Voters in County Show New Willingness to Spend : Elections: Several tax hikes and bond measures are approved, while revenue producers in the form of oil drilling and a card club are rejected.

In a show of economic confidence that has been rare in recent years, voters in several Los Angeles County communities approved tax hikes and bond measures Tuesday, while other communities voted to forgo businesses that would have brought in dollars but also raised concerns over crime or pollution.

Two years after recalling Covina’s entire City Council for approving a utility tax, the city’s voters decided Tuesday to keep an even bigger tax.

By a margin of 54% to 46%, Covina voters approved Measure M, which advises the council to keep in place an 8.25% utility tax. The rate will drop to 7% at the end of the month. The vote was not binding, but council members vowed to abide by it.

“The people of Covina have sent a message that they want to protect their quality of life,” said Councilwoman Linda Sarver. “This means my children and everybody else’s children have a future in this city.”

All five members of the previous council were recalled after approving a 6% tax in July, 1993. Sarver, along with Thomas O’Leary and Tom Falls, rode the anti-tax wave in 1993 to the recently vacated seats on the council. Once there and faced with closing a library, fire station and laying off five police officers and 37 other city employees, the three were part of a majority that passed an 8.25% utility tax.

Hank Vagt, leader of an ongoing recall campaign against the three and an unswerving anti-taxer, blamed the passage of Measure M on the advisory nature of the vote and his group’s lack of money.

“We got outspent,” he said.

In nearby Pomona, a developer’s gamble on a card club’s approval did not pay off as voters for the second time this year rejected plans to make the city home to the first casino in the San Gabriel Valley.

Measure K, which would have allowed the construction of the 150-table Pomona Park Casino, took 45% of the vote, failing by 1,190 votes. In April, a similar measure for two clubs was defeated by 200 votes.

“The margin of victory exceeded my expectations,” said Dale Hansen, spokesman for Committee Against Card Club Casinos in Pomona.

Hansen said that beyond the usual concerns about crime, Pomona voters feared the club’s influence over City Hall.

“The fact that card club’s backers were able to force the City Council to hold a second election worked in our favor,” he said. “It showed their power.”

Developer Leo Chu and his partners in the Hollywood Park Casino, DeBartolo Entertainment and Yucaipa Companies, had promised that the club would bring Pomona 1,000 new jobs, $10 million in yearly tax revenue and $1 million in annual charity donations. The partners did not return calls Wednesday.

In Hermosa Beach, residents approved a measure to ban all oil drilling in the city despite predictions from opponents that the decision could cost the city tens of millions of dollars in revenue.

Measure E, which called for the removal of the only two exceptions to a ban on drilling, passed with 54.5% of the vote after a fierce campaign on both sides.

Manhattan Beach voters narrowly approved a $47-million bond measure that will go to refurbish campuses and build a middle school.

Measure A, which required a two-thirds majority to pass, slipped by with 67.6% of the votes.

In Hawthorne, 17-year Councilwoman Betty Ainsworth and Chuck Bookhammer, a former two-term councilman, were elected on their campaign pledges to improve the city’s financial outlook. Mayor Larry Guidi ran unopposed for a second term.

Hawthorne officials last year said the city had an $11-million deficit on a $27-million annual budget.