Hidden Hills Likes Its Politics Out of View : Election: Residents value their privacy. City Council candidates make no bones about their tight-lipped ways.

Name a politician who scoffs at press coverage, ignores reporters, doesn’t return telephone calls--all just one week before a big election--and chances are they live in Hidden Hills.

In fact, all five City Council candidates for this Tuesday’s election in the eccentric, aggressively smug gated and guarded city in the west San Fernando Valley are a bit press shy. And who can blame them?

After all, this is Hidden Hills, as people here like to say--one of the first walled cities in California, a place where people value their privacy as they would a precious gem.

It’s a 1.6-square-mile fortressed community where hidden (there’s that word again) cameras record the license plate of every car that enters, a place where a Times reporter and photographer seeking out burning campaign issues were escorted out by a private security guard after they began questioning residents and workers outside City Hall.

“This is Hidden Hills,” explained one city employee. “Nobody just comes in here and starts asking questions. We’re just not used to it.”

The candidates seeking three council seats also make no bones about their taciturn, tight-lipped ways.

“I mean, really, this is Hidden Hills,” said one council candidate who (naturally) asked not to be named. “Around here, a council seat is like running for some class office in high school. People tend to vote for those they know or like. There aren’t any burning issues. This isn’t Los Angeles.”

Certainly not. In Hidden Hills, candidates don’t stump to gain votes, although they might appear on the city’s special cable channel, where homeowners ask pointed questions about which side of the line a candidate falls: Does he prefer horseback riding or tennis? What will he do about crime that might be generated by that new shopping complex in nearby Calabasas?

In Hidden Hills, the candidates filed the political short form with government officials, avoiding the countless forms and regular election red tape by agreeing to spend less than $1,000 on their campaigns and accepting no political contributions.

In this city of walls, the only candidate money being spent is on postage to send a political postcard or two to registered voters. With only 1,700 residents, there aren’t many voters to worry about. And as far as returning calls to reporters?

“It’s a problem for you guys, not for us,” said candidate Stuart Siegel. “I hope this doesn’t sound hokey, but we’re all just friends here. In Hidden Hills, political office is a volunteer kind of thing, like being on the board of directors of some charity.

“We’re volunteering to work in a tiny community of a few hundred voters. So, there’s no need for publicity, no need to take political shots at one another. The dynamics are different here, it’s a civilized kind of thing. I mean, one of the candidates is a guy I car-pool with, another I vacation with. If I don’t win, it doesn’t matter. We’ll still work together. That’s the way it is in Hidden Hills.”

Indeed, there has been a sense of cultured diffidence to Hidden Hills ever since the walls went up around the place back in the 1950s. People moved there to get away from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles, incorporating in 1961 to stop the progress of Burbank Boulevard, which would have cut the community in half.

Now, it’s a different world--a community of million-dollar-and-up homes that sit on acre-sized lots, where horse trails have replaced sidewalks, where every home is surrounded by a mandatory white picket fence and cutesy white sign that announces the family name.

It’s a place run by two equally powerful governments--a City Council and a homeowners association that divide responsibilities to see that Hidden Hills stays just the way it is. The association, for example, owns and maintains the roads while the city government manages the stop signs. But there’s no downtown. No stores. No businesses. No stoplights.

There’s just one pay phone located outside City Hall, the place that bears the placard that reads “On this site in 1897, nothing happened.”

For several years, elections were canceled because no one challenged the incumbents. On rare occasions, however, politics can get wild here.

In 1990 residents threw out three council members for proposing a low-income senior-citizen housing project that was part of a government requirement to provide the community with $100 million in redevelopment funds for a flood repair project.

Then residents disbanded the redevelopment agency, canceled a deal with a developer and fired their city attorney. When the developer sued, Hidden Hills settled out of court for $1 million rather than erect the senior housing.

“Yes, we’re a little standoffish here,” says Andy Andrews, a Hidden Hills resident for the past 27 years, whose white family sign also bears the greeting “Huddle by the Puddle.”

