Council Will Hold Its Peace Till New Year : Government: The deeply divided panel decides to take up discussion of the controversial letter of apology to the Sheriff’s Department when Tournament of Roses festivities are over.

With another long, damaging debate about the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department looming, the City Council opted on Tuesday to preserve the peace and put off further discussion of recent events related to the Rose Parade until after New Year’s Day.

Members of a deeply divided council agreed that an angry public discussion--including acting on a suggestion that both Mayor Jess Hughston and City Manager Philip Hawkey be removed from office--could revive the recently appeased hostilities between the council and the Sheriff’s Department.

Three council members--Chris Holden, Isaac Richard and William Paparian--have raised questions about the propriety of a controversial letter of apology that the mayor wrote to Sheriff Sherman Block last week without consulting most of his colleagues.

The mayor’s supporters on the council say that his letter, which he wrote in consultation with Councilman William Thomson and Hawkey, paved the way to a solution of a rancorous public tiff with the sheriff.

Block, miffed by council members’ earlier remarks about “neo-Nazis” and “white supremacists” in his department, agreed to let 763 sheriff’s deputies provide security for the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl game. The sheriff said Hughston’s apology, delivered to him Nov. 27, had persuaded him to relent.

The letter was such a serious breach of procedure, said Holden, who called for an investigation by the city attorney, that it could warrant the removal of the mayor and the firing of the city manager.

“If wrongdoing is ascertained, I believe the full range of sanctions should be seriously considered,” Holden said in a statement, “whether this council simply issues a formal public statement of impropriety or acts on the most extreme penalty of vacating the mayor’s chair and terminating the city manager.”

But Holden proposed that the council discussion of the letter be postponed until January. “This is the most responsible way to resolve the conflict between maintaining silence to preserve the peace and speaking up against what I perceive to be actions dangerous to this body,” Holden said in the statement, which he read to his colleagues Tuesday.

The imbroglio began about two weeks ago when the council voted to allocate $400,000 to hire sheriff’s deputies for the annual parade-and-football festival on the condition that members of the Vikings, an allegedly neo-Nazi, white supremacist club operating in the Lynwood sheriff’s station, be excluded.

Hughston and Vice Mayor Rick Cole were excluded from participating in the vote because both had accepted free Rose Bowl tickets last year and would therefore have been in conflict of interest, according to City Atty. Victor Kaleta.

Block responded angrily to the council’s conditions, denying that a racist club existed in his department and demanding an apology before he would permit his deputies to work in Pasadena on New Year’s Day. Organizations representing the deputies and the department’s lieutenants and sergeants supported him.

The council, faced with the prospect of paying an additional $500,000 to use California Highway Patrol officers instead of deputies, met in emergency session last week and drafted a follow-up statement. Council members said they regretted “the characterization of our action . . . by the Sheriff’s Department and Sheriff Block” and said they were “sorry for any offense that this has caused.”

Hughston again excused himself from the discussion because of the conflict of interest.

But in private discussions with Block, the sheriff reportedly told Hughston, Hawkey and Police Chief Oliver that the council’s statement was insufficient.

That was when Hughston stepped in, drafting a letter in which he said: “I apologize for any offense to you, your deputies or your department.”

Block said that he was mollified because Hughston, unlike his colleagues, had “used the A word,” for apology.

“I’m convinced that, but for the mayor’s letter, the issue would not be resolved,” Thomson said Tuesday. “He showed wisdom and considerable courage.”

But Holden raised a series of legal questions, including that of Hughston’s conflict of interest. Hughston had said last week that his letter was not an action on a financial matter but an expression of an opinion, releasing him from the conflict-of-interest constraints.

“I tried to weigh all the factors about sending the letter,” Hughston said on Tuesday.

“There was something we had discussed here, an action taken,” Holden responded, “then there was a communication by a member of the council who was not qualified to vote on the matter in the first place.”

Holden contends that Hughston’s action may have represented a violation of both the City Charter and of the Ralph M. Brown Act, which prohibits legislative bodies to act in secrecy except under narrowly defined circumstances.

“What do four votes mean around here?” Holden asked. “If they can be undermined, passed over, we need to know it.”

Hawkey said he was “absolutely comfortable and confident” about the propriety of his own actions.

“As city manager, my utmost responsibility is to provide for the security of the people of Pasadena,” Hawkey said. He added that his own role had been to “identify for (the mayor) the pros and cons” of writing his letter.

Kaleta will look into any possible improprieties in the matter, and the council will take it up next month.