Del Mar Has Voted for Going It Alone : Elections: Officials say that as the only city in the county to conduct its own elections, it manages to hold on to some of its small-town feeling.

Del Mar residents Tuesday night reaped the benefits of being the only city in the county that conducts its own elections, tuning in to watch their small electoral process at work on prime-time cable TV.

Every other city in San Diego County consolidates its elections in June and November, working with the county. But leaders of this quiet coastal community have instead hired an Anaheim-based firm to help them do their own electioneering.

Three months of preparation for Tuesday’s election--expending time and money for the sake of preserving Del Mar’s small-town atmosphere, came to a close as residents trekked to the polls.

“We like to have that small-city feeling of doing your own thing, counting the votes over at (community access) Channel 38 and having it done in-house,” said Patti Barnes, who conducted her first election as city clerk Tuesday, in which two City Council seats were at stake along with a ballot measure.

“The advantages to doing it this way are you get to learn the process . . . and just knowing you’re doing everything on schedule and you don’t have to worry about someone else forgetting about things,” Barnes said.

Also, another advantage of having elections in April, separate from the county’s elections, is that city issues are the only items on the ballot. As a result, there is more attention focused on them.

There is also the concern that if Del Mar were to consolidate its elections with the rest of the county, its issues would be relegated to the end of the ballot, as mandated by state law.

On the other hand, the cost of the individualized election is about $15,000, almost double that of a consolidated election, said Barnes, who, along with Deputy City Clerk Isabel Gomez, runs the election.

“The disadvantages are that it’s real time-consuming, it’s real hard to find precinct workers, you have to train the workers, and you have to count all the absentee votes,” Barnes said.

By Election Day, however, the hard work of meeting filing deadlines, making sure sample ballots were mailed out and finding polling places was behind her.

Now, with the exception of making sure electioneering wasn’t taking place too close to the polls and of taking down campaign signs too near the five precinct sites--normally the responsibilities of the county--all that was left was the “fun part” of counting the ballots.

After the precincts closed at 8 p.m., the ballots were brought to City Hall on Camino Del Mar, and the counting began in front of the camera at the local cable TV station, which has televised the proceedings for the past five years.

The results: J. Rod Franklin, 37, a management consultant, was the top vote-getter and elected to the City Council. Also elected to the council was Chris Helton, 40, an investment research director. Lew Dominy, 46, an architect, lost in his bid for a council seat.

The other ballot issue, Measure A, passed. It involves how basements are counted in calculating the floor area of homes.

Helping the city in the election process was the consulting firm of Martin and Chapman.

“We are the consultant to the city, and everything the city clerk can’t do at City Hall we do for her,” said Scott Martin, whose firm conducts elections for 78 cities in the 11 Southern California counties.

“The ballots stay right there within the city limits, they’re counted in City Hall on Election Night, and you know the results sometime around 10 p.m.,” Martin said. “And a lot of cities like that, they like their action at City Hall on Election Night, and they are willing to pay a little more money to have that happen.”

“Some cities don’t want to wait five days for results, and they don’t want to be hidden on the last page of the ballot material,” he said.

Martin and Chapman, which has been in business for 36 years, acts as consultant to cities ranging in size from Imperial in Imperial County, with its 1,500 registered voters, to Long Beach, with 170,000 voters. They charge fees ranging from $12,000 to $220,000.

Martin said that having a separate city election draws a more informed electorate since the voters are specifically interested in city issues, as opposed to a president or governor.

He acknowledged, however, that voter turnout for special city elections generally is much lower than for a larger election, as low as 25%.

For Del Mar, however, low turnout has not been a problem. Barnes expected turnout among the town’s 3,500 registered voters to be between 45% and 50% on Tuesday.

In contrast, the 78th Assembly District seat election was expected to generate about half that turnout, among the lowest ever in a county election, according to surveys taken Tuesday at sample precincts, said county Registrar of Voters Connie McCormack. County turnout for the 1988 presidential election was 69%.

“The people here are all very interested in the city, and they’re very interested in all the issues,” Cathy Rothbaler, a Del Mar elections officer, said as she overlooked the polling at the City Hall precinct.

“I kind of like being the only people having elections in April,” said City Councilman John Gillies. “It’s kind of a tradition, and you hate to change tradition unless there’s a compelling reason to do so. I think it would be a shame to have our local issues lost along with a whole bunch of county issues.”