AGOURA HILLS : Anti-Council Group Hires a Consultant

A group trying to recall the entire Agoura Hills City Council has hired a consultant to help improve its effectiveness at gathering the signatures needed to force a recall election, the leader of the group said Monday.

Barbara Murphy said the consultant, whom she declined to name, was hired last week. She said that since then, recall proponents have gathered about 300 signatures--compared to about 1,600 over the last few months.

“We probably had enough volunteers before, but we weren’t using the right techniques,” Murphy said.

The consultant has provided three people experienced in recall elections, who have been coaching about a dozen volunteers, Murphy said. They were on hand last weekend as volunteers staffed booths at various spots around town.

The group needs 2,454 signatures--or 20% of the city’s registered voters--by Dec. 7 to force a recall election, according to the city clerk’s office.

Fran Pavley, one of the council members targeted for recall, scoffed at hiring a consultant. Pavley said that someone who was staffing a booth last weekend at a shopping center asked her to sign the petition.

“She didn’t even know who I was,” Pavley said. “This is not a grass-roots effort anymore. This is not local people who are upset with taxes. This is people who are paid to get you to sign that paper any way they can.”

Pavley and others have suggested that the recall is influenced by business people who are angry with the City Council over its support for an ordinance banning pole signs.

“I think it’s a little scary,” said Dee Akemon, an avid supporter of the present five-member City Council. “We don’t know who we are dealing with. I hear these people are from San Diego.”

But Murphy responded: “Of course, it’s a grass-roots campaign. I’ve done what any good manager would do. If my job is to get enough signatures to get this on the ballot so people can vote, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

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 it accuses the council of allowing spending to spiral out of control. City Council members insist that the tax was necessary and that they have done all they can to cut costs.

Murphy said that until last week her group was made up of volunteers who were inexperienced at running a recall campaign. Before the consultant was hired, the petition gatherers had gone to local shopping centers and the post office, where they set up booths “too far from the door,” Murphy said. “We were not asking people to sign; now we’re actively asking people to sign.”

Pavley said of the petition drive over the weekend: “All day, it was so hard to get into the market. It was easier to sign than to say no.”