Hawthorne Hearing to Settle City Clerk’s Fate : Government: City Council will decide whether Patrick Keller, who has been living in Hawaii, is a resident of the community.

Annoyed that Hawthorne City Clerk Patrick Keller has been living in Hawaii, City Council members will hold a residency hearing Monday that could force his removal from office.

If the council decides that Keller is not a legal resident of Hawthorne, state law requires that his $600-a-month job be declared vacant, according to the city attorney. The council could appoint a new clerk or hold an election to fill the post.

“The city is entitled to have a city clerk who attends meetings, who’s here to be contacted,” Mayor Steve Andersen said. “I’d certainly like an explanation of where he is and what he intends to do.”

Keller, who is out of the country and has not returned telephone calls, had indicated to friends that he planned to return to his home in Kona, Hawaii, several days ago. Keller purchased a home in Hawaii in 1989.

According to county records, he has given a friend’s Hawthorne address for his voter registration. The friend, Wes Bush, executive director of the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce, said that since the summer of 1990, Keller has stayed with him and his wife whenever he has been in town. Keller does not, however, rent a room in the Bush home and has not been there since last Thanksgiving.

City Council members, who said they have been urging Keller for months either to move back to Hawthorne or resign his post, last week believed they could not force Keller from office because he is an elected official.

But City Atty. Michael Adamson said an article in The Times last week about Keller’s habit of staying with Bush while in Hawthorne provided the first evidence that Keller does not have a permanent home in the city.

A Hawthorne police detective is gathering information about Keller’s residency for use at the hearing, Adamson said.

Notices of the hearing are being sent to all known business and home addresses used by Keller over the last two years, Adamson said.

“It’s basic due process,” Adamson said. “If, after the hearing, it is a finding of fact by the City Council that he no longer resides in the city, then under the government code . . . his seat becomes vacant.”

The council would have 30 days either to appoint a clerk to serve the two years remaining in Keller’s term or call for an election, which most likely would be held in November.

The part-time office is responsible for maintaining records of city resolutions and ordinances, keeping the minutes of council meetings and administering municipal elections. The day-to-day operations of the clerk’s office are handled by the chief deputy city clerk, Robin Parker. She said she has seen Keller only about 10 times since 1989, although he checks in by telephone once a week.

Andersen expressed growing frustration with Keller’s absence from council meetings.

“I’ve been talking to him about this off and on since last summer,” he said. When Andersen last talked to Keller a month ago, “I told him, ‘Make up your mind what you want to do,’ . . . and he had made statements that were pretty close to an oral resignation, like, ‘I’m going to do it,’ and ‘I’m resigning soon,’ but that’s the last I heard from him.

“He could have been in some airplane that went down in the ocean and we wouldn’t know it.”

Councilman Charles Bookhammer said Keller assured him in a call from Hawaii last September that he needed a few more weeks to iron out some personal problems before returning to Hawthorne.

“I think we’ve been more than patient,” Bookhammer said.

Councilman Larry Guidi, who was elected in November, said he has never met nor spoken with Keller. “I didn’t even know what he looked like until I saw his picture in the newspaper.”

Guidi and his colleagues declined to say what action they may take.

“We have to hear all the facts first,” Guidi said. “This is a group decision and we’re going to make it after we know exactly what the facts are.”

If Keller fails to appear at Monday’s hearing, and is found by the council not to reside in Hawthorne, Adamson said, Keller’s only recourse to regain his post would be to sue the city.

He declined to describe what kind of a lawsuit Keller could file. “I’m on the other side and I’m not going to lay out a strategy for him to get his office back,” Adamson said.