ELECTIONS EL SEGUNDO : City Growth Develops Into Main Council Issue

By MICHELE FUETSCH

March 29, 1992 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

El Segundo has for years walked a development tightrope, pledging allegiance to the small-town way of life while enjoying all the economic benefits that come from living among giant aerospace companies and next door to an international airport.

As this year’s City Council campaign illustrates, though, tensions on the tightrope are increasing.

Growth has become the big issue in El Segundo, where the worker population is 100,000 a day and the residential population only 15,000. With three of five City Council seats at stake in the April 14 election, the campaign is bitter, contentious and narrowly focused on the proposed General Plan, which will guide land use over the next 20 years.

Opponents of the plan claim that it will allow rampant growth, a flood of townhouses and condominiums in single-family residential areas and the kind of commercial development that will draw “outsiders” to El Segundo.

“The gangs and things like that. You’ll have a crime problem,” said Willard Crick, president of the El Segundo Residents Assn. and a leading opponent of the General Plan under review by the council.

Supporters of the plan are outraged by such claims, saying that the opposition has misrepresented the impact of the few zoning changes the council has made.

“They’ve gotten this town polarized with this no-growth campaign,” said Councilwoman Janice Cruikshank, a General Plan supporter and one of two incumbents seeking reelection.

Density increases are modest and confined to a handful of specific land tracts in business districts and two surplus school sites, supporters of the plan say.

“The General Plan is (for) controlled growth,” Cruikshank said. “Nobody has given a go-ahead for uncontrolled growth.”

For Cruikshank, 62, a former school board member, this is the second campaign in five months she has had to wage over the General Plan. In November, she won a special election to serve out the remaining few months of an unexpired council term. Then, as now, the overriding issue was the General Plan.

The only other incumbent running in the council election is Mayor Carl Jacobson, who is seeking his third term. Jacobson, 44, is the management and information systems director for California Switch and Signal, a Gardena-based electronic parts distributor.

Councilman Scot D. Dannen decided not to seek reelection.

Among the three challengers is Blake Mitchell, 34, a civil engineer with his own municipal consulting firm. He is making his first bid for public office.

Also running is Richard Switz, a 63-year-old retired Hughes Aircraft Co. engineer and a newcomer to politics, and Michael Robbins, a 32-year-old Hughes engineer making his second bid for a council seat. Robbins ran against Cruikshank in November.

Switz, Robbins and Jacobson, the only council member opposing the General Plan, say they are not running as a slate. However, the positions of the three closely parallel that of the residents association. Mitchell supports the plan.

The specific areas of the plan that have caused the most controversy are two surplus school sites and a commercial area in the city’s northeast corner where the Metro Rail Green Line is to stop when it arrives in 1994.

The General Plan would allow townhouses or condominiums to be built on the surplus school sites. One site is at Imperial Boulevard and Sheldon Street, the other at Center Street and Grand Avenue.

The council has already lowered the density from the 29 units per acre recommended by its General Plan consultant to about 22 per acre. But opponents of the plan want the bulk of both sites preserved for single-family housing.

“When we put in high-density residential units,” Robbins said, “they consume more tax money than they generate.”

Large multifamily developments would change the character of the neighborhoods around the sites, Jacobson said.

“It’s the development community that wants that kind of density because they (need) that density in order to get their money out of it,” Switz said.

In commercial areas bounded by Imperial Highway and El Segundo Boulevard, the plan calls for increasing some densities in hopes of attracting businesses--such as hotels and restaurants--to help keep the city solvent now that the aerospace industry is downsizing.

But opponents say there is enough business and traffic already. And they oppose anything, such as a movie theater or an ice-skating rink, that would be an “attractive nuisance,” bringing unwanted outsiders into town.

Cruikshank points out that the school property is off the tax rolls now. Also, she said, the city’s financially strapped education system needs the money the land sales would generate. The council allowed higher densities on the land, she said, in an effort to make it more attractive to developers.

The General Plan, Cruikshank said, reflects the council’s effort to adjust to difficult economic times and keep businesses that are already in town. The organized opposition against the General Plan, she said, is anti-children and anti-business.

“If anyone prevailed with (a) no-growth plan of any kind,” Mitchell said, “I believe that the city of El Segundo would cease to exist as we know it.”

Voters also will decide April 14 who will fill the positions of city clerk and city treasurer.

Incumbent City Clerk Ron Hart, 56, a newspaper distributor, is running for his second full term as clerk. He was appointed to the job in 1984 to complete an unexpired term.

His opponent is Cindy Mortesen, a 44-year-old bookkeeper who says that Hart has been too political as city clerk. She says he took sides against Cruikshank when her opponents tried unsuccessfully to remove her from the November ballot by claiming her filing petition was improper.

Hart says he is not political and that his only boss is the electorate.

Running unopposed for city treasurer is Susan Schofield, 37, who runs a real estate agency with her husband.

El Segundo Candidates

In El Segundo, two candidates are competing for the city clerk’s position. Five candidates are running for three City Council seats.

City Clerk

Ron Hart

Age: 56

Occupation: newspaper distributor; incumbent

Cindy Mortesen

Age: 44

Occupation: bookkeeper

City Council