LOCAL ELECTIONS : Claremont: Voters must decide on whether a new tax amounts to wasteful spending or is a way to improve their quality of life.

A brief exchange at a candidates panel summed up the April 10 City Council election campaign.

“This campaign is about values,” Councilwoman Diann Ring said during the forum at City Hall. Challenger Jack D. Mansfield disagreed, saying: “This campaign is about money.”

Both are probably right.

The question is whether voters perceive a controversial new tax as a prudent way to pay for quality-of-life values or as a raid on taxpayers’ wallets to finance wasteful spending.

On March 9, after months of debate, the council unanimously approved a landscaping and lighting assessment district that covers all private property in the city and will cost the average homeowner almost $93 a year.

The council race has attracted an unusually large field of nine candidates, and several say they are running because of the new tax. They accuse the council of overspending, and criticize it for refusing to put the issue on the election ballot.

The assessment is defended by two incumbent council members who are seeking reelection and by a third candidate who served on a citizens committee that recommended the measure. They say the tax is necessary to maintain Claremont as what they call a “special place.” Superior city services, they say, are one reason people want to live in this quiet, tree-lined college town.

Three council seats are open. Running for reelection are Nicholas L. Presecan, senior vice president and co-founder of Engineering-Science Inc. of Pasadena, and Ring, a partner in a public relations and advertising firm. Richard Newton, who was appointed to the council after the death of Alex Hughes last year, is not seeking another term.

The challengers are Corey Calaycay, a university student; Pasquale (Pat) Di Natale, a retired machine shop instructor; Nelson Gentry, an attorney; Algird G. Leiga, a business executive; Mansfield, a retired businessman; and Mike Noonan, a hospital pharmacist.

A 10th candidate, Patricia O’Toole Eckert, has withdrawn from the race, but her name will remain on the ballot.

Presecan, 49, who is now serving as mayor, told the audience at the March 13 candidates forum that he brings to the council a wealth of experience as a former Marine captain, businessman and engineer.

He said the council has made progress in preserving hillside space, promoting economic development and obtaining housing for senior citizens. One of his goals, he said, “is to keep human services a part of the way of Claremont in spite of those who would turn Claremont into simply a bedroom community.”

Presecan said those who complain about the council’s refusal to place the assessment district on the ballot are raising “a nonsense issue.” He said property owners, who pay the tax, were given ample opportunity to protest the assessment.

Ring, 47, who, like Presecan, is seeking a second four-year term, said those who want to submit the tax question to voters do not seem to understand the government system.

Voters don’t decide garbage fees or the size of the federal deficit, she said. Instead, voters elect representatives to make those decisions, and if voters don’t like the decisions, they replace the representatives at the next election.

City Council accomplishments cited by Ring include the redevelopment of a blighted shopping center on Indian Hill Boulevard, a commitment to build housing for senior citizens, development of teen and anti-drug programs, the preservation of hillside space, the strengthening of police services and the hiring of a full-time economic development director.

Among the challengers, Kiley, 38, is the only strong defender of the assessment district.

He was a member of an advisory committee that studied the city’s budget and recommended the tax.

Kiley, who has served on a number of school and community committees over the past 12 years, said the committee tried hard to find evidence of wasteful spending in the budget. He said it recommended some spending cuts and changes in priorities, but didn’t find “the $900 toilet seat” or other extravagances.

“What we found is that the budget for the city is impacted by the same things that impact family budgets,” he said, adding that income must keep pace with rising costs. He said the assessment district is a fair way to bolster revenue to maintain roads, parks, human services and other programs at their current levels.

But others strongly oppose the tax, including Calaycay, 19, one of the youngest candidates ever to run for the Claremont City Council. He is a student in business administration and political science at Loyola Marymount University. His family has lived in Claremont since 1974.

Calaycay, who circulated petitions against the assessment district, said the city should try to increase its revenue through business expansion. He said a number of ideas should be explored, including the establishment of a department store adjoining the central business district.

He said his assets include his Philippine heritage, which would give the council ethnic diversity, and his youth, which would give the council a new viewpoint. He said some residents say that “a lot of people on the council are too old, too traditional.”

Also opposed to the tax is Di Natale, a 74-year-old retired safety officer and instructor from New York, who moved to Claremont in 1987 and has become a regular observer at council meetings.

Di Natale said he entered the race because he objected to the city manager’s compensation of $85,668 a year plus benefits, thought the city was withholding information about the assessment district and had spent a frustrating year trying to get the city to trim a hedge near his home.

Di Natale has pledged to work as a council member full-time. He told the audience at the candidates forum that he is not a skilled public speaker, had never dreamed of running for office before and has much to learn about such issues as redevelopment. “I do not know much about what’s going on,” he said, “but as I go along, I get ideas.”

Gentry, like Di Natale, is a comparative newcomer to Claremont. He moved to the city in 1987 from Montclair, where he served on the council for eight years.

He ran for Congress in 1988 on an unconventional platform whose planks included legalization of drugs, three months of mandatory military service for all young people and abbreviated congressional sessions during which members would be housed in military barracks. His proposals as a council candidate are just as unorthodox. His prescription for controlling spending, for example, is to cut employee salaries.

Gentry, 49, said he would reduce the salary of the city manager by 5%, of department heads by 3% and of other employees by 1% to make them aware of the city’s financial problems. Then, he said, he would threaten further pay cuts unless the city’s finances improved. The result, he said, would be that employees would work harder to promote economic development in order to increase city revenues.

He said the city should become more aggressive in the pursuit of economic development so it does not have to resort to measures such as the assessment tax. However, he said, criticism of the City Council is unfair because there was no other immediate way to fund services demanded by residents.

Leiga, 56, who holds a doctorate in chemistry and is an executive with Xerox Medical Systems, opposed the assessment district and said it should have been submitted to voters.

“I think we need some changes in the way the city is run,” he said. Though the council professes an interest in listening to voters, he said, the evidence is that it “hardly hears what is being said.”

Leiga said the city has added employees unnecessarily. The assessment tax has been imposed, he said, because “we don’t have good controls on spending.” In addition, he said, people in the business community complain that red tape at City Hall discourages business expansion.

Mansfield, 68, retired owner of a design and manufacturing business, said he entered the campaign because of his opposition to the assessment district and the council’s refusal to put the issue on the ballot. “I thought it was reprehensible on the part of the council to deny the people the right to vote,” he said.

Mansfield said the council has depleted much of its budgetary reserves. “This city is in a lot worse financial condition than anybody would want to know,” he said.

But the city would have enough revenue without an assessment district, he said, if it “properly managed and utilized” its income.

Noonan, 50, who lives in the southern part of Claremont, has campaigned on a platform calling for better representation for his part of the city.

Claremont, which elects council members at-large rather than by district, does not have any council member living south of First Street, he said, and the result is that the area is being short-changed. Very little of the money raised by the landscaping and lighting district, for example, will go to projects south of First Street, he said.

Noonan, who opposes the assessment district, said the city needs to become more innovative in dealing with its financial problem.

“I am, if nothing else, certainly an innovator,” he said, citing his work in the Peace and Freedom Party, Peace with Justice Coalition of the Pomona Valley, the Pomona Valley Rainbow Coalition and other political groups.