Mall Plan Supporters Win Seats on Council : La Canada Flintridge: The vote is an apparent mandate for the city to proceed with controversial Sport Chalet project.

La Canada Flintridge voters have elected three City Council candidates who supported the proposed Sport Chalet shopping center, giving an apparent mandate for the city to go ahead with the controversial project.

In a field of seven candidates, former Councilman Jack Hastings led the pack in Tuesday’s election with 3,728 votes. Closely following him was Public Safety Commissioner Jim Edwards with 3,666 votes.

Incumbent Councilwoman Joan Feehan was reelected with 3,543 votes. This will be her second four-year term on the City Council, where she served as mayor in 1988.

Incumbent Councilman O. Warren Hillgren and Mayor Edmund Krause did not run.

A total of 6,712 ballots were cast, representing 49.9% of the city’s registered voters. The new council members will be sworn in April 17 for four-year terms on the five-member council.

“The result of yesterday’s election is a sign that we shall all move together for consensus in the community,” said Feehan. “Let us all put the election behind us and work together to ensure we remain the fine city that we are.”

The three victors in the election had been labeled pro-growth candidates due to their strong support of a proposed Sport Chalet shopping center development.

Hastings was appointed to the council and served as mayor pro tem in 1985. He was defeated in his 1988 reelection bid. Edwards has an extensive record of community involvement, including 16 years as a volunteer member of the Montrose Search and Rescue Team.

They and Feehan were endorsed by a local Republican group in a tabloid mailer written and funded by representatives of the Sport Chalet store.

The Sport Chalet also paid for several last-minute campaign flyers that attacked three other candidates, Trails Council President Liz Blackwelder, Planning Commissioner Judy Breitman and architect Peter Kudrave, claiming that they opposed the shopping center. Breitman, Kudrave and Blackwelder emerged in the campaign as a slate of candidates publicly opposed to the size of the proposed Sport Chalet retail complex.

Candidates in the other faction, Feehan, Edwards and Hastings, went on record supporting the plans for the shopping center in its present form.

Other candidates included Melvin Ricks, who ran his campaign on a promise of streamlining city government and improving communication among municipal departments, and Barbara Parady. Although she dropped out of the race early in the campaign, her name appeared on the ballot, and she received 223 votes. One flyer bearing a return address of the Sport Chalet accused Blackwelder and her real estate firm of “fraud and deceit and breach of contract” in a 1979 home sale that resulted in a lawsuit. The flyer read, in part: “We just don’t need any more people in government who play fast and loose with the law . . . do we?”

According to Blackwelder, her real estate firm sold a house described as having a new roof, and the buyers sued her, saying she misrepresented the house’s roof as new. On her lawyer’s advice, Blackwelder and the former homeowner each paid $2,500 to settle the suit out of court. She said it was the only legal dispute during a career of 40 years in real estate.

Another flyer suggested Kudrave has allowed unsafe and unsanitary living conditions in rental property in which, it alleges, he has a financial interest. Under photographs showing the unkempt interior of a dwelling, the mailer asserted that tenants living in property over which Kudrave is executor may be in violation of city health and safety codes.

The flyer said seven people “are crammed into one of his rental units forcing some to sleep on a mattress laying on the living room floor. Even tenant pleas for help on simple things like leaking faucets go unanswered.”

“Without using the word, they did everything to lead the reader up to think I am a slumlord,” said Kudrave, who denied the Sport Chalet’s allegations. He said he does not own the property, which was willed to his sister after his mother died last summer.

Kudrave said he is the non-paid executor for the trust and receives no money from managing the property. He said he is in the process of helping his sister sell the rental units.

Sport Chalet’s Executive Vice President of Marketing Bob Haueter defended the allegations.

“The question we raised was the condition of those units,” said Haueter. “The unsafe condition of those units . . . points to the issue of Mr. Kudrave’s responsibility as a landlord.”

Kudrave countered: “Clearly I am not the landlord; I do not own the property. Yes, I have a responsibility. But to imply that it is mine in the traditional sense is a lie.”

Breitman was the target of a third flyer that attacked her solely because of her association with Blackwelder and Kudrave.

Breitman has criticized Haueter, who last year was a senior assistant in state Assemblyman Pat Nolan’s Glendale office. She said Haueter is not a marketing executive, but a paid political adviser hired by the local sporting goods store to elect a council favorable to their proposed retail development.

“He’s a professional political hit man,” Breitman said, “and they call him a marketing director. These guys know how to play dirty politics.”

Haueter denied he was hired by the Sport Chalet to influence the campaign. He said a City Council vote on the proposed project was expected long before the election, and that his employment interview did not mention the campaign.

Haueter said the flyers were fair because the three candidates named in them raised the very issues that the flyers examined. He said Breitman, Kudrave and Blackwelder were deceiving voters by publishing statements in support of the proposed Sport Chalet project when they, in fact, opposed it.

“They ran a campaign where they were attempting to get elected by the people who opposed the project and the people who supported it too,” said Haueter. “Our assumption going into this election was if Blackwelder, Breitman and Kudrave were elected, there was no way they would vote for this project.”

Kudrave said he is afraid the Sport Chalet’s tactics may keep some people from running for elected office in La Canada Flintridge in the future.

Although critical of the last-minute mailings, Feehan said the Sport Chalet flyers did not do any real damage. As evidence, she cited the absentee ballots, many of which were cast before the controversial mailers were distributed.

“The absentee ballots were overwhelmingly for Edwards, Hastings and myself,” said Feehan. “That gives validation to the whole election.”

According to City Clerk Pat Anderson, 1,038 of the absentee ballots were returned before the Sport Chalet mailed its flyers. Anderson said the margin of support for Feehan, Edwards and Hastings among the absentee votes was far greater than the distribution in the other ballots. A total of 1,367 absentee ballots were received.

Blackwelder, although disappointed by the Sport Chalet’s critical mailers, said she enjoyed the race and is ready to mend fences.

“It was an illuminating experience,” said Blackwelder, “and I loved meeting so many wonderful people who could see beyond the smoke screen, and all the hue and cry, and who dearly love this community as much as I do. Maybe things will settle down now, and the community can go about solving problems.”

A vote on the Sport Chalet’s proposed expansion will be one of the first items on the agenda when the new council meets May 7.

“We have to set the dates on the hearings for the Sport Chalet appeal,” said Edwards. “I would think that, given the amount of hearings, it will probably take us May and June before we hear all the testimony. We have to go over all the conditions and over the primary project itself.”

In addition, the new council will face a number of personnel issues, including the selection of a new city manager and the appointment of several city commissioners.

“Personally, I would like to see us set some long-term goals for where we want the city to go now,” said Feehan. “I am excited about having a new team of people to work with.”

LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE

9 of 9 Precincts

CITY COUNCIL

Three vacancies

Candidate Vote % Elizabeth Blackwelder 2592 13.14 Judy Breitman 2674 13.56 James Edwards 3666 18.59 Joan Feehan* 3543 17.96 John Hastings 3728 18.90 Peter Kudrave 2761 14.00 Barbara Parady 0223 01.13 Melvin Ricks 0538 02.73

Winners appear in bold

* Indicates incumbent