Pinole Mayor Ousted on Racism Claims : Government: A City Council vote caps months of debate in the Bay Area city. The politician denies making the alleged offensive remarks.

Mayor John Goularte, besieged by criticism for reportedly making racist remarks, was stripped of his office by City Council members in a drawn-out meeting that concluded early Tuesday.

The council--earlier divided over whether to oust Goularte--voted 4 to 1 to remove him and to install Mayor Pro Tem Ann Williams in his place. Goularte, who cast the lone vote in his favor, will retain his City Council seat until his term ends in November, 1992.

He said he will not seek reelection, but insisted that the council’s actions were politically motivated.

“They’ve been on my back for the last 10 years--(council members) Ann Williams, Gretchen Mariotti, and the rest of them--and now they’ve finally got me,” Goularte said after the end of the meeting, adding, “I never said any such words. It’s a damned lie.”

Not so, said Mariotti, who labeled the former mayor “a small-town product caught in a time warp.” A decade ago racist remarks by a city official might have gone unpunished, she said, but today--as this Bay Area city’s minority populations swell--they must be censured.

“The way he reacted to a diverse community was incorrect,” she said.

The ouster of the 66-year-old retired oil worker-turned-politician at the meeting--which began late Monday and lasted until early Tuesday morning inside Pinole’s packed Memorial Hall--marked the end of months of fierce debate over his conduct.

On Jan. 23, while Goularte was discussing with a local building contractor whether the city should approve a paid holiday honoring Martin Luther King Jr., he said a local merchant confided in him that he could never observe “a holiday honoring a (black man),” using a derogatory term.

Reaction to his words were swift, with a city employee group and council members Williams and Mariotti spearheading a campaign to remove him. But the remaining two council members refused, opting instead to reprimand him after he apologized.

On March 29, at the scene of an argument between black youths on a basketball court, Goularte reportedly turned to Parks Commissioner Maria Alegria, and said, “You know, once they move in, they want to take over.”

“I interpreted ‘they’ as the black youth,” Alegria wrote in a March 30 letter to the City Council.

Goularte insists he told Alegria, “When certain groups come into town, there is trouble.”

“And I meant that regardless of race or ethnic group they belong to,” he said.

This time the City Council gave him two weeks to resign. When he refused, they removed him.

“What I found especially saddening was that the mayor never really addressed these incidents,” said City Councilman Dan Purnell, who was named mayor pro tem at the meeting. “I think there was a real lack of leadership on his part.”

Although the council banded together to remove Goularte, there is evidence of a rift among residents when talk turns to the subject of the ex-mayor.

“There are a lot of liberal people on the City Council,” said Cathy Zecchin, a travel agent in Pinole. “They just can’t afford to have someone making comments like that.”

To Al Mims, news that Goularte was no longer Pinole’s mayor would “relieve some of the tension here,” allowing residents to stop dwelling on the issue.