HUNTINGTON BEACH : Veteran Teacher Silva Named Mayor

Jim Silva, 47, a longtime high school teacher, is the city’s new mayor.

Silva, who succeeds Mayor Peter M. Green, was elected Monday night to the yearlong job.

“My two primary goals are to get the city’s new pier completed and to balance the budget for next year,” Silva said in an interview.

Councilwoman Grace Winchell, 54, was elected mayor pro tem, which means she will automatically be elected mayor in December, 1992, when Silva’s term ends under a law passed by the City Council this year.

Silva had served for the last year as mayor pro tem.

Although Silva is identified with the pro-growth wing of the council, he has cast some swing votes that have defeated or sidetracked some major development projects. Most notably, Silva last summer cast the deciding vote in the council’s 4-3 decision to deny a land lease for the proposed Pierside Village project. That controversial proposal called for building a cluster of restaurants on the ocean side of Pacific Coast Highway next to the pier.

Environmentalists have long campaigned against Pierside Village, and Silva’s vote against the lease has apparently killed it.

Silva said in an interview Monday that while he opposed Pierside Village, he proudly supports other aspects of downtown redevelopment.

“When I walk with my family in our new downtown, I’m proud of what we see,” he said. “I talk to people I see on the streets downtown, and they tell me they also really like what is going on there now.”

Silva said the pier and the city budget are his immediate priorities because of their importance to the city.

The new, $11.7-million pier is scheduled to be completed by next spring. On Monday, however, the city learned that the builder, Riedel International Inc. of Portland, Ore., plans to file for financial reorganization this week because of debt problems. Nonetheless, city officials said the action poses no threat to completion of the pier because the city has a performance bond that guarantees that the structure will be finished at the contract price.

The city’s 1992-93 fiscal-year budget has already become a worry to the City Council because of a predicted $6.5-million shortfall in city income by next year because of the recession.

Silva was elected to the City Council in 1988 for a four-year term. Before his election, he had served as a city planning commissioner since 1986.

A native of Fullerton, Silva graduated from Rancho Alamitos High School in Garden Grove in 1962. He received his bachelor’s degree in business from San Jose State University in 1966 and his master’s degree in economics from Chapman University in 1974.

Silva has been a teacher with the Garden Grove Unified School District for 25 years--24 of them at Los Amigos High where he teaches economics. He is youth director at Grace Lutheran Church, active as a Boy Scout adult leader and is a former board member of the YMCA of Huntington Beach.

He is married to the former Connie Finch of Garden Grove, and they have two children, Chad, 16, a junior at Marina High, and Donna, 13, a student at Dwyer Middle School. The Silvas live in the Huntington Harbour area of the city.