LA PUENTE : City Council Selects Businessman Gaytan to Fill Storing’s Seat

The City Council chose George Gaytan, a prominent local businessman and a political novice, to assume the duties of former Councilman Charles H. Storing, who died April 2.

The selection of Gaytan, chief executive officer of Gaytan Foods, comes just a little more than a month after Gaytan’s business was granted a controversial zoning change at his family-owned pork rind manufacturing plant on Abbey Street. Over the objections of local residents, the council approved the zoning change, paving the way for expansion of Gaytan’s plant.

Gaytan’s selection at Tuesday night’s council meeting so angered Planning Commissioner Paul Dahlitz, who also had tried for the council job, that he withdrew his application for a sixth term on the commission. Dahlitz, a retired supervisor for GTE, has been a member of the Planning Commission for 20 years.

Dahlitz, 61, was bitter that his many years of service did not translate into a council appointment. And he questioned Gaytan’s commitment to the city. By his own admission, Gaytan, 50, only became interested in city affairs during the zoning application.

“I figure if I gave the city 20 years of service and they didn’t think enough of me to fill that position, well, I don’t think I should continue on with the city,” Dahlitz said. “It’s getting to be a good old boys’ network.”

Gaytan said the zoning change request was “a wake-up call” that made him realize the division that exists in the city and on the council. The rezoning was opposed by 120 people, many of whom live near the Gaytan plant and who signed a petition that was presented to the council. Only Councilwoman Sally Holguin-Fallon voted against the expansion.

It was a family decision to “become proactive in trying to find solutions to the problems facing the city,” Gaytan said.

He sees himself as a peacemaker who will be able to work with Holguin-Fallon, who is continually at odds with her council colleagues, and lead the council to common ground.

Holguin-Fallon abstained on the selection of Gaytan. She said afterward that she had no objections to Gaytan as a councilman and that he might be able to smooth relations between her and the rest of the council. She abstained, she said, because she believes that new council members should be elected, not appointed.

“At the very least, people should have an opportunity to choose their representatives,” Holguin-Fallon said.

Some of the 13 other candidates who applied to fill the nearly two years remaining in Storing’s four-year term included two sitting city officials, a former City Council member and a retired city employee.

At its April 11 meeting, the council rejected a proposal to leave Storing’s seat vacant and hold a special election in November. Citing the $40,000 cost of a special election and the lack of a city ordinance addressing council appointments in the event of unexpected vacancies, council members voted 3 to 0 to appoint a replacement.