Recall Bid Ends Rare Period of Civic Unity : West Hollywood: Groups that joined to fight a gambling parlor are at odds over a move to oust the mayor.

It was an unprecedented alliance of West Hollywood city officials and community organizations that joined ranks last fall to defeat an initiative on the November ballot that would have opened the way for the Westside’s first gambling parlor.

At the time, some residents commented that it was remarkable to have such a sense of shared purpose and unity in a city noted for its political contentiousness. Some predicted that it wouldn’t last.

They were right. West Holly wood’s flirtation with harmony is over. A group of residents is mounting a door-to-door recall campaign against Mayor John Heilman, the only City Council member to serve continuously since the city’s November, 1984, incorporation.

The Recall John Heilman Movement, claiming a membership of 250 people representing nearly every established group in the city, will begin taking its recall petition to residents this week. Its members have until the first week of June to collect the required 4,200 signatures, 20% of the city’s registered voters, to bring the issue to a vote. If the recall qualifies for the ballot, a special election will be held in the fall.

Movement leaders say they launched the recall campaign because Heilman has failed to adequately address the city’s ills. They say he has permitted overdevelopment on the residential west end, ignored crime on the beleaguered east end and weakened the city’s rent-control ordinance.

On a personal level, they say Heilman has become intolerant of those who oppose him, often ignoring residents’ suggestions at council meetings.

Heilman says he believes he has widespread support among voters and notes that he was reelected by a comfortable margin last April. Perhaps more important, he has the strong support of the city’s powerful tenants’ rights group, the Coalition for Economic Survival.

But recall organizers insist that Heilman has lost touch with the city.

“There is an overwhelming sense in this community that John is not listening to the people,” contended Gary Dontzig, one of five residents who started the recall effort. “Buildings are higher than they are supposed to be. Traffic is more congested than ever. The people have been asking for all this to stop.”

Recall committee members are focusing much of their campaign on what they perceive to be Heilman’s past political sins.

Prominent among them was Heilman’s energetic sponsorship in 1989 of a plan to build a $23-million civic center in West Hollywood Park. The center would have included city offices, an expanded public library, underground parking and rooftop tennis courts.

Opponents argued that the park was highly valued by the community and that construction of the civic center would have meant moving a public pool and other recreational facilities. Voters rejected the plan narrowly in a November, 1989, special election.

“The civic center was John’s Taj Mahal,” said Rita Guarriello, a former planning commissioner whose husband, Sal, is a city councilman. “I remember him telling residents at one City Council meeting, ‘It doesn’t matter what you want, you’re going to get the center in the park.’ ”

Organizers of the recall also say Heilman has used his influence on the five-member City Council to overturn Planning Commission decisions. Councilwomen Babette Lang and Abbe Land tend to vote with Heilman, critics note. So did Councilwoman Helen Albert, whom Lang replaced in April, 1990.

Some of those votes have been very controversial. In September, 1989, for example, the council overrode the commission and allowed the Writers Guild of America to expand its headquarters at Almont Drive and Rosewood Avenue.

The council again overrode the commission three months later and permitted hotelier Severyn Ashkenazy to convert 200 apartments to hotel rooms. In return, Ashkenazy agreed to pay the city $250,000 a year for 20 years to replace the lost housing and promised not to evict about 40 tenants.

Heilman’s allies say the complaints are old news.

“The recall movement is raising the same issues as they did in last April’s election,” said Larry Gross, executive director of the Coalition for Economic Survival. “Yet John Heilman won in a landslide victory. This campaign is irresponsible.” If a recall election becomes necessary, he said, the city will have to spend money “that should go to social services.”

“I don’t see this group having any broad base of support,” he said.

To underscore its support, the coalition’s steering committee last week removed two of its members who have been active in the recall effort, Rita Guarriello and Rochelle Sommers Smith.

Heilman, 33, a law professor at Whittier College of Law, contends that some of his critics fail to understand the role of City Council members.

“It is my job to lobby people on issues that are good for the city,” Heilman said. “I certainly try to get three votes for things that I think are important. So do the other council members. But if you look at past decisions, you’ll see that most are 5 to 0 or 4 to 1, a clear majority. That is because the council generally shares philosophical views on what the city needs.”

Heilman acknowledges that he has taken unpopular stands on certain issues in recent years. But he has done so, he insists, to protect residents’ interests.

One of of those decisions involved a losing effort in court to preserve the city’s tough rent-control ordinance, which Heilman helped write. The case stemmed from a request in 1986 by apartment owner Mary Simonson for permission to raise rents in her Hancock Avenue building. Despite Simonson’s claim of economic hardship, the city’s Rent Stabilization Commission denied the increase.

Simonson sued for the right to raise rents, and won. She became an overnight symbol of the landlords’ struggle against rent control. The court decision was upheld in January by the state Supreme Court.

Many rent-control advocates criticized Heilman and the council for fighting the suit, considering that Simonson’s rents were low even by West Hollywood rent-control standards. By fighting and losing, the critics contended, Heilman has made it easy for other landlords to seek similar rent increases.

Heilman responds that the fight was necessary “to protect the integrity and the strength of the ordinance. . . . We fought on behalf of tenants’ rights. A decision had been wrongly handed down. It would have been wrong of us not to challenge it.”

Heilman’s supporters say that the Simonson case and the other issues raised by the recall committee have clouded the mayor’s contributions to the city. They point to the vast network of social services the city provides to seniors, AIDS patients, the disabled, the homeless and other groups.

According to officials in the city’s Human Services Department, West Hollywood spends more per capita on social services than any other city in the nation--an average of more than $140 for each of its 36,000 residents. Heilman, his supporters say, has been at the forefront of that effort.

Heilman also cites his commitment to helping the homeless in the city. In November, the council approved a 50-bed homeless shelter on La Brea Avenue. Although the shelter has drawn criticism from nearby residents who say it will bring blight and crime to the city’s east end, many see it as a step in the right direction.

“The shelter is one more instance of an innovative City Council,” said Kim Kralj, a human services commissioner. “You can’t solve peoples’ problems, or the issues they are raising in the community, as long as they’re on the streets. The shelter is giving people options, a chance to turn their behavior around. It is creating options for the east end of town.”

City officials are also looking into sites on the east end to build a new city hall, which would act as an anchor for redeveloping the area. Residents have mentioned several locations, including the corner of Santa Monica Boulevard and Fuller Avenue and another next to West Hollywood Hospital on La Brea Avenue.

“The city needs suggestions from people who feel they can help revitalize the east end, not rhetoric from recall campaigns,” said Sibyl Zaden, one of the city’s five planning commissioners. “But in this city, one group or another is always complaining. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could offer more constructive comments and less de structive criticism.”