Foothill Freeway in Pasadena.

The council has said alternatives to completion could be light-rail commuter trains, increased use of synchronized traffic lights, parking bans at peak traffic hours, creation of one-way streets to funnel heavy traffic and some modifications at each end of the freeway gap.

“The freeway is the far greater evil.” Hodge said. “But to say no-build, without acknowledging that there is a problem that should be looked at, is irresponsible.”

Although Woollacott supported recent low-build language approved by the council, he said “low-build and no-build are terms I don’t want to use.” But he said he is opposed to the proposed Meridian Avenue route and other variations of that plan.

If reelected, Woollacott said, “I’d have a goal to retain, maintain and sustain, on a sound financial basis, the integrity of our community neighborhoods and the preservation of our family-oriented lifestyle.”

Likewise, former council member Robert Wagner, 67, stands on his record from 1984 to 1988. Long active in local politics, Wagner became embroiled in a number of controversies on the council and made no apologies as he rebuked critics and chastised city officials, particularly City Manager John J. Bernardi. “Actions speak louder than words,” Wagner said.

Wagner and his family developed the city’s largest shopping complex on Fair Oaks Avenue. He chose not to run in 1988, he said, because he wanted to devote time to working on fund raising and the bicentennial of his alma mater, Georgetown University.

With the university celebration completed, Wagner said he is ready to return to local politics. He calls South Pasadena a “brilliant diamond” that he said has become tacky because of poor planning. And he decries “the extraordinary legal and lobbying fees” related to the city’s campaign against the freeway extension.

Two of the challengers, Wallace N. Emory and Harry Knapp, both first-time council candidates, say they have the financial expertise to help solve a problem all of the candidates acknowledge: South Pasadena’s financial situation, made precarious because of the increasing costs of public services and a minimally growing retail sales-tax base.

“I have the business background to make sound decisions,” said Emory, 50, an account executive with a paper company and a longtime reserve police officer. “I don’t have a lot of political baggage. And I don’t have any favors to pay back.”

Knapp, 47, a corporate financial executive, cites his undergraduate degree in engineering and a graduate degree in business as reasons why he would make a good council member. “I don’t have any outside agendas, and I’m not on an ego trip,” he said.

Active with the South Pasadena Preservation Foundation and the Citizens United to Save South Pasadena, Knapp says he is concerned that the city’s standards governing development are the loosest in the San Gabriel Valley. “The building codes don’t reflect what people in town want,” Knapp said. “Condos are being plopped down in the middle of single-family housing areas.”

Another first-time candidate, Norman H. Getchell, interprets the concern by some candidates for preservation as late. “Everybody’s jumping on the preservation bandwagon today,” Getchell said. “But I was a preservationist before it was fashionable.”

Getchell, 59, a real estate broker, promotes himself as “the major driving force” behind a 1983 ballot measure that thwarted plans for two office towers on Fair Oaks Avenue near the 710 Freeway.