Plan for Interim Council Member Praised, but Ferraro Skeptical : City Hall: Two candidates for Yaroslavsky’s 5th District seat support his suggestion that someone be appointed to the post until a special election is held.

Los Angeles City Councilman Zev Yaroslavsky’s proposal to have an interim council member appointed to succeed him when he leaves office drew praise Wednesday from a variety of community leaders, including two candidates seeking election to his seat.

But City Council President John Ferraro, whose views strongly influence City Hall, was skeptical that the council would take such a novel step, or that it is even necessary. The council has not made such an appointment since 1966.

“I just don’t think it’s going to happen,” Ferraro said.

Yaroslavsky this week said he hopes the council would appoint a temporary council member until the city can hold a special election. He leaves the council on Dec. 5 to become a member of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors.

If no appointment is made, a high-ranking City Hall bureaucrat would oversee activities in Yaroslavsky’s 5th District for as long as seven months--the length of time it would take to elect a successor.

But Ferraro’s doubts about a council appointee failed to douse the fervor of Sherman Oaks Homeowners Assn. President Richard Close and other community leaders who say they strongly support Yaroslavsky’s proposal.

Close said a caretaker council member could be critical to the success of ambitious city plans to rebuild quake-devastated Sherman Oaks.

“For Sherman Oaks and Studio City to be without a voting council person for seven months would be catastrophic,” said Close, who added that he had warned Yaroslavsky weeks ago.

City officials, with Yaroslavsky’s blessing, are now reviewing the possibility of establishing a redevelopment plan for the Sherman Oaks area, where apartments and businesses were badly battered by the Jan. 17 Northridge earthquake. Close said he worried that the city’s Community Redevelopment Agency might use the absence of a council member to take control of the plan.

Close said his worst fears were that the other council members would actually use a leadership void to “strip mine” the 5th District.

“The city will be adopting a budget next year when the 5th District will have no representative,” Close said. “If we’ve got something the others want, there won’t be anyone to stop them from taking it. They’ll be fighting over the bones of the 5th District.”

Others say Yaroslavsky’s departure will weaken the 5th District’s voice at City Hall in part because the longtime council member is taking his top staff with him.

“It’s not just Zev, but his entire staff that’s going to be missed,” warned former Los Angeles school board member Roberta Weintraub, who will be running next spring for Yaroslavsky’s seat.

In the past, council staff members--who are knowledgeable about the district--often stayed behind after their bosses left office.

Weintraub said the City Council must at least make sure an interim team is fully staffed with qualified people.

If the council follows its longtime practice, it will seek to merge the election to fill Yaroslavsky’s seat with next year’s regular municipal elections, which begin with a primary in April. The general election is scheduled for June.

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That means anyone elected to the 5th District seat next year would probably take office on July 1, 1995, and would serve the remaining two years of Yaroslavsky’s four-year term.

Also supporting the appointment idea was Michael Feuer, executive director of Bet Zdek Legal Services and another candidate for election to Yaroslavsky’s seat.

Like the other supporters, Feuer favors an interim appointment only if the appointee does not intend to be a candidate for the same seat come election time.

Jerry Daniels, president of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy and a veteran homeowner leader from Yaroslavsky’s district, warned that a leadership vacuum could result in further attacks on open space in the large mountainous regions of Yaroslavsky’s 5th District.

“My fear is that developers may be in there fast to take advantage of a leadership gap,” Daniels said. Even with Yaroslavsky in office, there is an ongoing war to protect the Mulholland Drive scenic corridor from development encroachments, Daniels said.

Yaroslavsky first raised the appointment idea in an interview this week with Times editors and reporters. Yaroslavsky said he was considering the idea solely because of his concerns about the fate of quake recovery efforts in Sherman Oaks.

If no appointment is made, Ron Deaton, the city’s chief legislative analyst, is likely to be named by the City Council to run the 5th District. It has been the council practice for 30 years to use the CLA to run vacant council offices until a new council member is elected. Ten such vacancies have arisen since 1966.

But Deaton would have no vote on the City Council, nor would he have the same standing in other respects with regular council members.

“This type of caretaker would be a eunuch,” Close complained. “We need a leader, not a caretaker, or we’ll get lost in the shuffle at City Hall.”

But Ferraro said the CLA system works.

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“We haven’t had complaints in the past, and during one period the CLA was running two vacant council offices at the same time,” Ferraro said. In 1991, the CLA ran both the South-Central Los Angeles seat left vacant by Councilman Gilbert Lindsay’s death and the Eastside seat left empty when former Councilwoman Gloria Molina was elected in the middle of her term to the Board of Supervisors, Ferraro said.

“I don’t think Zev or the community should be worrying about this,” Ferraro said. “I’d be here to take calls from anyone who thought the 5th District wasn’t being treated right, and Zev himself has never been a shy person. If he thought something was wrong, he’d call me about it.”