ELECTIONS HIDDEN HILLS : Incumbents Trailing Foes of Housing Plan

In a dramatic turn of events in Hidden Hills, three City Council members appeared headed toward defeat Tuesday by candidates who oppose a controversial proposal for court-backed lower-cost housing in the wealthy, gated city in the west San Fernando Valley.

Howard Klein, Susan Norris Porcaro and David G. Stanley led by a wide margin with more than one-third of the votes counted. They were challenging Mayor Chris K. Van Peski and council members Colleen M. Hartman and Warren H. McCament in one of the most hotly contested races in the city’s 29-year history.

Hidden Hills election officials said the turnout of about 650 of the city’s more than 1,000 registered voters was believed to be a record.

The incumbents viewed the race largely as a referendum on a developer’s proposal for an apartment building for senior citizens, an office building and nine luxury houses on land the city recently annexed outside its gates. Hidden Hills consists almost entirely of spacious single-family estate homes, with only two commercial buildings and no multifamily housing.

When the proposal was made public last summer, the community was plunged into an uproar over whether the city should be enlarged and whether it should include commercial buildings or lower-cost apartment housing.

The controversy pitted Van Peski, Hartman and McCament against a vocal group of residents, including Klein, Porcaro and Stanley.

The incumbents supported the project as a way of fulfilling the terms of a court settlement that the city agreed to last year. In an attempt to settle a 6-year-old lawsuit, brought by Los Angeles County and a private attorney over the city’s use of a redevelopment agency, the council last year agreed to build the senior citizens housing with redevelopment funds.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge R. William Schoettler Jr., who is presiding over the lawsuit, last month said he was prepared to summon city officials into his courtroom to force them to approve a plan for lower-cost housing if the city failed to go through with the project.

Porcaro said in an interview that she would work to dissolve the redevelopment agency.

“We don’t need any further growth,” Porcaro said. “We want to have control over our own environment.”

The incumbents have said they took the steps that were in the city’s best interest by setting up the redevelopment agency to build a storm drain, settling the lawsuit and complying with broad state laws requiring every city to include lower-cost housing in its land-use plans.

They said the housing proposal would have a minimal effect on the existing city.

“I fear this city may be forced to comply and not have an alternative that is as attractive as the one we have now,” Van Peski said.

The city had not held an election since 1984.