HUNTINGTON BEACH : Green Unanimously Voted New Mayor

Peter M. Green, an environmentalist and Golden West College professor, on Monday was unanimously elected mayor by his fellow council members.

“For me politics is people,” Green said in a brief speech after being sworn in. “There are many, many good people in this city.”

Green said one of his goals in 1991 will be to have a “citizens’ congress,” which he said would allow people in the city to tell the council what they want to see done in city government.

He has been a member of the seven-member City Council since his upset victory in 1984.

Green won the position of mayor after a spirited, behind-the-scenes battle between him and Councilman Jim Silva for that position. Silva was elected mayor pro tem by a vote of 6 to 1. Councilwoman Grace Winchell nominated Councilwoman Linda Moulton-Patterson for mayor pro tem and cast the only vote for her. The mayor pro tem serves as chief executive in the absence of the mayor.

Green, who has been mayor pro tem, replaces outgoing Mayor Thomas J. Mays, who was elected to the state Assembly. Some had predicted that Green would never be chosen mayor because he frequently has irritated developers in the city. He has often voted against controversial development proposals, and last January he publicly criticized the powerful Huntington Beach Co., the city’s largest landowner, saying the firm had politically manipulated the city into “a company town.”

Green, 64, has taught biological sciences and ecology at Golden West, a two-year community college in Huntington Beach, for the past 21 years. In a recent interview, he said he was urged to run for the City Council in 1984 by his colleagues in the environmental group Amigos de Bolsa Chica.

With little money and no previous campaign experience, Green said, he knocked on doors and simply asked people to vote for him.

“My election was a big surprise,” he said. “It even surprised me.” He was easily reelected to the City Council in 1988.

A native of Minneapolis, Green served three years in the Navy during World War II. He received a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts from St. Benedict’s College in Atchinson, Kan., in 1952; a master’s degree in zoology from Oklahoma State University in 1961 and a doctorate in ecology from Oklahoma State in 1963.

During the late 1960s, Green served as both a teacher and administrator at St. Gregory’s College in Shawnee, Okla. He moved to Huntington Beach in 1969, when he joined the faculty of Golden West College.

He and his wife, Cathy, have two children, Teresa, 19, and Tom, 18. Green said his hobbies are playing tennis and working in his garden.

Three new council members were sworn in: Moulton-Patterson, former Councilman Jack Kelly and former Police Chief Earle Robitaille. Winchell was sworn in for a new four-year term.