COVER STORY : Shock Value : Politics: Defiant Culver City Mayor Albert Vera charges forward with his plan to bring low-cost electricity to residents. But his proposal also has generated heat from officials at Southern California Edison.

As he walks between the rows of olive trees, Albert Vera reaches up and plucks off one of the green, acorn-sized fruits, then places it carefully atop a bucket heaping with olives picked by a field hand.

“Let’s pick those trees over there next,” he says to the foreman, motioning to a section of trees in the distance.

In the tiny town of Lindsay, about 45 minutes north of Bakersfield, Vera is owner and lord of an olive fiefdom consisting of 26 ranches, thousands of acres, a country bungalow, several dogs, even some rare white peacocks.

He is every bit the no-nonsense boss. When he bought his first olive ranch, Vera knew nothing about growing olives--only that he wanted to be in the business. Now he is the area’s largest landowner and one of its biggest olive producers, locals say. Says Vera: “If you tell me I can’t do something, by God I’ll learn how to do it.”

It’s this defiant, straight-ahead style that, as mayor of Culver City, Vera has displayed in his drive to have the city take over local electric service from Southern California Edison.

Vera has argued for over a year that Culver City should create a city-run utility to lower electric rates for its residents. Says Vera: “Edison has made millions off rate payers. I want the profits to remain in the cities.” Recently, he has been urging eight area cities--Culver City included--to collectively demand rate reductions from Edison and consider creating a joint agency to purchase electricity.

But Vera’s vision of a city-owned utility has angered Edison, and the giant power provider has its share of allies in Culver City. Critics call the mayor’s proposal half-baked. Vera’s single-minded approach may work wonders in the olive groves, they say, but it could cause major problems in an area as complicated as municipal electric service.

“He’s got a lot of ideas. He seems to come up with a new one every week, but he doesn’t think about them enough before he presents them,” says Ed Little, a former City Council member who is still active in Culver City politics. “People are afraid that the city can’t run its own utility efficiently, yet Albert is like a bulldog when he gets an idea in his head.”

Vera, who was first elected to the Culver City City Council in 1992, acknowledges that he often feels frustrated with the inertia of politics.

“By yourself, you can do things and get them done, but in politics you have to discuss everything and by the time you’re done, you get disgusted with it,” says Vera, who, in addition to olive growing, has owned and operated Sorrento’s Deli in Culver City since 1963. “I’m used in life to doing things, accomplishing things.”

Waiting for things to happen never has been Vera’s style. If it were, his rags-to-riches story might have read quite differently.

In 1950, at age 15, he arrived in New York from a small town near Naples, Italy. Vera came as an American citizen--his mother was born in the United States, but moved to Italy before he was born. During his first year in this country, he moved with an aunt to Culver City, where he has lived ever since.

He spoke no English, had no money, and wanted desperately to go home, he says. “Every time I opened my mouth, people laughed at me,” he recalls.

It did not take him long to learn English, although he retains a heavy Italian accent. Nor did it take him long to make his way in business. In 1962, he bought a white van and started a refrigerated deli on wheels. Vera drove a two-week circuit from Culver City down to San Diego and then up to San Jose, making home deliveries of fresh mozzarella and other deli items to customers.

Soon after starting his portable deli, he married his wife, Ursula, a native of Germany, and together they opened Sorrento’s Deli. The shop still stands in the same Sepulveda Boulevard location, though it is twice as large as the original store.

It was while he was driving through the San Joaquin Valley that Vera decided to get into the olive business. He bought his first ranch in the early 1960s. Clueless about farming, Vera called professors of agriculture at several California universities for information.

Now he produces between 1,200 and 1,500 tons of olives annually, bottling some whole and crushing some for olive oil. He sells both products under a private label, Vera Ranches, at his own store and through distributors. He also sells Italian coffee and wine under his own label.

At least twice a week, Vera makes the 3 1/2-hour trip to Lindsay, most of the driving time spent on a cellular phone conducting his business as mayor--talking to reporters, getting updates on projects, responding to complaints from city residents. On one recent afternoon, he was behind the counter at Sorrento’s, serving up sandwiches and conversation. There, too, he talks city politics with the locals--and contributes to numerous causes.

“He buries people in donated food . . . he does a lot of nice things for people and organizations around here,” says Dr. Richard Schoenbaum, a Culver City dentist who is a member of Citizens Allied for Reliable Electricity (CARE), a Culver City group that formed in opposition to Vera’s utility takeover proposal.

Vera was able to draw on such goodwill in 1992 when he first won election to the council. This year, his council colleagues appointed him mayor, a post that rotates from council member to council member every year. Throughout, Vera has prided himself on getting things done.

Vera’s harshest critics soften their tone when they speak of his success after the Northridge earthquake in squeezing $250,000 out of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors to finish a street rebuilding project in downtown Culver City. The work, part of a $10 million downtown redevelopment project, had been under way before the quake, but Vera argued that it should be completed immediately to offset traffic problems caused by the temblor.

