LOCAL ELECTIONS / DANA POINT CITY COUNCIL : Campaign Heats Up : The two incumbents and three challengers are divided on the city’s controversial General Plan.

What’s this? Can it really be Mickey Munoz, the legendary surfer, surfboard shaper, and beach fixture schmoozing at a political rally?

“I’m worried about what’s going to happen to Capistrano Beach,” drawled Munoz in his customary T-shirt and shorts, sipping a drink at a recent gathering at Lucy’s El Patio Cafe in the old Doheny Village. “Some people have some crazy ideas about what we ought to do here.”

With major development looming in the Doheny Village and the Headlands, both cherished seaside sections of this six-square-mile city, Munoz’s sentiment is representative of what many believe is at stake in the June 2 City Council election: nothing less than the future of Dana Point.

Enhanced by such lofty pretensions, the race for two seats on the five-member council promises to be free-swinging, peppered by predictions of potential disaster and anything but laid-back. It’s enough to have aroused the likes of Munoz, who admits to hardly being a political type.

“It’s going to be a war,” said candidate Ernie Nelson.

Although all five candidates claim to be running independently, they have already divided into two contrasting camps sitting on opposing sides of the city’s controversial General Plan. Each time the two incumbents attempt to shift the election focus to other issues, the challengers return to slam the plan, a state-mandated chart of future development in the city.

In one corner are Bill Bamattre and Judy Curreri, the two incumbents who endorsed the General Plan and who are asking for another term to continue the course they have charted.

In the other corner are Nelson, William Ossenmacher and John D. Bowler, all political newcomers. A sixth candidate, Christopher L. Booker, is on the ballot but has withdrawn from the race.

The three challengers launched their campaigns by attacking the council’s General Plan as too tourist- and development-oriented. They say the city needs a dramatic reversal and two new faces on the council.

Ossenmacher goes a step further, charging that the City Council has “disregarded our constitutional rights.” Ossenmacher and Nelson have hammered away at the council’s resistance to a citywide referendum on the General Plan passed unanimously by the council last July.

“The initiative and referendum process is an important part of our democracy,” said Ossenmacher, a city planning commissioner and a marketing consultant. “The City Council should never interfere with these rights. It’s one of our most basic freedoms.”

It is an attack not appreciated by either Bamattre or Curreri, both of whom are longtime city leaders who worked on the hard-fought drive for cityhood in the late 1980s. They emerged from the first City Council campaign in June, 1988, as the two top vote-getters in a wide-open field of 26 candidates.

Curreri is quick to point out that she was the first council member to suggest publicly that a vote on the General Plan might be a good idea. But she later backed off, instead stating that a vote on a five-inch thick, 900-page planning document would not be fruitful.

“The General Plan is a tremendously complex document . . . but it’s what it says, a general plan. I wish I could sit down with each person in town and go through some of the questions,” said Curreri, a county public health nurse. She also objects to attempts by the challengers “to lump the entire council together like one body with five heads on it. I am independent.”

Critics of the General Plan argue that it is pro-development and will change the city from a small beach town to a destination resort. Immediately after the plan was adopted, critics gathered about 2,300 signatures on a petition demanding the matter be the subject of a citywide vote.

Along with the General Plan’s emphasis on development, critics claim that it neglects to provide adequate parking and housing for future resort employees and miscalculates open space estimates. The flaws in the housing areas will be felt particularly in the city’s crowded Lantern Village area, while the open space miscalculations have been made in the plan for the promontory known as the Headlands, the critics contend.

Like Curreri, Bamattre, a battalion chief with the Los Angeles County Fire Department, has attempted to shift the focus of the election to other issues such as increasing gang problems, parking and the city’s need to stabilize its revenue base.

“We need to think about our vision of Dana Point in 10 years. What do we want Dana Point to be?” Bamattre said. “To do that, we have to make sure we are planning for additional revenue.”

It’s the current council’s vision of Dana Point that Nelson and other challengers want to attack. Nelson, an engineer who, with his wife, owns a Dana Point travel agency, claims that the council has done little more than accept the route the county planned for Dana Point long before incorporation.

“When we voted to become a city, we voted to control our own destiny, to take the community out of the county’s hands,” Nelson said. “The council has lowered some of the densities here and there, but basically we’ve got the same plan the county laid out a long time ago.”

Bowler, who runs the county’s oldest drug rehabilitation center, Dana Point’s Straight Ahead, has focused his campaign on the council’s ill-fated Redevelopment Agency, which caused a local furor when it was launched three years ago. While most council members agree that redevelopment was a mistake and have attempted to disassociate themselves from it, Bowler and the other challengers continue to warn voters that it will be brought back if the incumbents are reelected.

The issue of incumbency itself has taken on a curious aspect of the race, according to the challengers. Curreri and Bamattre, both former mayors, decided not to list themselves as incumbents on the ballot, at least partly because of the anti-incumbent fever sweeping the nation.

Both, however, say they stand by the accomplishments of the council.

“I’m proud of my record,” Bamattre said. “You don’t see us having to debate how to cut the budget or lay off city workers.” Said Curreri: “This city today looks a lot better than it did before cityhood.”

There is one thing all the candidates and local politicos agree on. In a city of 32,000 people such as Dana Point, not known for large voter turnouts, any small edge can swing the election.

“A candidate who can get as many as 3,500 votes can win this,” said Mayor Mike Eggers, a political consultant.

Dana Point City Council

Here are the candidates running for two seats on the City Council in the June 2 election.

Bill Bamattre

Age: 40

Occupation: Incumbent; battalion chief, Los Angeles City Fire Department.

Background: Stanford graduate; Dana Point resident for 10 years; member of Dana Point Chamber of Commerce and Dana Point Civic Assn.; first elected to the City Council in June, 1988.

Issues: Opposes a public vote on the city’s General Plan; favors public vote on plan for the Headlands; opposes major changes in Doheny Village area; favors spending city funds for local cultural programs.

John D. Bowler

Age: 57

Occupation: Administrator/ counselor for a drug rehabilitation center.

Background: Dana Point resident for 18 years; former teacher at Saddleback College.

Issues: Favors public vote on the General Plan; favors seeking an alternative to a hotel on the Headlands; favors natural development in Doheny Village without government money; favors spending city funds for local cultural programs as start-up money only.

Judy Curreri

Age: 49

Occupation: Incumbent; public health nurse.

Background: Dana Point resident for 17 years; member of the Dana Point Civic Assn.; former member of Capistrano Bay Park and Recreation District board of directors; first elected to the City Council in June, 1988.

Issues: Opposes a public vote on the city’s General Plan; favors saving majority of Headlands for public use; favors a mix of residential and commercial development in Doheny Village; favors spending city funds for cultural programs.

Ernie Nelson

Age: 54

Occupation: Mechanical engineer.

Background: University of Redlands graduate; owner of local engineering company and travel agency in Dana Point; eight-year resident; first time running for public office.

Issues: Favors a public vote on the city’s General Plan; favors “sensitive development” of the Headlands; favors development of Doheny Village by incentives for the private sector; opposes spending city funds for cultural programs.

William Ossenmacher

Age: 34

Occupation: Businessman.

Background: University of Michigan graduate; Dana Point resident for six years; current member of city Planning Commission; former member of the city Cultural Commission.

Issues: Favors public vote on the General Plan; favors “sensitive development” of the Headlands to preserve habitat; favors letting Doheny Village develop naturally; opposes spending city funds for cultural programs.