ANAHEIM : Council to Review Relocation Plan

The City Council today will review a plan calling for the owner of a 23-acre mobile home park to pay for relocating tenants and will consider strengthening a recent campaign-reform ordinance.

Campanula Properties Inc., owners of the Orange Tree Mobile Home Park next to The Pond of Anaheim, wants to close the 236-space park and possibly replace it with a parking lot.

Owner John Stanaland has said rising vacancy rates, traffic problems and the 25-year-old park’s deteriorating condition led to the decision.

The council will examine a May 2 Planning Commission directive that Campanula Properties pay up to $10,000 per tenant in relocation costs for scores of mobile home owners still living in the park.

The company originally had offered to waive $5,000 in rent to tenants if they left the park by Oct. 15.

Campanula Properties has until tonight to appeal the Planning Commission’s action to the City Council. If an appeal is made, the council may set a date for a public hearing.

Otherwise, the council is not expected to take action. Stanaland was not available for comment.

The council will consider adding two provisions to a campaign-reform ordinance that went into effect in July, 1993.

Political activists Shirley Grindle and Alexander Carrassi II urged the council to toughen the ordinance by requiring officials to report more thoroughly on campaign contributions and payment of campaign debts.

However, the city attorney rejected a third suggestion by the activists, saying it would probably violate the First Amendment.

Grindle and Carrassi want the ordinance to prohibit candidates for Anaheim office from using campaign funds raised while seeking an office outside Anaheim.

Otherwise, the pair argued in a letter to the council, candidates who could transfer funds would have an “unfair advantage” against local candidates “who would be raising all of their funds under the more restrictive Anaheim ordinance.”

But City Atty. Jack White said such a prohibition might be ruled unconstitutional since it limits spending of campaign funds after the money has been contributed.