Residents say their coolness doesn’t come from any phony Hollywood-type exclusivity, even though the city has played past or present home to such personalities as actors Beau Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner, entertainers Bob Eubanks and Tony Orlando, comics Sinbad and Howie Mandel and the late singers Sarah Vaughan and Marvin Gaye. And Eric Wright, a rapper known as Eazy-E and former member of the group NWA, owns a home there.

“It’s a matter of personal privacy,” Andrews continues. “We moved here for privacy. People who want to do that are by nature a little standoffish, don’t you think?”

Some residents can’t understand why outsiders won’t let Hidden Hills remain, well, hidden .

“Why is it that it leaves such a bad taste in people’s mouths just because you have a community of people in expensive homes who just want to close themselves off from all the crime and the rest of it in the city at large,” asks Siegel.

“That idea just seems to strike such a chord with people, as if there’s something wrong with it. Believe me, once you get inside these gates, there’s nothing terribly exciting going on here. There’s nobody inviting me to hot tub parties. It’s very low-key. You’ll probably find a disproportionately large number of family-oriented people, a lot more dads who coach Little League per-cubic-foot than the population at large.”

Still, there’s that nagging sense that Hidden Hills residents want the rest of the world to just go away.

“They’re real hidden, aren’t they?” asks Calabasas Mayor Marvin Lopata. “They just don’t seem to extend themselves like the rest of the communities in the West Valley. We have community meetings and Hidden Hills always just sends their city clerk.

“She’s a really nice woman, I’m sure. But here we are, all these mayors and pro tems, and their mayor isn’t there. I don’t even know who their mayor pro tem is, to be honest with you, or if they even have one. The point is, they don’t seem to want to participate in any of the community functions. I think they just want to keep to themselves. That’s certainly the message they send out.”

These days, not all is bucolic even behind the walls of Hidden Hills.

Indeed, there is a rift of sorts that has cracked the foundation of this walled paradise. Newer residents, many of whom have paid $3 million or more for their homes, have sought to leave their stamp on the community, say older residents.

In the carpeted recesses of homeowners meetings, residents are duking out a proposal to streamline the assessment of homeowner fees, which are now based on a home’s selling price. Those who bought more recently into the community want to see an even fee collected. But residents who have lived there for decades like things just the way they are.

Also, some older residents are miffed over a plan to spend between $10,000 and $20,000 of homeowner funds on a catered welcoming party for new residents, saying that in their days a simple potluck dinner always did the job, a night when somebody “dropped a vodka bottle into punch at Peggy Blalock’s house.”

“This community is a different place today than it used to be,” said retired attorney Warren McCament, a former council member. “The new blood has come in.

“They want to build larger homes and it’s split the community. This used to be a friendly place, but not anymore. I’ve never seen such resentment. I for one, don’t want to see Hidden Hills turn into any Beverly Hills.”

Longtime resident Eleanor DeCarteret has also felt the tension.

“I don’t think people are as friendly as they used to be,” she said. “I try to wave to people when I’m in my front yard pulling weeds. But with the new ones, sometimes they wave, sometimes not at all.”

And so the coming election may bring some changes to Hidden Hills. But in the outside world, the impression is the community will remain pretty much the same.

Later this year, officials plan to open up a new City Hall, where residents and outsiders can conduct official business. It will, however, be located just outside the city limits. After all, this is Hidden Hills.

Hidden Hills Profile

A statistical look at the gated community of Hidden Hills, based on 1990 U.S. census data: Population: 1,729 Square miles: 1.6 Incorporated: Oct. 19, 1961 Households: 502 Persons per household: 3.4 Families: 468 Median age: 38.9 Average income: $263,746 Persons in poverty: 64 (3.7%) *

Ethnicity White: 89% Latino: 85 Other*: 3% * Includes: Asian: 2%, African American: 0.8% and American Indian, Eskimo and Aleut: 0.2%