Glendale Pair Seeks Reform on Elections : Ballot drive: The transplanted New Englanders go after political power for areas they say are neglected.

Art Segien and Richard Seeley, who are bucking long odds in a battle against Glendale’s political establishment, say their fighting spirit comes from their New England roots.

Seeking signatures on a petition may not be as colorful as dumping tea in Boston Harbor. But the two activists have summoned the same sense of stubborn outrage in their pursuit of a bloodless revolution at Glendale City Hall.

Segien, 78, a retired engineer, and Seeley, 59, a self-employed landscaper, grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut, respectively. Over the past year, the pair have forged an unlikely partnership to try to bring political power to parts of the city they believe are now neglected. They hope to do so by changing the way City Council members are elected.

“In Boston, people are taught not to sit on their hands but to get up and say what they think,” said Segien, the feisty chairman of the Coalition for Electoral Reform.

Added Seeley, the group’s treasurer: “Maybe New Englanders have something in their background that builds a little character. You don’t give up. When you start something, you finish it.”

Segien and Seeley have taken the reins of an initiative drive launched last year by a third Glendale activist, Robin Westmiller. Westmiller and Seeley both ran unsuccessfully for the council in April, 1989.

Westmiller, 36, who has put her home up for sale and plans to move to Ventura County, summed up the reasons for challenging the status quo in Glendale, where, as in many small towns, power has long been held by a core group of insiders.

“I’m fed up with Glendale,” said Westmiller, a former Weight Watchers lecturer and Radio Shack manager who now devotes most of her time to raising three young daughters. “The school system has gone down the tubes. There’s no parking. The gang situation is increasing. The graffiti--they can’t keep on top of it. The traffic situation is becoming unbearable.”

She said Segien seized on her original idea of reforming Glendale’s city government.

“Art took this thing on whole-hog, 100%, body, blood, life, soul, money, and he ran with it,” Westmiller said. “And I give him full credit. At that point, I couldn’t do it.”

She said she became politically active after Glendale council members rejected her ideas and treated her rudely at a public meeting.

“They listen--in one ear and out the other,” Westmiller said. “And they’ll do whatever they damn well please anyway.”

Mayor Larry Zarian said he has always listened to the activists’ concerns.

“I characterize these three as well-meaning people who somehow are dissatisfied with some things in this city,” he said. “It’s easy to find faults. Tell me the solutions.

“They say there is too much traffic. I know that. They say they are building too many apartments. I know that. They say the schools are overcrowded. I know that. I’m working to find a solution. I say, ‘Work with me.’ ”

The solution Segien and Seeley are pursuing would require City Council members to be elected from districts, rather than citywide as they are now. But the mayor and the four other council members--at least two of whom could be forced to give up their seats if the effort succeeded--are staunchly opposed.

The ballot drive organizers suffered a setback last week, when the Glendale city clerk announced they had not collected enough signatures. But Segien and Seeley vow to keep fighting, in court or with a renewed signature drive or by organizing their supporters to vote out the council’s entrenched incumbents.

Segien and Seeley believe they have tapped into widespread discontent among Glendale residents over the problems caused by the construction spree and population boom of the 1980s.

Segien collected the lion’s share of the coalition’s signatures, often setting up a card table at the entrance to a supermarket, and asking shoppers: “Want to sign a petition for better government in Glendale?”

He would show the shoppers a map of Glendale, and explain that no council members live in south Glendale or the far northern neighborhoods such as Montrose.

Segien himself lives in an affluent central Glendale neighborhood but he owns apartment buildings and a rental house in the southern part of the city. He first squared off against the council four years ago, when he successfully protested a plan to aid the city’s car dealers by allowing auto-related businesses in a residential area where his apartments are situated.

Segien grew up in Belmont, Mass., which he recalls as a tidy town with no industry or apartment buildings. It had good schools and police who walked a beat and knew every resident by name, he said.

“I started working when I was 5 years old, working in a grocery store,” he said. “When I was 13 years old, I was managing one.”

He earned a degree in mechanical engineering at MIT and worked as a factory manager and a manufacturing cost-cutting consultant. He also has bought and renovated real estate. To broaden his knowledge, Segien has returned to college to study law, accounting and public speaking.

His colleague Seeley had a similar hard-working childhood in Torrington, Conn., where he earned money by mowing lawns and shoveling snow. When he was 17, his family relocated to Los Angeles.

“My father lost his job and couldn’t get another one because he got blackballed,” Seeley said. “It was a very small city. I won’t go into reasons why, but that’s the reason we’re out here. We know all about small-town controversy.”

Seeley served in the U.S. Army during the Korean War, then earned a business administration degree at UCLA. He did manual labor and worked as an insurance claims adjuster. He has had a landscaping and gardening business for the past 19 years.

Since 1963, Seeley has lived in a portion of La Crescenta that was annexed by Glendale in 1952. Seeley believes the area is under-served by the city. In an attempt to remedy that, he ran for the City Council in April, 1989, and finished 12th out of 13 candidates.