Critics Not Quiet in Assessing Job Bean Has Done : Ventura: The councilwoman’s low-key approach irritates some, but her supporters point to a voting record consistently in favor of controlled growth.

In a popular satire on local politics now playing for lunch crowds in Ventura, a bewildered character named Councilwoman Legume doesn’t seem to understand anything.

When asked about Taylor Ranch, the proposed site for a four-year university just west of Ventura, Legume replies:

“Isn’t Taylor Ranch a place where they produce sewing machines?”

Legume is a fictional character, a caricature of Ventura Councilwoman Cathy Bean in a theater production titled “Live at the Livery.”

Bean has seen Legume in action. But unlike most Livery faithful, the real councilwoman doesn’t think the act is funny.

“They certainly don’t know me,” Bean said icily the other day.

Bean’s critics say there hasn’t been much opportunity for anyone to get to know the councilwoman since she was swept into office last November along with Todd Collart and Gary Tuttle in a wave of anti-growth sentiment.

Since that election, which stunned the city’s business and political establishment, Bean, 62, has kept a notoriously low profile--except for one comment about Latinos that triggered a major controversy.

Unlike her colleagues, she has yet to make any major public proposals for the council’s consideration and she rarely says much at all during public meetings, except when she announces that she doesn’t understand staff presentations.

But while her critics chastise her for a perceived lack of leadership, Bean’s supporters say she is doing just fine. They point to her consistent voting record in favor of environmental and slow-growth positions as the true measure of her performance.

Moreover, some of them argue that, if anything, Bean has been singled out as a target by pro-development special-interest groups that were disenfranchised in the November election because of her relative lack of political experience.

Crouched by the vegetable patch in her back yard, picking tomatoes for a neighbor while two grandchildren climb a tree, Bean appears to be an unlikely focal point in the political battle over Ventura’s future.

And yet, with the council almost evenly divided on such issues as the importation of state water and the desirability of building a four-year university on the outskirts of the city, the vote of this retired schoolteacher and doting grandmother has made the difference.

On both the state water and university issues, Bean sided with a bare majority of the council to defeat projects that some environmentalists believe would lead to runaway growth in the city.

“She’s doing a fine job,” said Pat Baggerly, a leader of the local Environmental Coalition. “She ran on a platform of controlled growth, and now she’s supporting that platform.”

As Bean tells it, her involvement in politics was little more than the progression from concerned citizen to community leader.

The daughter of a shop owner in tiny David City, Neb., Bean left home after high school and enrolled in the University of Nebraska at nearby Lincoln, earning a degree in sociology. Then she found a job as a social worker in another small town in Nebraska, where she met Art Bean, a crane operator, and got married.

She quit her job in Nebraska to raise her two children, Dan, now 37, and Cate, 34. Then, in 1957, the Beans moved to Ventura County to chase the California Dream.

“Those were the booming days and we knew Art could find a job because he’s a heavy equipment operator and can handle all kinds of machines,” she recalled. After three years in Port Hueneme, they moved to Ventura.

When the children got older, Bean obtained a master’s degree in education from Chapman College in Orange County and became a teacher at several different elementary schools in Port Hueneme and Ventura, a career she followed for 20 years until she retired five years ago.

“Mrs. Bean was pretty strict, which was nice,” said Eric Styles, 17, who remembers her as his fourth-grade teacher at Juanamaria Elementary School.

“When kids got into fights or stuff like that, she would always find out all the facts before making any decisions,” Styles said. “She was very fair, just like she is now.”

After retiring, Bean became involved in the Ventura County League of Women Voters, which picked her in 1986 to be a member of a committee to review the city’s general plan.

As a committee member she tried to impose strict growth limits on future population, but she was outnumbered. The committee ended up supporting a 122,000 population limit--about 30,000 more than Bean proposed.

Unwilling to accept defeat, Bean got together with a group of friends to found the Alliance for Ventura’s Future, a grass-roots organization that put pressure on the past City Council to curb growth and eventually was partly responsible for scaling the general plan population cap down to 112,000.

From there, it was a small step to the City Council. When her friends asked her to run, Bean says, she could not walk away from her civic duty. She was elected, along with Tuttle and Collart, by a 2-to-1 margin over Jim Monahan, the fourth-place finisher and incumbent mayor.

But despite the landslide win, public praise since the election has been hard to come by for Bean, her public image often eclipsed by her close ally Tuttle, the outspoken former world-class runner.

“Gary sees his role as being the one who brings the issues to the people and so forth, and that’s fine,” Bean said. “But we’re not all cut from the same cloth. If someone comes to me with a problem and I can quietly handle it, I don’t feel it’s necessary to take it to the City Council.”

Bean says attention makes her uncomfortable--and, indeed, most of the attention she has received since her election victory has been less than flattering.

In January, only weeks after being sworn in, Bean offended minority groups when she said that the need for a four-year university at Taylor Ranch is “not that desperate” because “as for low-income students, we know we are talking of Hispanic students” who would be well-served by a two-year college.

Bean later said that her statement misrepresented her true feelings towards minorities. In her 20 years as a schoolteacher, she said, “I taught Hispanics, blacks, Cambodians and Vietnamese students and treated them all exactly the same.”

But, to this day, Latino leaders say they still feel insulted and are watching her closely.

“We feel exactly the same way as we did when she made those remarks,” said Sandra Echavarria, president of the Oxnard-based Assn. of Mexican-American Educators. “We feel those kinds of comments are racist.”

Bean never recovered completely from the initial controversy. Since then, she has become more cautious in making public statements.

Tuttle says he understands Bean’s low-key style. “She got slammed so hard in the beginning on Taylor Ranch and other issues, that she’s gotten gun-shy,” he said. “She has chosen to do a good job behind the scenes instead of making a big media splash.”

In the process, she has created the impression in some circles that she is more of a follower than a leader. The Greater Ventura Chamber of Commerce, for one, traditionally invites new council members to address its members, but this year only Collart and Tuttle were invited.

“I guess she doesn’t reflect much,” chamber President Bob Gregorchuck said. “So far, there hasn’t been much to look at. She seems to be a team player more than anything else.”

Mayor Richard Francis, on the other hand, says Bean’s image problem lies elsewhere.

“She likes to use the phrase ‘I don’t understand’ as an introductory colloquialism when she believes an issue needs to be discussed further. Unfortunately that makes her seem unintelligent. . . . As a consequence, she is more vulnerable to the criticism of certain individuals who are politically motivated and are in the forefront of certain groups, such as the Chamber of Commerce and the Ventura County Development Assn.,” Francis said.

The man who most actively represents these interests on the council is Monahan, who rarely, if ever, votes against a proposed commercial or residential development.

“Cathy should do her homework instead of wasting the City Council’s and the staff’s time” during public meetings, Monahan recently complained.

For her part, Bean doesn’t even blink when asked if she feels as capable as her colleagues. “Yes!” she says. “Yes!”

As for Monahan, Bean’s response is that his attacks are prompted by a mixture of jealousy and sexism.

“I can only conclude that he resents me because I’m a woman and I beat him badly in November,” she said.

With that, smiling over her put-down of her most vocal critic, she turns to her granddaughters Megan, 4, and Cindy, 7, and announces it is time to go to the beach.