ELECTIONS : New Council to Decide How to Use BKK Land, Replace Lost Revenue

The winners of Tuesday’s election for three City Council seats will have the bittersweet duty of overseeing the closure of the controversial BKK landfill.

All six candidates agree that the toxin-filled landfill should close on schedule in 1995, but they don’t all agree on how the land should be used afterward and how the city can make up for the loss of about $3 million in annual business license taxes it generates.

In the meantime, the city is facing severe budget cuts to offset a $1-million shortfall and is in the middle of a gang warfare crisis.

Two incumbents and four challengers are competing for three seats, including one left vacant by the death of William (Bill) Tarozzi last December. Nancy Manners and Bradley McFadden are up for reelection against restaurant owner Ben Wong, real estate agent Robert L. Smith Jr, businessman Tim Cullinan and city Planning Commissioner Stuart York.

In other races, Marian Smithson, a certified public accountant, and Nora McCauley, 39, purchasing/material manager, are vying for the part-time position of city treasurer, and City Clerk Janet Berry is unopposed for reelection.

During their four-year terms, the council winners will be called upon to decide the future of the BKK property.

Two years ago, the Redevelopment Agency designated the 583-acre site, in south West Covina near Walnut, and seven other adjacent properties for redevelopment. The parcels, totaling 1,119 acres, could generate $1 million to $2 million annually in property taxes for West Covina.

BKK Corp. President Ken Kazarian hopes to build a business park on parts of the property next to the landfill in a joint venture with Newport Beach-based Davis Developments.

City Planning Director Pat Haley said preliminary plans submitted by the partnership show that the 2.3-million-square-foot business park would sit on 233 acres north and west of the landfill area, which by federal law must remain open space. Retail use is being proposed for about 426,000 square feet, and the rest would be put to light-industrial use, such as research and development offices, she said.

Haley said the environmental impact report on the project will be submitted to the Planning Commission in four or five months and that some of the projects may be completed before the dump closes in late 1995.

Some candidates are depending on the expanded redevelopment area to bring in additional revenue, while others say that is a hopeless goal until the city has dealt with a gang crisis that is tearing away at the business climate.

They referred to the Feb. 24 shootout in which two gang members fired 15 shots into The Plaza at West Covina mall, injuring two shoppers and two rival gang members. Businesses will not locate in West Covina unless gangs are subdued, they said.

* Cullinan, 52, who owns a telephone sales and service company, promises to impose a two-term limit on himself. He supports a reduction in business license taxes to attract new businesses, and favors a more restrictive anti-loitering ordinance to fight gang violence.

He said he would pursue cost-saving measures that would include using private contractors for most city services, except police and fire.

* Manners, a retired municipal consultant in her second term on the council, served a one-year stint as mayor in 1988. She is president of the Independent Cities Assn., the East San Gabriel Valley Planning Committee and the Independent Cities Risk Management Authority.

She said she would continue to push for more commercial businesses to recoup lost revenue, especially private industrial construction on the BKK property. She is against retail businesses because they would increase traffic in the already congested area, she said.

She thinks that revenues from the auto plaza, the expansion of The Plaza at West Covina and the future Lakes project, a 21.7-acre commercial development near the San Bernardino Freeway, will carry the city through while BKK is being redeveloped.

* McFadden, 36, said the city could regain between $2 million and $4 million by establishing a materials recovery facility where cans, bottles, plastic and newspaper can be recycled and sold.

He said several commercial projects being redeveloped--the mall expansion, the Lakes project and the Eastland mall renovation--combined with development near the dump will bring in an additional $4 million a year. The general fund and reserves could also be tapped to fund after-school programs for youths to keep them away from gangs and drugs, he said.

* Wong, 40, said the major issues are crime and graffiti because they affect real estate values. “I don’t have an answer for 1995,” the 35-year resident said. “It’s realistic that we will see some (financial) shortfall, because I don’t see us attracting enough retail businesses to make up the difference.”

Wong, who has a doctorate in biochemistry from USC, supports renewing a Chamber of Commerce educational program, encouraging residents to spend 10% of their income in West Covina.

* Stuart York, 48, pastor of Rosemead Christian Church, said that BKK is not a major issue and that his only concern is an environmentally safe and proper closure.

He added that the city should concentrate on renovating Eastland Shopping Center, which he called the most prime piece of property in the San Gabriel Valley. He said the center should have been rehabilitated years ago.

“I called it analysis paralysis,” York said. “(City officials) analyze something until they paralyze themselves into doing nothing.”

* Smith, 28, a 15-year resident with a bachelor’s degree in business, wants no development on the BKK site at least until health studies are done to see if there is any environmental danger to the public. In the meantime, he said, it should be turned into a greenbelt.

He is against commercial or residential development on the site, and said the area should be covered with grass and trees and closed to the public for at least 10 years.

The city needs a comprehensive redevelopment plan and should concentrate on maintaining roads and parks, especially in the southern part of the city, to increase property value, he said.