HUNTINGTON BEACH : Crime, Environment Had Roles in Race

Voters have filled four City Council seats with two candidates backed by environmental organizations and two viewed as more sympathetic to developers.

The reelection of Grace Winchell and the addition of Linda Moulton-Patterson to the council will create a pro-environment bloc of three on the seven-member council, counting incumbent Peter M. Green, whose term isn’t up until 1992.

Moulton-Patterson, president of the Huntington Beach Union High School District Board of Trustees, led the 11-candidate field in the City Council race. Winchell easily won a second four-year term on the council.

Voters also elected Earle Robitaille and Jack Kelly, both of whom were seen as pro-development candidates.

Robitaille is a former police chief and Kelly is a former two-term councilman. They and Moulton-Patterson emphasized crime control in their campaign mailers. The late-blooming law-and-order issue, according to some observers, may have been more decisive than environmental concerns in Tuesday’s election. “Law and order is clearly the No. 1 issue on people’s minds,” Robitaille said. “There’s a lot of concern about the gangs that have been spilling over into the city, as well as concern about narcotics.”

Kelly, a former television actor who co-starred in the old “Maverick” series, prominently used a policeman’s photo in one of his campaign mailers. Kelly, Robitaille and Moulton-Patterson also enjoyed the backing of the Huntington Beach Police Officers’ Assn.

But a fourth candidate backed by the police officers, Ed Mountford, finished sixth behind environmental candidate Mark Porter.

Voters overwhelmingly supported Measure C, a citizens’ initiative that would prohibit the city’s selling or leasing park or beach land without a citywide vote.

The measure was passed just a week before the city’s most controversial development, Pierside Village, is scheduled to come before the City Council. Pierside Village would include new restaurants on beachfront land near the pier. Environmentalists say that passage of Measure C now means that the city cannot lease this land, but some officials, including Mayor Thomas J. Mays, say Pierside Village is protected by a previous lease.

On Tuesday night, the city Planning Commission voted 4 to 3 to approve Pierside Village. The City Council is scheduled to take up the project on Nov. 19.