Newcomers Start With the Basics : City Hall: On their first full day of business, four new council members grappled with such issues as seating, wall color, phones.

Rudy Svorinich gave his new peers a lesson in the phonetic intricacies of his last name. Laura Chick learned where they keep the junk food. Jackie Goldberg struggled all day to find a working phone line. And Richard Alarcon had to fight off one of the upperclassman to keep his desk.

The Los Angeles City Council, Class of 1993, got down to a first This story was reported by Times staff writers Jack Cheevers, Greg Krikorian, James Rainey and John Schwada. It was written by Rainey.

full day of business Friday that had all the makings of a back-to-school session.

“The level of anxiety I’m feeling seems familiar,” said Chick, the new councilwoman from the west San Fernando Valley. “I feel like I’m 16 and I’m going in for my driver’s license.”

For the biggest crop of newcomers at 200 N. Spring St. in recent memory, the mundane preceded the momentous. Simply finding a phone that worked and learning to punch a button to vote electronically were the first orders of the day.

But the four new council members and their 11 colleagues had time to get down to business, too--reelecting Councilman John Ferraro to his fourth consecutive term as council president, putting their ideological stamp on a few issues and pledging to work with new Mayor Richard Riordan.

The reelection of Ferraro was widely viewed as a victory for his ally Riordan, who will need all the help he can get to push his programs through the sometimes ornery city legislature.

“This city needs some tender loving care,” Ferraro said in thanking the council for its support. “It needs all of us working together with our new mayor.”

Riordan paid a short visit and, echoing Ferraro’s promise, said: “I’m not going to be a stranger to the council chambers.”

But after Riordan left the chambers, most of the attention turned back to the four new lawmakers who spent the day getting used to their surroundings.

Alarcon had gotten off to a hectic start when he nearly missed his 8:02 a.m. Metrolink commuter train from Van Nuys, then hopped the wrong shuttle bus before walking several blocks to City Hall.

But at least the key to his new office fit. “It works!” said a smiling Alarcon, who previously was former Mayor Tom Bradley’s top aide in the San Fernando Valley.

Alarcon last month became the first Latino elected to the council from the Valley, winning the northeast Valley seat previously held by Ernani Bernardi, who retired Wednesday.

The first order of business was a staff briefing on the upcoming council meeting with his former campaign manager, Al Avila, and several aides.

Pat Michell, newly hired as a senior legislative deputy, said one of the few controversial items on the agenda involved a proposal to impose a 10% tax on cellular phone users.

“What should be my posture?” asked Alarcon.

Michell explained that without the tax, the city’s budget shortfall would grow by another $4 million to $5 million. He urged Alarcon to vote yes on the tax.

But Avila cast the issue in flatly political terms.

“Your constituents are not going to have a lot of sympathy for cellular phone users,” he said, referring to the largely blue-collar district Alarcon represents.

By 10 a.m., Alarcon was in the spacious council chambers, being instructed about how to use his voting buttons by Assistant City Clerk Pat Healy.

The key, she told him, was to remember that unless a council member depresses the “no” button, a yes vote is automatically recorded.

The intricacies of voting behind him, Alarcon ran into a problem that no clerk could help him with: Veteran Councilman Richard Alatorre.

Because Alarcon’s name comes before his alphabetically, Alatorre was forced to move to the No. 2 desk in the council “horseshoe”--the bank of council members’ desks arranged in a U around that of President John Ferraro.

Trouble was, Alatorre didn’t want to leave the first desk, which gives him easy access to council phones and snacks and a quick escape route from unpleasantly controversial votes.

A smiling Alatorre alternately slumped in his old chair or stood behind it, holding on possessively. Even Ferraro, a former All-American football player, failed in a lighthearted effort to lift Alatorre from the chair.

“We were warned this might happen,” an Alarcon aide said.

“I never expected Councilman Alatorre to get confused about his seat,” Alarcon said. “Once we clear up that minor dilemma, I’m sure everything else will be easy.”

After an hour, and a good deal of chiding, the veteran gave up his hazing and let the freshman have his position.

Chick, who defeated her onetime boss Joy Picus to win her seat representing the southwestern portion of the Valley, was introduced to one of the perks of office by colleague Mike Hernandez. He directed her to the secret stash of snack goodies in a room just off the council chamber.

Another early lesson: be punctual. That was the advice of Diana Breuggemann, a veteran council aide whose latest incarnation is as Chick’s deputy. Council members who arrive late for council meetings risk displeasing Ferraro, Breuggemann warned.

And when Chick stepped into the City Hall garage awhile later, she learned about a perk of office: swift valet parking. Although she wanted only to retrieve something from her car, an ingratiating attendant leaped in and pulled it out of its parking space at the sight of her as she yelled “no, no” in a futile attempt to stop him.

“Boy, they are fast,” she said, marveling.

Svorinich turned his attention to the pale green walls of an office that once belonged to Councilman Nate Holden, who has taken over the office of ex-Councilman Michael Woo, the loser in last month’s mayor’s race. The new councilman may have left the Wilmington paint store that he owns, but he proved that it hadn’t entirely left him.

“These walls are gonna need some PVA sealer,” he said knowledgeably. “Polyvinyl acetate sealer. A primer to keep the old color from bleeding through.”

After further study, he finally settled on a color: cottage white.

When they arrived Thursday morning in the ornate, marbled council chamber, both new and old council members enjoyed a bit of back-of-the class jocularity.

Some of the ribbing centered on Svorinich’s name.

After Ferraro twice garbled the name (pronounced Sa-VOR-a-nich) the council’s youngest member drew loud laughter when he parried: “Thank you Mr. Fa-RARE-o.”

Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky then suggested Svorinich, 33, pronounce the name for everyone.

“It’s Sa-VOR-a-nich,” he said, then turned to the crowd. “All together now,” he demanded. “Sa-VOR-a-nich!” One hundred and fifty onlookers chimed back.

This show of camaraderie notwithstanding, the freshman class settled in for a few more serious actions.

Goldberg used a committee meeting at the start of the session to protest the lack of women and minorities among companies holding several contracts with the Community Redevelopment Agency. She succeeded in winning a two-month delay.

“We wanted them to come back with some numbers that are more reflective of the city that we live in,” Goldberg said.

And Svorinich joined a minority of his colleagues in dissenting on a vote to tax cellular phone users. “We need to make this a more business-friendly city and to do that, we can’t increase taxes,” said Svorinich, who has also pledged to give his staff’s complement of seven city cars to police stations in his district.

The three other new members voted for the tax.

The afterglow of their first day left newcomers hungry for more.

As Chick put it: “I’m frothing at the bit to get down to business.”

“There’s a lot of educating of Laura Chick that needs to be done,” Chick said, telling her veteran colleagues that she would look to them at times for guidance.

It may not have been what she meant, but former Councilman Art Snyder, now one of City Hall’s premiere lobbyists, presented her with a slender, handsomely bound volume containing his published thoughts about life at City Hall.