Power Balance Tilts Everything in Oceanside : Politics: Budget troubles, deployment to Mideast intensify stress of change to slow-growth council. Now there’s talk of a recall drive.

Only last summer, Oceanside was celebrating itself--unveiling its gleaming white Civic Center, gazing dreamily on its upscale coastal developments and talking loftily about the dawn of a golden age of redevelopment.

Since then, like artillery shells dropping in from nearby Camp Pendleton, damaging events have exploded upon the seaside city:

* The economic recession and massive deployment of Camp Pendleton Marines to the Middle East have strangled city revenues and put many downtown businesses in a slump.

* A potential $5.8-million city budget deficit was discovered, the result not only of economic factors, but also of city mistakes and a breakdown in communication between the city staff and City Council.

* The city’s growth-control law, Proposition A, suffered a clear setback after a Superior Court trial. So far, the city has spent $1.5 million defending the law, which is now headed for a second costly trial early next year.

* A slow-growth majority won election to the council in November, throwing the city into near political pandemonium with fractious council members at open war with one another. Three top city officials--the city manager, redevelopment director and police chief--have resigned amid political pressures from the council.

* A citizens’ revolt, ignited by council turmoil and proposed budget cuts, may lead to a recall campaign against the council’s new majority.

Maybe these problems are only a passing storm. But they reveal the stresses of a shifting political balance in a city divided between a pro-growth establishment and slow-growth residents.

“The power structure in Oceanside has changed,” said Lou Lightfoot, the city’s former planning director and now a land-use consultant to developers and public agencies.

There are two radically different visions of what this political change portends for the century-old city of 125,000 people.

Mayor Larry Bagley--now a virtually powerless minority council member--fears that after a decade of progress in drawing investment, Oceanside may suffer if developers of commercial and industrial projects spurn the city’s new political regime for cities with more open arms.

“The message has gone out: ‘Don’t invest in Oceanside,’ ” said Bagley, a three-term mayor who has decided not to seek reelection. But until his current term ends, he said, “I am going to fight. This city has come too far in the last 10 years for them to throw it all down the tubes.”

Bagley’s outlook, while shared by some local bankers, developers and other interests, is not universally accepted.

His political archrival, Councilwoman Melba Bishop, the council’s longtime outsider who now holds all the cards, proclaimed: “We’ve seen enough Taco Bells and El Pollo Locos” win rubber-stamp approval in Oceanside.

“It’ll be harder to pull the wool over our eyes. . . . We’re going to be more choosy,” she said, exulting that with the election of slow-growth colleagues Nancy York and Don Rodee, “the powers that be downtown are shaking in their boots.”

While the slow-growth troika may be victorious after years of election batterings, it still inherits a community that’s generally split between east and west.

To the west is the city’s downtown, where businesses have been bullish toward residential growth as a way to create a market for goods and services. In the San Luis Rey Valley to the east, subdivisions and strip shopping centers have sprouted with sufficient congestion to start an anti-growth backlash by residents there.

“What we have may be a separate economic situation in Oceanside--a bedroom community of commuters and the downtown interests,” said Gene May, an Oceanside resident who is the vice president and manager of the Corporate Banking Center for San Marcos National Bank.

However, at the moment there is too much confusion and conflict in Oceanside for most civic leaders to step back and pontificate. The City Council is straining to solve a budget crisis, even though some members cannot even talk civilly to, or about, one another.

Meanwhile, the community is wondering what the collision of ideologies and personalities bodes for the city’s future.

At their first official council meeting two weeks ago, the new majority fired four members of the seven-member Planning Commission, seeking a new commission majority to reflect Oceanside’s slow-growth order.

Then, Bishop, York and Rodee wrested control over council committee assignments from Bagley, and unceremoniously yanked him as the city’s 10-year representative to the San Diego Assn. of Governments, an influential regional planning agency.

Saying he was “hurt” by being pulled from Sandag, Bagley in an interview said, “People have been offended, outraged by the arrogance of these three people.”

But the new council team isn’t shrinking from its actions, and York said: “Basically, what we needed to do was get the attention of the people.”

“There isn’t any rancor or vindictiveness toward these guys, even though they’ve treated us horribly over the years,” she added.

(Bishop has said she was lobbied to remove Bagley from Sandag’s board of directors by slow-growth council members from other cities who also serve on the board.

