A Liberal Dose of Support Propelled Riordan

A city divided: Election returns from Tuesday’s balloting show Richard Riordan rode to victory in the Los Angeles mayor’s race in part by breaking apart the historic coalition of Westside liberals and African-American voters that propelled and sustained Tom Bradley in the mayor’s office.

Riordan outpolled Councilman Michael Woo in some of the Westside’s traditionally liberal areas. Of seven City Council districts that touch the Westside, Riordan captured four districts where Anglos dominate the electorate. Woo won the three council districts that are the more racially diverse, including his own in Hollywood.

Riordan ran strongest in the affluent and overwhelmingly white Westside and San Fernando Valley district long represented by Councilman Marvin Braude. The mayor-elect won nearly two out of three votes cast in the district, which includes his home in Brentwood.

And the Republican businessman carried the districts represented by Councilwoman Ruth Galanter and City Council President John Ferraro. In each of those areas, voter turnout exceeded the 43.4% level recorded citywide.

Turnout was much lighter in the Westside’s two council districts with the largest number of black voters. Despite intense efforts by Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas to get out the vote for Woo in the largely African-American precincts in the Crenshaw District and South-Central Los Angeles, only one in three voters in his district went to the polls.

The turnout was better in the Mid-City and Crenshaw areas represented by Councilman Nate Holden.

Woo easily won both districts, drawing more than three out of every four votes cast, but his margin was quickly erased by Riordan’s strength elsewhere.

Throughout the bitter campaign, Riordan hammered away at Woo’s eight-year stewardship of his Hollywood district, but voters there gave Woo a modest vote of confidence.

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Good start: The morning after his victory, Riordan stopped by City Council Chambers. Ferraro, the council president and a key Riordan ally during the campaign, greeted him with a handshake and warm embrace. And following Riordan’s brief remarks to the council, he quickly found reason to praise the mayor-elect. “Thanks for making a short speech,” said Ferraro, a comment that brought laughs from the other pols, who are not known for their brevity.

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No end in sight: Like that indefatigable Energizer bunny, the legal fight between developer Richard K. Ehrlich and Culver City keeps going and going and going.

The dispute dates back to 1989, when Ehrlich tore down his Westside Sports Center, a private athletic club in the 4900 block of Overland Avenue. Citing lost recreational space, the city ordered Ehrlich to replace four tennis courts and placed a $280,000 lien on his property.

Ehrlich, contending the lien was unfair, sued and won--and won and won some more. Four times the city appealed in Los Angeles Superior Court and four times it lost.

Last month, however, the city got a major break when the California Court of Appeal ruled that the city’s fees against Ehrlich were, indeed, allowable.

The response at City Hall was one of relief-- understandable in that Culver City, by at least one estimate, has spent as much as $200,000 in legal costs on the matter. “I feel great,” crowed City Atty. Norm Herring, who inherited the case when he was hired in November, 1991. “I feel the city has finally been vindicated.”

But has it?

On Wednesday, Ehrlich’s counsel/daughter, Lisa Ehrlich, said she filed a petition for a rehearing, contending that the appeals court based its ruling on inaccurate data.

Her chief complaint is that the city, in yielding to neighborhood sentiment, refused to let Ehrlich provide alternative recreational facilities on the property, figuring it could just hit him up for the cash instead.

“They gave no flexibility whatsoever,” she said.

And Ehrlich’s daughter, terming the fees a form of extortion, showed no sign of running low on energy. If need be, she vowed, she’ll carry the case to state Supreme Court.

If only batteries lasted this long.

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More than their fair share: Harry and Sema Belafsky are good taxpayers. Maybe too good.

For years, the tax bills on their apartment building arrived from the city of Los Angeles. For years they paid them--$800 over the past decade alone. But the six-unit building is in West Hollywood, not Los Angeles. They never should have been paying the L.A. business tax.

A city staffer spotted the error this spring when Harry Belafsky trooped to a local senior center to pay the bill at a makeshift City Hall outlet. The couple filed for a refund, but got only $224. Turns out that three years is the limit on refunds.

But the Belafskys want the rest of their money back and an answer to why they got taxed by Los Angeles in the first place.

Over at City Hall, Donald J. DeBord thinks he knows. When the Belafskys first registered to pay the tax, they wrote their home address--in Los Angeles--as the address of the business. It was their mistake and it lived on in the City Hall computers that spit out the yearly bills. No one noticed, even when West Hollywood became a city in 1984.

“Somehow they just slipped through the cracks,” he said.

DeBord says the couple can apply for another refund, but it’ll take legal action to overcome the three-year refund limit.

The couple, whose apartment earnings supplement Social Security checks and Harry Belafsky’s part-time pharmacy job, are learning to question mail from the city of Los Angeles.

