Residency of Bradley Pick for Harbor Post Clouded : Appointments: Reynaldo Garay moved from Rancho Palos Verdes to San Pedro only after the mayor nominated him to be a port commissioner. Despite doubts on this issue, Garay has local support.

When Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley set out last month to fill a vacancy on the city Harbor Commission, the one thing many harbor-area residents asked was that the mayor appoint someone from San Pedro, someone they knew, to represent them on the powerful five-member panel.

They didn’t get their wish. At least not all of it.

Bradley appointed Reynaldo Garay, a longtime harbor-area educator and well-regarded community leader but someone who, public records show, has not lived in Los Angeles--let alone San Pedro--since the mid-1960s.

Garay’s residence in nearby Rancho Palos Verdes violates Los Angeles’ 1928 City Charter requirement that commissioners live within the city. And to meet that requirement, Garay said last week, he has moved into the San Pedro apartment of his wife’s nephew.

His wife, he said, will continue living in the couple’s Rancho Palos Verdes home until they decide whether to both relocate to San Pedro.

In the meantime, Garay said, his move to an apartment building on 25th Street technically satisfies the city’s requirement. And he insisted that he never misled anyone, including the mayor, in declaring for weeks that San Pedro was his home.

“I said I lived in San Pedro. As far as I’m concerned, I do,” said Garay, who once lived in San Pedro. He remains active in various community groups there and still owns an apartment building on 25th Street, a few blocks from where he recently moved.

Although Garay’s pledge to live in Los Angeles may be enough to ensure his City Council confirmation as a port commissioner, his appointment by Bradley represents the third time in recent years that the mayor has selected commissioners who did not live within the city.

Robert Rados Sr., the former port commissioner and San Pedro businessman whose departure from the panel last month created the current vacancy, lived for years in the Rancho Palos Verdes home of his late mother. According to a 1988 city attorney’s opinion, Rados was able to live in the home because he was unable to sell it and intended to return to his previous residence in San Pedro when he did. But when he stepped down from the commission, Rados still lived in the Rancho Palos Verdes residence.

More recently, Bradley said he would not seek the resignation of Cultural Heritage Commission Chairman Amarjit S. Marwah despite a city attorney’s opinion that Marwah was not a resident of the city and should step down from the panel. Marwah, who owns a 10-acre estate in Malibu, told the mayor in a May 1 letter that he had rented a residence in Los Angeles, and that was enough for Bradley to disregard the city attorney’s recommendation.

In the case of Garay, Bradley spokesman Bill Chandler said the mayor selected the 56-year-old dean of Los Angeles Trade Technical College for the Harbor Commission after being told by Garay that he lived in San Pedro. “When he was under consideration for the position . . . he provided an address that is within the city,” Chandler said, referring to the 25th Street apartment building that Garay and his wife have owned since 1964.

But city records show--and Garay has acknowledged--that he was a registered voter in Rancho Palos Verdes from 1969 until July 9 of this year--one week after his appointment by Bradley. And in a recent interview, Garay said he switched his voter registration to Los Angeles--and moved into the San Pedro apartment of an in-law--only to satisfy the city’s residency requirement.

“I have reestablished residence back in the city because of this technicality,” he said.

“I will split my time as best I can” between the 25th Street apartment and the Rancho Palos Verdes home he and his wife bought in 1968, Garay added.

The arrangement, he said, has “not been easy” on the couple, who have been married for 29 years. “But she is supporting me on this,” he said.

The arrangement is enough to satisfy Bradley that Garay is now a resident of Los Angeles and that his appointment should be confirmed by the City Council on Tuesday, Chandler said last week.

“He has provided an address within the city . . . (and) that appears to meet the residency requirement,” Chandler said. “And beyond that, his credentials are outstanding, and the mayor wants his nomination to move forward.”

Apparently, so do many others in San Pedro, including harbor-area Councilwoman Joan Milke Flores, who was among those urging Bradley to appoint a San Pedro resident to the port commission.

Although dismayed to hear that Garay was not a resident of the community when he was appointed, Flores said she will support his selection as long as he fulfills his promise to make the community his primary residence.

“I intend to ask him if (San Pedro) is his primary home, if he considers it his residence and his home (in Rancho Palos Verdes) as a place he sometimes visits,” Flores said. “I want it to be all out in the open.”

Flores added that she is troubled that Garay’s residence outside the city came to light only after he was selected for the appointment. “My problem is not with him. My problem is with a system that requires something and then allows some slippage,” Flores said.

She said it was Bradley’s responsibility to confirm the commissioner’s residence before submitting Garay’s name for appointment.

“With all the problems the mayor has had on this” issue, Flores said, “it might do him well to make sure (appointees) are residents of the city. I mean, he’s the one who sends letters to us saying these people are qualified to be on the commission. And I think at some point he has to take the responsibility for” assuring that appointees live within the city.

Leron Gubler, the San Pedro Peninsula Chamber of Commerce director who had urged Bradley to appoint a local resident to the port body, said that, like Flores, he is pleased with Garay’s credentials but disappointed to learn that the appointee did not live in San Pedro at the time of his selection.

“The city does need to look into these things on all of their commissioners because if you don’t enforce the rules, at some point you could have people who have nothing to do with the city making decisions,” Gubler said.

But Gubler quickly added that he does not put Garay in that category. He described Garay as someone who is “respected in the community and who has strong ties to San Pedro.”

Gubler also said he hopes Garay’s appointment will be confirmed so that the city does not launch a search for a new port commissioner. “I think we would much rather have someone who lives just over the border (in Rancho Palos Verdes) than somebody who lives in Bel-Air,” he said.