SHERMAN OAKS : Council to Weigh Interim Appointment

The fate of a drive by community activists to persuade the Los Angeles City Council to appoint an interim Fifth District member for the next six months could be decided by the council today.

On the council’s agenda is a proposal to call a special election to fill the seat vacated by Zev Yaroslavsky earlier this month. Under the city’s bylaws, if the council wishes to appoint an interim member, it must do so before it orders a special election.

Although vacancies have arisen in the past, the council has not appointed an interim member in the last 28 years.

The council district office is currently being run by a caretaker, Avak Keotahian, a former city legislative analyst who has no vote on the council.

Community leaders say, however, that severe earthquake damage to Sherman Oaks has made it critical for the area to have a voting representative. The interim council member would oversee the community’s rebuilding and the establishment of an emergency recovery area there.

The 5th District also includes Bel-Air, Century City, Fairfax, Westwood and portions of Studio City, Van Nuys and North Hollywood.

For the council to appoint an interim representative, it would have to put off the special election vote and a council member would have to request that an item calling for the appointment be placed on the agenda, according to Michael Carey, executive officer in the city clerk’s office.

The council would then have two deadlines. It can delay calling the special election for only so long--until Feb. 15, to be exact--if the council wants to consolidate the special election with the general elections in April, 1995, said Kristin Heffron, head of the city’s Elections Division.

Heffron said that if the council wishes to appoint a short-term council member--someone who would run the office until June 30, 1995--it must do so by no later than Jan. 11. Otherwise, the appointee would be a long-term replacement, staying in office for the remainder of Yaroslavsky’s term, which ends on June 30, 1997.

The council also must abide by a city requirement that an appointee live, and be registered to vote, in the district for 30 days prior to selection.

Two men have been mentioned as candidates for the interim post, former Yaroslavsky aide Michael Jimenez and Robert Geoghegan--who served as chief deputy to former Los Angeles County Supervisor Ed Edelman.

Jimenez registered to vote in Bel-Air on Dec. 5, but Geoghegan was not registered to vote in the district, according to a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters. However, another spokeswoman said that if Geoghegan had re-registered in the past few days, the changes may have not shown up in the system.

Geoghegan said Monday that he had sent in a change-of-address form to the registrar on Friday, the same day he moved to Cheviot Hills.