Drive to Recall Bishop Qualifies for Ballot : Politics: Controversial Oceanside councilwoman’s fate will be determined in a recall election. The mayor urges her to resign.

A recall campaign to force Oceanside Vice Mayor Melba Bishop from the City Council, where she leads a tough slow-growth majority, has qualified for the ballot, the city clerk’s office said Monday.

Petitions seeking her removal contained 8,549 valid signatures from voters registered in Oceanside, 161 more names than were needed to place the recall question before citywide voters within 125 days.

Meanwhile, Mayor Larry Bagley on Monday urged Bishop to resign from the council, where she is serving the third year of her second four-year term.

“With that showing, I think she should resign,” said Bagley of the petition, adding that it is “inevitable” that Bishop’s actions on the council will lead to a recall election.

“There’s just been too much disruption in the city, and it’s too apparent there’s a power bloc operating” on the council, Bagley said.

Ed Wicburg, a leader of the 6-month-old Recall Melba Bishop Campaign, said Monday his grass-roots organization now will mount a vigorous ballot fight to oust the councilwoman.

Recall advocates charge that Bishop has wrested control from directly elected Bagley and, with council slow-growth allies Nancy York and Don Rodee, pushed through severe budget cuts for the police and fire departments.

Further, they claim the majority has used heavy-handed tactics against city administrators, forcing several top officials to resign.

“Melba represents a dictatorship in this city . . . they (the majority) have their minds made up before they come to council,” Wicburg said.

Bishop, responding to the recall, said Monday the political effort “is pure and simple hatred and sour grapes” over the outcome of last November’s election.

That’s when slow-growth forces defeated veteran Councilwoman Lucy Chavez, and a new majority replaced the old guard on the council.

“I think this is about having power on the council,” said Bishop, who is 49. She said Bagley and his ally, Councilman Sam Williamson, “were used to having a majority.”

Bishop has argued that the council majority has had no choice but to decisively cut spending in a deficit budget, replace planning commissioners who don’t reflect council policies and reshuffle the leadership of some city departments.

If the recall succeeds in North County’s largest city, Bishop would be the second council member removed from office in San Diego County this year. In April, voters overwhelmingly toppled San Diego City Councilwoman Linda Bernhardt in a furor over her effort to redraw council districts.

The Bishop recall movement marks another turbulent episode in Oceanside’s legendary stormy politics.

Another Oceanside recall effort in the early 1980s resulted in two councilmen being removed during a scandal over misuse of city expense accounts.

This latest campaign, according to Wicburg, began in January, shortly after York and Rodee were elected in November and formally took office in early December.

At their first meeting, the newly forged majority fired most of the city Planning Commission and informed Bagley he could no longer serve as the city’s representative to the San Diego Assn. of Governments, a regional planning agency.

They also refused to allow Bagley the mayor’s traditional prerogative of assigning council members to specialty committees.

Since then, under political or budgetary pressure from the council, Police Chief Oliver Drummond, City Atty. Charles Revlett and Fire Chief Jim Rankin have resigned.

Wicburg, who has lived in Oceanside since 1983 and is self-employed, said Bishop was targeted for recall because York and Rodee hadn’t served long enough on the council to be legally recalled when the petitions began being circulated in January.

Further, Wicburg said that York and Rodee shouldn’t be judged until they spend more time in office, although he charged that they vote however Bishop instructs them to. “They don’t act on their own, they always look to her,” he said.

York has insisted that developers wanting to neutralize the slow-growth momentum are behind the recall. However, Bishop disagreed with that view Monday, saying, “I think at this point the developers are not getting involved.”

Wicburg denies any backing from builders, saying recall supporters cut across the lines of local politics and issues and want Bishop removed because of what he calls her high-handed tactics.

“Developers are not behind us at all,” he said, adding that the ongoing debate about slow growth “did not start this recall.”

Recall petitions were submitted to the city clerk’s office June 17.

Although 11,811 total signatures were offered, the county registrar of voters found some invalid, and others were withdrawn by signatories themselves.

“We had received some 1,558 requests to remove names,” said Jone Behounek of the city clerk’s Office.

The City Council on July 24 will be informed that the recall campaign has been certified, then a recall election will be scheduled, she said.

Meanwhile on Monday, Bishop supporters took a lawsuit seeking to cripple the recall drive before Vista Superior Court Judge Ronald Prager. Oceanside Taxpayers for Orderly Growth, which sponsored the city’s slow-growth initiative, Measure A, four years ago, had requested a temporary restraining order to halt the city clerk’s office from certifying the recall signatures.

The group argued that the signatures were bogus because recall forces purportedly hired people from outside Oceanside to circulate the petitions.

However, Assistant City Atty. Debra Corbett said Monday that the judge refused to grant a temporary restraining order.