Is It a Political Smear or Just a Spreading Problem?

Guilty, with an explanation: The cream cheese culprit has confessed. Santa Monica Councilman Ken Genser says he’s the one who got cream cheese on Mayor Judy Abdo’s nameplate. But Genser insists he is no vandal and the act was no political smear.

Instead, he copped a plea to the lesser crime of misdemeanor messiness with a cream cheese knife. He did not clean up his mess.

“I don’t think a little smudge of cream cheese is called vandalism,” Genser said.

The cream cheese incident was one of a string of unsettling acts that occurred in the council office in recent weeks, always after council meetings on Tuesday night.

Desk drawers were rifled. A telephone receiver turned up in the wastebasket. Councilman Paul Rosenstein’s picture was removed from its frame for a little cosmetic dentistry--his teeth were blackened out with a pen.

Genser and his buddy, Councilman Kelly Olsen, said they know nothing about the other incidents. Though they were not publicly accused, their names were floated around City Hall as suspects because of circumstantial evidence--they often are the last ones seen in the office after meetings.

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Home again: Santa Monica’s highest ranking Friend of Bill, Derek Shearer, hardly had time to unpack his suitcase in Washington before abruptly resigning as deputy undersecretary of commerce and heading home.

The reason, or so Shearer told the Wall Street Journal, was the ill health of his wife, former Santa Monica Mayor Ruth Yannatta Goldway.

That news came as a surprise to Goldway’s friends and associates in Santa Monica, some of whom had seen or talked to her a week ago.

Reached at her office, Goldway would not comment but did not dispute the Journal’s account.

The couple were movers and shakers in the renters’ rights movement in Santa Monica. Shearer’s ultra-liberal economic views led to conjecture that he was too far to the left for President Clinton to put him in a top spot.

But Shearer got his job in the second wave of presidential appointments, when he left his job as an Occidental College professor for the bright lights of The Beltway. He will return to Oxy in the fall.

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Scrambling for votes: The June 8 showdown in Los Angeles’ 13th City Council District between Jackie Goldberg and Tom LaBonge is widely viewed as a tossup, so the two candidates are angling for every possible edge. And that includes enlisting endorsements ranging from labor unions to the also-rans in the district’s recent primary.

Those already supporting Goldberg, who seeks to become the council’s first openly gay member, include California Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer, U.S. Rep. Xavier Becerra (D-Los Angeles), whose congressional district includes parts of the council district, and the Los Angeles County Federation of Labor. Goldberg, a former school board member, also is backed by the United Teachers-Los Angeles.

LaBonge, meanwhile, has won the support of the third- and fifth-place finishers in the April 20 primary--Tom Riley and Virginia Stock Johannessen. Together, the pair won 18% of the vote. La Bonge, a longtime aide to Council President John Ferraro, also has been endorsed by the city’s fire and paramedic unions.

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Day at the Dunes: Los Angeles Councilwoman Ruth Galanter and the city’s Environmental Affairs Department are asking for volunteers to bring their gardening gloves, sunscreen and a picnic lunch to the El Segundo Dunes on Saturday.

The task at hand: Helping restore about 200 acres of the dunes west of Los Angeles International Airport to their original condition. Volunteers will work from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. pulling weeds, cleaning up trash and planting native species such as California sunflowers and El Segundo spineflowers.

Officials are hoping for a big turnout.

“This is not just a Westside thing,” said Lillian Kawasaki, general manager of the Environmental Affairs Department. “The dunes belong to everyone. We’re reaching out to other areas. . . . We’re sending flyers and making phone calls for volunteers throughout the city.”

Kawasaki said that through Galanter’s efforts, the city last year received $430,000 from the state to hire experts to help with the restoration. And volunteers from two local environmental groups--Rhapsody-in-Green and Heal The Bay--already have devoted hundreds of hours to restoring the area.

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Would Picasso put up with this? The artist’s design fee, traditionally paid to an artist to come up with designs for an artwork, is in the doghouse in Culver City.

The city doled out $1,000 last month for an artist to design tree grates for the downtown district. The resulting grates were round, while the holes left by the architect were square.

“We can’t use it and we have to pay the person anyway,” Councilman Albert Vera said. “This is not good business.”

Another artist, Peter Shire, who is seeking a commission to create a sculpture for the entrance to Culver City Park, will have to come up with several proposals for free before council members will consider authorizing him to execute the piece.

“These would be very rough proposals,” he warned, saying he’s had the unfortunate experience of being burned, too. He once worked without a design fee, only to have the project fall through.

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Seeing red: Fire-engine red is making a comeback in Santa Monica.

After more than a decade of using bilious yellow-green fire equipment, the Fire Department recently purchased a new red truck.

The decision to gradually change to an all-red fleet delights firefighters, most of whom dislike their off-color trucks. (The official name of the color is lime yellow, though firefighters usually call it “slime green.” It became fashionable after research showed it was more visible than red.)

The red renaissance also delights City Councilman Kelly Olsen, who believes his lobbying has something to do with it--even after a nasty public flap with the firefighters’ union president during election season last fall.

In that brouhaha, union President Rob Wirtz accused Olsen of trying to silence him by a threat that went something like this: “If you don’t keep quiet, you won’t get your red fire trucks.”

Olsen saw red, hotly denying that his support was a bargaining chip. He recalls shaking hands with newly hired Fire Chief John Montenero two years ago and saying, “Hello. Nice to meet you. How do you feel about red fire trucks?”

Deputy Fire Chief Ettore A. Berardinelli said the red go-ahead was given by the chief and city manager. He said the shift was justified by another study that concluded that, though lime-yellow might be more easily visible, red is more recognizable by the public as fire equipment.

Berardinelli recalls being flagged down twice by people in the street while driving a small lime-yellow department vehicle. They had mistaken it for a taxi.

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Council meetings this week:

* Beverly Hills: No meeting.

* Culver City: 7 p.m. Monday, Interim City Hall, Trailer No. 1, 4095 Overland Ave. (310) 202-5851.

* Los Angeles: 10 a.m. Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. 200 N. Spring St. (213) 485-3126.

* Malibu: 6:30 p.m. Monday. Hughes Laboratory, 3011 Malibu Canyon Road. (310) 456-2489.

* Santa Monica: 6:30 p.m. Tuesday. 1685 Main St. (310) 393-9975.

* West Hollywood: No meeting.

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Staff writers Nancy Hill-Holtzman, Lee Harris, Bernice Hirabayashi and Greg Krikorian contributed to this report.