Says Vera proudly: “I got a quarter of a million dollars in two weeks.”

He is also credited with lobbying the federal government for more than $800,000 to rebuild Culver City’s 45-year-old public swimming pool, which sustained heavy damage in the quake.

To generate more revenue for the city, Vera is working with Culver National Bank to create a Culver City credit card that would direct up to 3% of each cardholder’s interest payments to municipal coffers.

He also successfully sponsored a voluntary program under which Culver City receives price reductions from vendors whom it pays within 10 days. And he was the driving force behind a “buy local” policy considered partly responsible for the city’s purchase of more than $900,000 in goods and services from local businesses last year, out of total expenditures of more than $12 million. In the first four months of the current fiscal year, the city has turned to local businesses for $576,000 worth of goods and services.

Vera has plenty of other plans in mind--even if it is unclear whether the city will get the funding needed to carry them out. Among the projects: a new courthouse in Culver City and a 200-acre municipal golf course.

By far his most ambitious idea is his proposal for a takeover of electric service from Edison, which has had a franchise in the city since 1925.

He has spent most of the past year trying to convince both the City Council and local voters that municipal electric service will save Culver City money--up to $10 million in the first year. He first floated the idea more than a year ago. Soon after, the City Council voted to hire a San Francisco consulting firm, R.W. Beck & Associates, to complete a $24,000 preliminary feasibility study.

The effort suffered a setback in July when the City Council voted against proceeding further. However, one council member who says he is open to the possibility of municipal electric service was absent from that meeting, and the issue may again come up for discussion in the coming weeks.

Vera, meanwhile, has continued to press the matter.

“I consider it at a standstill, but Albert’s talking about it as if he will be able to do it,” said Councilman Michael Balkman. “Some of us know when to stop if we lose on our ideas, but Albert doesn’t.”

In its analysis, R.W. Beck found that it would cost Culver City about $24 million to buy Edison’s distribution system, although Edison estimates the value at $100 million. To cover all the costs of a takeover--including $2.5 million in legal, engineering and appraisal fees--Beck said the city would need to issue up to $84.4 million in bonds.

But the study also showed that a municipal electric company would generate more revenue for the city than the nearly $600,000 a year that the city collects from Edison in franchise fees and property taxes.

Edison has not taken Vera’s takeover proposal lying down. The utility has issued several reports condemning R.W. Beck’s analysis as factually incorrect and contends that a municipal utility would prove far more costly to Culver City than the current arrangement.

Vera’s proposal will never become reality because it is too expensive and has generated little support in Culver City, Edison contends.

“The people in Culver City are against a government takeover by a 4-to-1 margin,” says Fred Trueblood, regional manager for Southern California Edison, quoting the results of a company-funded survey. “Albert has been difficult to deal with, and what he is doing now is more about political agendas than community benefits.”

In pushing for a city-run utility, however, Vera is not proposing the unprecedented. Twenty-seven municipal utilities provide electricity in California, and all charge rates that are lower than Edison’s, according to the California Municipal Utilities Assn.

In recent months, Vera has shifted his strategy. Working with a City Council colleague, Dr. James Boulgarides, Vera has formed a group tentatively named the South Bay Joint Powers Consortium. Composed of Vera and the mayors of seven South Bay cities, the ad-hoc group’s first priority is to lobby Edison for a 25% discount on the rates the utility charges in their cities--Culver City, Hawthorne, Gardena, Carson, Torrance, El Segundo, Lomita and Inglewood.

Edison contends that the group should take its complaints to the California Public Utilities Commission, which sets the rates.

The mayors, who still must gain the approval of their respective city councils before they move forward with their plan, say they are preparing for the day when the California Public Utilities Commission deregulates the state’s electric utilities. The PUC this year has been holding public hearings on deregulation.

If the industry becomes deregulated, and many believe that it will, Edison will lose hold of its local monopoly and cities will be able to negotiate with different power providers for the lowest rate. The consortium is scheduled to meet again on Nov. 16.

Vera won a partial victory against Edison when he forced the utility last month to begin paying the city’s business license fee, a levy Edison had considered itself exempt from because it pays a franchise fee.

Still, the mayor’s proposed takeover of local electric service has alienated some of his constituents. And some Culver City council members accuse him of working behind their backs with the elected officials from other cities.

“It would have been more appropriate for the issue to have been directed to the council first,” said Edward Wolkowitz, a City Council member who voted against a city takeover of the utility.

But that would not be Vera’s style, Wolkowitz admits.

Indeed, Vera argues that people who make enemies make progress.

“Show me a person who doesn’t take any heat, and I’ll show you a person who has done zero,” he says. “But show me someone who takes heat and I’ll show you someone who is successful.”