AGOURA HILLS : Deadline Looming for Recall Movement

With less than a month to go before the Dec. 7 deadline to gather the required number of signatures, the leader of a movement to recall the Agoura Hills City Council was predicting victory.

Barbara Murphy, an Agoura Hills resident who is spearheading the movement, predicted Tuesday that her group will get the 2,454 signatures--or 20% of the city’s 12,026 registered voters--it needs by Dec. 7 to force a recall election.

“We think we can get (the signatures), definitely,” Murphy said. “Based on what we have now and where we have to be, we think we can pull it out.”

Murphy declined to say how many signatures the group has. “We definitely have more than half,” she said.

Murphy’s group, Citizens Against New Local Taxes, began the recall process last summer, after the City Council voted unanimously to pass a 4% tax on electricity, gas and telephone service to help close a budget gap of nearly $1 million.

The group maintains that the city could have closed the deficit without the tax and accuses the council of allowing spending to spiral out of control.

Council members say they had no choice but to levy the new tax and scoff at the notion that they have spent carelessly. Council members say they worry about what will become of the city if they are thrown out of office. The recall supporters, they say, have no plan ready to replace them.

In another recall attempt in 1989, a group made up largely of different people failed to get the required signatures to recall four council members.

Darlene McBane, a former councilwoman who was targeted in the previous recall attempt, predicted that the latest attempt would also fail.

“Everybody I’ve talked to thinks this is silly,” she said. “And even if they agree (that the utility tax is unnecessary), they think that three elections in one year is a bad way to go.”

If the recall group is able to gather the required number of signatures, the city next year would have to hold a recall election, then another election to replace the council members, then the regularly scheduled elections in November.

Councilman Denis Weber said he has doubts that the recall supporters will be able to get the signatures they need. The council has meanwhile been picking up supporters, he said.

“We’ve probably got over 300 names, at least, and we publish our names,” he said. “Yet I’ve never seen any of the signatures that they have.”

The council members have been setting up tables each Saturday at a local shopping center, next to a petition-gathering table set up by recall supporters.

“In the last few weeks, we got maybe three times as many supporters as they (the recall group) got signatures on their petitions,” Weber said.

The current recall attempt, according to McBane and others against a recall, is backed by opponents of a city ordinance against commercial signs on poles. The council, they maintain, is being targeted because they support the ordinance.

Murphy denies that the recall supporters are motivated by the pole sign issue. She said she is personally opposed to the ordinance because businesses need the signs to attract customers.