“I feel stupid because I never inquired. I don’t know why really,” said Harry, 75. “When you’re basically an honest person, you don’t always look for the bad.”

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Testing the waters: After representing the Westside in the Assembly for 15 years, Gwen Moore is considering a race for statewide office. “We’re exploring a run for secretary of state,” the Los Angeles Democrat said last week. “We’re putting together an exploratory committee.”

A liberal lawmaker known for her work on utility and consumer issues, Moore said she has been holding some small events in Northern California to gauge her chances of winning the office long held by March Fong Eu. Like many veteran Assembly members, Moore can only run once more before term limits force an end to her Assembly career. Her options for advancement in the Legislature were limited when state Sen. Diane Watson (D-Los Angeles) failed to win a seat on the county Board of Supervisors last fall.

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Writer’s block: Malibu city officials had planned to get out the first issue of the city’s quarterly newsletter in May, but now it looks like the staff and volunteer effort won’t go out till late this month.

City administrators blame the delay on illness. But volunteer Lucile Keller said the newsletter has been delayed because the city staff kept rewriting it, and the volunteer production staff had to redo the newsletter three times.

In April, the City Council nixed a proposal to hire an Orange County firm to produce the city’s official house organ, and instead gave it to city staff to write, and a troika of volunteers to produce and distribute.

Mayor Carolyn Van Horn, who had favored hiring a consultant to put out the newsletter, restrained herself from saying “I told you so,” but did say Wednesday that hiring a contractor would offer built-in accountability.

Keller said getting out a city newsletter is a learning process for everyone the first time and she hopes it’ll be easier the next go-around.

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Table mess: It has not been a picnic for the picnic tables on Ocean Front Walk in Venice.

They were the subject of two hours of testimony at a public hearing Wednesday to help decide their fate.

Some residents like Rob Hallwachs said the tables are ugly and had to go. Sarah Izzard countered that “I think the tables are functional, not ugly.” Councilwoman Ruth Galanter, who represents the area, thinks a nearby grassy area would be a safer location for the tables, according to an aide. Other people couldn’t understand why the tables were being discussed at all.

The problem came into the spotlight earlier this year when activist Jerry Rubin complained to the California Coastal Commission, which has authority over all permanent development along the coast, that a permit had not been issued for the 12 tables to be installed near the Muscle Beach athletic complex. Wednesday’s hearing was the first step necessary to obtain a permit.

City officials said data from the hearing will be turned over to the Los Angeles Recreation and Parks Commission, which has authority over the boardwalk.

The commission will submit its suggestions to the Coastal Commission, which in turn will conduct its own hearing and a make a decision on the tables’ fate.

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Redoubling recycling: The city of Los Angeles, the Salvation Army and tenants at the Park La Brea apartments in the mid-Wilshire area have teamed up to initiate what they tout as an innovative recycling program.

The program goes one step beyond recycling the usual bottles, cans and newspapers. Under it, the complex’s more than 7,000 tenants can put such items as clothing, books and small appliances in large bins in the basements of each of Park La Brea’s 18 apartment towers. These items will be picked up by the Salvation Army and sold in the group’s thrift stores to help support programs for the needy.

The expanded recycling effort is aimed at slowing the clutter of the region’s already overburdened landfills, according to Joan Edwards, director of the city’s Integrated Solid Waste Management Office.

Said Edwards: “Valuable and reusable items are often discarded in the trash and this program, which may be used as a model for other large apartment complexes, is a convenient way for residents to donate their reusable items, divert material from the landfill and help support the Salvation Army programs.”

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Council meetings this week:

* Beverly Hills: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday. 450 N. Crescent Drive. (310) 285-2400.

* Culver City: 7 p.m. Monday. Interim City Hall, Trailer 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: no meeting this week. 1685 Main St. (310) 393-9975.

* West Hollywood: no meeting this week. West Hollywood Park Auditorium, 647 N. San Vicente Blvd. (310) 854-7460.

Staff writers Ken Ellingwood, Lee Harris and Jeff Rabin and correspondents G. Jeanette Avent and Jeff Kramer contributed to this story.

The Race for Mayor

Council District Location Riordan Woo Ferraro (Mid-Wilshire-Valley) 50.9% 49.1% District 4 Yaroslavsky (Fairfax-Westwood- 57.1% 42.9% District 5 Valley) Galanter (Westchester-Venice- 51.8% 48.2% District 6 West L.A.) Ridley-Thomas (South-Central L.A.- 14.1% 85.9% District 8 Crenshaw) Holden (Mid-City-Crenshaw) 23.3% 76.7% District 10 Braude (Brentwood-Palisades- 64.4% 35.6% District 11 Valley) Woo (Hollywood-Glassell Park) 44.3% 55.7% District 13

Source: Los Angeles city clerk’s office, semiofficial results