Sheridan, Agran Snarl Anew Over Meeting on Petitions

The longtime feud between this city’s past and future mayors erupted anew Saturday, with Mayor-elect Sally Anne Sheridan blasting outgoing Mayor Larry Agran for calling a special City Council meeting when she will be out of town.

Assistant City Manager Bernard Strojny said Agran pulled him out of a meeting late Friday afternoon and presented him with a notice calling for a special council meeting Tuesday. Strojny said he made a point of telling Agran that Sheridan and the city manager would be away, but said the mayor “didn’t seem to be that concerned.”

“It’s going to raise an absolute war in this city,” Sheridan said Saturday.

She accused Agran, who gave his farewell speech last week, of trying to manipulate the process by which a new City Council member will be chosen--and to do so before Sheridan and the new council are sworn in Friday. The council has a regular meeting scheduled July 24.

“Goodby, Larry,” Sheridan added. “You lost the election. Let’s not interfere with an easy transition.”

Sheridan noted that on Tuesday she will be in Monterey attending seminars for newly elected officials. In addition, she said, City Manager Paul O. Brady Jr. and the two newly elected council members, Art Bloomer and Barry Hammond, will be attending the Monterey meeting.

“This was well known to Mr. Agran,” Sheridan said. “We will all be in town and available on Monday.”

Agran, reached in Palm Springs on Saturday night, denied that he knew that Sheridan would be out of town when he first called the meeting.

He acknowledged, however, that Strojny had responded to the meeting call by telling him that Sheridan would be in Monterey on Tuesday.

Miffed by the Sheridan’s attack, Agran fired back his own salvo, saying that if she wanted to attend the Tuesday meeting, she could make arrangements.

“The fact of the matter is that Monterey is one hour away (by jet), if she chooses to come to the meeting,” said Agran, who noted that he believes that the other council members will attend. “In any event, it’s clear that she has a contrary interest here. If she regards this meeting as important, then she will be here.”

Sheridan and Agran have disagreed about nearly every issue since her election to the City Council in 1984. Agran was in office for 12 years, becoming the city’s first elected mayor in 1988, but was defeated by Sheridan in the June 5 election after a bitter and costly campaign. It featured allegations of smear tactics, complaints to the state Fair Political Practices Commission and a bid by the Sheridan camp to persuade the county district attorney’s office to investigate Agran.

During the campaign, Sheridan said one of her goals would be to “depoliticize City Hall.”

“If I become the mayor, I would probably do a workshop on healing, on getting the staff to feel good again about what they do,” she said two days before the election. “My role for the next four years would be to heal the city.”

The healing process, however, has been thwarted by glitches in city election laws, which have become fodder for two further disputes between Sheridan and Agran:

* Lawyers have disagreed over when the terms of Agran and the two outgoing City Council members expire.

The city attorney has said their terms do not expire until Sheridan and the new council are sworn in Friday. But two private attorneys hired by the council to study the election laws concluded that the terms expired on Thursday, leaving an eight-day gap when council actions could be open to question.

* The two private attorneys, Stephen M. Coontz and Franklin J. Lunding Jr., have questioned the validity of Measure D. That law, passed in 1988, was intended to determine how to fill a council seat when a City Council member is elected mayor with two years remaining in their four-year term. Sheridan’s election created exactly that situation.

In a City Council race, the top two vote-getters are normally elected to fill two seats. Before Measure D, if an incumbent council member won the mayor’s race, the third-highest vote-getter in the council race would automatically fill the vacant council seat for the remaining two years. In the June election, that was Mary Ann Gaido.

But under Measure D, which Agran supported, if voters oppose the automatic election of the third-highest vote-getter, they may petition for a special election. If 7% of registered voters sign a petition by today, a new election would be held in November.

A petition to do just that has been submitted to City Clerk Nancy C. Lacey. She has until July 24 to verify the signatures.

Agran’s agenda for Tuesday’s meeting is to discuss public access to the signatures on the petition. Gaido has been refused permission to review the signatures.

Sheridan on Saturday said she believes that the signatures are private and secret, so Agran should not be allowed access to them. Agran said that he favors public inspection of the documents and that the petitions do not fall under state privacy laws.

“I don’t believe in secrecy in government,” Agran said. “There will be no harm whatsoever to make them available for inspection by interested parties.”

Both Agran and Sheridan said they support Gaido for the council seat.