(Escondido Mayor Jerry Harmon confirmed that “absolutely” he had called Bishop hoping to prompt Bagley’s ouster from Sandag. Harmon said: “It’s time, if we’re going to make changes at the regional level, that we get people at Sandag who are more consistent with a slow-growth position.”)

If the new council majority wanted attention, they got it.

Bagley, elected mayor three times, has a following, as does Bishop. And his admirers didn’t take kindly to rough handling of the mayor. They’re already talking about a recall campaign against Bishop, York and Rodee.

Donna McGinty, a longtime city resident who is active in Neighborhood Watch, blames the majority for the council strife and for proposed cuts in police and fire department budgets.

“I’ve lived in Oceanside for 50 years. I’ve never seen a council conduct business with such demeanor,” said McGinty, adding that there’s “a time frame of 90 days” before launching a recall.

Bishop scoffs, and accuses Bagley, Councilman Sam Williamson, and recently defeated Councilwoman Lucy Chavez of engineering the recall. “I think the three of them are in on it,” said Bishop, adding, “There’s nobody more vengeful than Larry Bagley.”

The mayor denies he’s plotting a recall, but can scarcely conceal his joy when commenting. “There’s already talk of recall,” he said. “If it were legally possible to do so, there would be recall petitions circulated in the city yesterday, and they would have been filed by today.”

But Bagley is not at a peak of popularity himself right now, in part because of a fiscal crisis that happened during his mayoral tenure.

A month ago, a stunned council learned that Oceanside’s $227-million budget for the current fiscal year would be $5.8 million in the red unless there were cuts. Besides reductions in police and fire service, city administrators plan to cut 95 jobs by laying off part-time workers and not filling vacant jobs.

Contributing to the budget woes were two major factors that no one could have foreseen: the declining housing market and deployment of 20,000 to 30,000 Marines from Camp Pendleton. In the three months ending in September, there was a 54.7% drop in planning, building and engineering fees generated by residential development.

Fees developers pay for roads, water and sewer lines declined nearly 84% over that same three months of 1990-91. Businesses, especially those downtown that cater to Marines, are smarting, although the city won’t know how badly until sales tax figures are received in January.

Outside economic factors aside, the budget crisis was also caused by confident council spending based on the grave miscalculation that Oceanside was starting the new fiscal year with a huge beginning balance.

There were muffled warnings by some city staff members of impending fiscal doom, but somehow the word never reached the council.

The slow-growth majority largely blames Bagley, a former city manager who knows his way around a budget, and Williamson, who served on the council’s fiscal committee but conveyed no grim budgetary news.

“A great many people think Sam ought to be recalled because of his handling of the budget,” Bishop said.

Even Bagley acknowledges a communications failure between the council and staff, saying, “Why that message wasn’t brought to the council, I don’t know. But I can surmise a lot. If you have a council that is intimidating the staff, you have a very defensive staff.

“This information was attempted to be conveyed to department heads and the city manager, but at different levels it was cut off.”

He and Bishop agree that the staff must be allowed to think independently, be free from council interference, and be at liberty to tell the council what it may not be glad to hear.

Whether there will be a new relationship between the council and staff is hard to tell.

Over the past five months, City Manager Ron Bradley, Redevelopment Director Kathy Graham and police Chief Oliver Drummond quit in frustration with--or because of a lack of confidence from--various council members. Those top jobs are now held by people with temporary titles.

While the council is still looking back at what went wrong, many people in town wonder what will happen now.

Bob Pickerel, vice president and manager of Bank of America’s downtown branch, said, “In these troubled times, you need to have the council together. You can’t just come in and sweep out the whole house. You’ve already got a temporary police chief, a temporary city manager and a temporary redevelopment director.”

Pickerel is wary about lending to a developer who must seek approval from the new council majority, although Bishop insists the slow-growth advocates support quality development by builders willing to pay their fair share to offset city costs.

“As a banker, I wouldn’t feel prudent about being involved with any project that has to go through the city right now,” Pickerel said.

His banking colleague, Gene May at San Marcos National Bank, disagrees, viewing Oceanside as a coastal venue that will surely attract top-notch projects and people who will work with stringent conditions on development.

“Oceanside is going to be as desirable as it gets,” he said.

Amid the tumult are calls for patience and perspective.

Mike Ogden, project manager for a $325-million commercial-hotel-residential project on 10 acres within the city’s downtown redevelopment area, said, “A lot of people are overreacting. Let’s hope Oceanside doesn’t have to endure that kind of embarrassment in the future. I don’t think so; I’m optimistic.”