ELECTIONS FILLMORE CITY COUNCIL : Field of 6 Candidates Is Short on Experience

The city of Fillmore will elect two council members Tuesday from a field of six consisting of a city planning commissioner, an engineer, a retired aircraft mechanic, an assistant fire chief at Port Hueneme, a meat cutter and a housewife.

Most of the candidates lack experience in city government and most have refrained from making specific proposals on how to improve the city.

In keeping with the county’s dominant election issue, “slow growth” and “controlled growth” have been the campaign buzzwords in Fillmore. But although all the candidates say they are committed to restricting residential growth, they all want to attract light, clean industries to the city of 11,600 to create more jobs and improve its tax base.

Regardless of who gets elected, the city’s Latino majority will remain without a representative on the five-member council. Latino leaders in the city have said they are frustrated because in the past they were unable to get qualified Latino candidates elected.

Ray Wolfe, with less than a year of service on the city’s planning commission, is the most experienced public servant in the race. Wolfe is also a office manager for the Ventura County Superior and Municipal Courts and has worked as a manager in two department stores.

If he is elected, he said, he will form a citizens committee and hire a consulting firm to promote the newly created industrial park in north Fillmore. “We have a large labor force available, our housing costs are the lowest in the county and I think a lot of industries don’t know about these advantages,” he said.

Retired aircraft mechanic John Pressey thinks Fillmore is dirty and he wants to clean it up. Pressey, who sweeps his street from gutter to gutter every Saturday morning, said a cleaner city would increase civic pride and enhance property values.

Pressey proposes a 5-cent tax on plastic cups and a 25-cent tax on spray paint to pay for beefing up the city’s litter and graffiti removal programs.

He is the only candidate opposing the sale of fireworks in the city, on the grounds that they create litter.

Housewife Linda Brewster said that, unlike most of the other candidates, her schedule will not prevent her from being a full-time council member. “I love Fillmore, and my two children are in high school now, so I have the time to do the job,” she said.

Brewster has been attending council meetings since July to catch up on city business, but she said she hasn’t mapped out a course of action in case she is elected.

Candidate Charles (Tom) Robertson has been an assistant fire chief at Pacific Missile Test Center in Point Mugu since 1968.

Robertson, unlike the others, said he has serious doubts about a proposal to bring the Shortline tourist-dinner train to the city. He said the train station’s former site at Newhall Ranch “looks like a junkyard” and questioned the railroad company’s ability to buy the right of way to operate between Fillmore and Piru.

Candidate Donald Gunderson is a retired Navy captain currently working as an engineer at Advanced Technology in Camarillo. Gunderson, a proponent of adding some moderate-income, high-density apartments to the city’s housing stock, is a favorite among the city’s mobile home dwellers, most of whom are retired and live on fixed incomes.

Journeyman meat cutter Troy Tashima said he opposes building high-density housing because he thinks people want bigger homes to move up to. But he agrees with the other candidates in that the city needs to expand its industrial base to remain viable.