Meeting Was Not All Roses : * Civic affairs: Board and City Council hold a historic get-together to discuss broad array of issues. They come away bruised but smiling.

The City Council and Tournament of Roses officials faced off in a historic get-together Tuesday and both sides came away bruised but smiling.

Over a dinner of roast veal and carrots in butter sauce at the Athenaeum, the elegant Caltech faculty dining club, council members chided the tournament for its predominantly white leadership and urged it to share more of the city’s financial burdens.

Tournament officials responded with a list of their achievements, suggesting that they were grievously underappreciated and misunderstood by the city.

“I think you do a wonderful job,” Mayor Jess Hughston reassured tournament officials. “You put on one of the greatest festivals there is. Pasadena is on the map because of the Tournament of Roses.”

Then some of Hughston’s colleagues proceeded to rough up their tournament counterparts, raising some of the issues that had given the preliminaries to this year’s parade a rancorous edge and throwing in some new ones.

Officials from the tournament and City Hall have met often on specific issues relating to the Rose Parade and the Rose Bowl, but this was the first time the City Council and the tournament’s executive committee had met to discuss broad policy issues, officials said.

It was an unusual event in other respects too. A gallery of spectators, consisting of the public and the media, watched restively as white-jacketed waiters served dinner to the officials in the club’s Hall of Associates, with its gilded Baroque ceiling and bucolic Renaissance tapestry.

The dinner was part of the regularly scheduled Tuesday meeting of the City Council, which earlier in the day had concluded its other business in the City Hall council chambers.

“Wouldn’t you be embarrassed to be eating while people were watching you?” said spectator Angeli Paterson of Pasadena as council members and tournament officials picked at their salads.

Then someone went out for fast food and, as the club’s maitre d’ looked on sourly, a dozen members of the audience unabashedly gulped down In-N-Out burgers.

Councilman Isaac Richard charged that the selection of the tournament’s queen by a committee of white males was “a symbol of the perpetuation of white supremacy.” Vice Mayor Rick Cole encouraged the tournament to celebrate diversity by opening its executive committee to minorities and women.

“How can you have a 60% minority city with only two minority queens in 103 years?” Richard asked.

Kristina Smith, the 1985 Rose Queen, was the first black to receive the honor. Leslie Kawai, who reigned in 1981, was the first Asian-American. Yasmine Delawari, who is of Afghan descent, was queen in 1990.

“We want to have the opportunity to say, ‘Look at these beautiful Latinos, these beautiful blacks and Asians,’ ” Richard said.

The selection process was kept narrow, the councilman added, because of “the mature white males doing the picking.”

The selection of the court is not a beauty pageant, tournament officials say. The selections are based more on poise and public speaking ability than on personal appearance, officials say. Tannis Ann Turrentine, this year’s Rose Queen, was one of 731 contestants.

The tournament’s emphasis on seniority as a basis for promotion within the ranks, Cole added, means that neither a minority member nor a woman could reach the presidency before 2001.

“The sooner the tournament figures out a way to make changes up to the very top,” the vice mayor said, “the stronger and better understood the tournament will be.”

Tournament Vice President Del Beckhart said the organization actively recruits members of the tournament court at schools all over the Pasadena region without regard to race.

“We encourage all girls to come to the tryouts,” he said.

Robert Cheney, who stepped down last month as tournament president, said the organization’s resistance to change was one of its strengths.

“You’re looking for something that I can tell you will come,” Cheney said. “Maybe it will be slower than you’d like it to come, but that’s the strength of the Tournament of Roses. We do things with calculation, positively. . . .”

But tournament officials responded even more fervidly to demands that its 25-year contract with the city be renegotiated.

According to city officials, the Rose Bowl must undergo $40 million to $50 million in long-term capital improvements, not including the recently begun construction of a stadium press box and 38 luxury suites, to make it a first-class venue that can compete for major sporting and entertainment events.

The Rose Bowl will be the site of next year’s NFL Super Bowl, and it is in contention for hosting matches in the 1994 World Cup soccer tournament.

Proposed improvements include plumbing and electrical work, seismic improvements, seat enlargement, accessibility improvements and locker-room renovations, City Manager Philip Hawkey said.

“The stadium is almost exactly 70 years of age,” Councilman William Thomson said, “and it’s showing it.”

The city and the tournament must “come to grips with the capital challenge of the Rose Bowl,” which is owned by the city, Cole said.

Tournament officials said their resources are not great, though the Tournament of Roses is the only such event in the country that generates a profit for its home city.

In recent years, after the tournament’s books are balanced, Cheney said, it has generally presented the city with about $500,000 in annual profits.

“That’s not chopped chicken liver,” he said.

But Cole said that after expenses are paid, the city’s share of the profits has been only about $62,000 in recent years.

Cheney suggested that the city change its current ordinance, placing a cap of 12 major athletic events in the Rose Bowl per year, and extend the schedule to generate more revenue.

“We’re not sure we can sell any more events,” Cole said, “especially given the condition of the stadium.”

Maybe not, tournament officials said. But their own resources were limited. A lucrative $11-million-a-year contract with ABC-TV to broadcast the Rose Bowl game expires in 1997.

“If we had to go out right now (and negotiate a new contract) we wouldn’t come close to that amount,” said the tournament’s football committee chairman, Harriman Cronk. “ABC has already visited us and asked us to take a cut.”

Finally, with the issues aired but unresolved, the city lawmakers and tournament officials got up, shook hands and said good night.

“I thought we could have had a meeting that was totally milk and cookies,” Cole said. “But that probably wouldn’t have been as good in establishing a long-term relationship.”

In a related development, the City Council voted 4 to 3 Tuesday to deal with potential sanctions against city officials--who had fashioned a letter of apology last November to Los Angeles County Sheriff Sherman Block without consulting the full council--at an informal council retreat, rather than during a regular council meeting.

Block had demanded an apology from the council for remarks about “white supremacists” and “neo-Nazis” in his department before he would agree to send 800 deputies to bolster security at the parade and the Rose Bowl football game.

Hughston finally smoothed the situation by writing his own letter of apology.

At Tuesday’s meeting, City Atty. Victor Kaleta presented a chronology of the two weeks of sometimes rancorous discussions with sheriff’s officials in November. But Kaleta declined to rule on the propriety of Hughston’s letter, or on the role of Hawkey, who advised Hughston on the matter.

“I have more than just an official interest in this,” Kaleta said. “I have a personal (interest). The council members are basically my seven bosses.”

“This doesn’t look good,” said City Councilman Chris Holden, who voted against the measure. “Now we sweep it all under the rug.”

Some council members who supported the change in direction said they were concerned about continuing attempts to assign blame.

“If we can’t look backward without assessing individual blame,” said Councilman William Thomson, “we shouldn’t do it. . . .

Forward is the only way to look.”

Thomson had been involved in closed meetings at which Hughston decided to send the letter.

After Hughston wrote his letter, Holden had suggested that one possible sanction would be to remove the mayor from office and fire Hawkey. Holden backed away from those options Tuesday, saying he meant only to suggest a range of possible actions.

Hughston voted against delaying the matter until the retreat, which has yet to be scheduled, saying he wanted the issue to be aired quickly.

“I did what I did out of conviction that it was the best thing to do for the city,” the mayor said.

Hughston said he would press for a special meeting on the issue within the next two months.