Elections Bring New Faces and a Few Surprises to City Councils

Every city council on the ballot, except Simi Valley’s, picked up a new face when the votes were tallied early Wednesday, but not necessarily a new direction.

In Thousand Oaks, for instance, an open seat once held by a slow-growth advocate was filled by a like-minded candidate--Linda Parks--leaving the balance on the divided council unchanged.

The two new councilmen in Camarillo, Kevin Kildee and William Liebmann, bring with them the same mix of moderate-growth and pro-business sentiment as the members they are replacing.

The election results brought a few surprises, particularly for Oxnard Councilman Andres Herrera, who ran the best-financed council campaign in Ventura County this fall and still found himself 14 votes shy of a council seat. He is awaiting absentee ballot returns.

Other incumbent council members--Moorpark’s Eloise Brown and Santa Paula’s Al Urias--could lose their seats too, according to semi-official results released by the county Wednesday.

Thousand Oaks

The pro-business faction may dominate the City Council, but slow-growth candidate Linda Parks led the field of nine candidates Tuesday, receiving nearly 5,000 more votes than incumbent Mike Markey.

“It would have been nice to come in first, but winning is fine,” said Markey, who along with Mayor Andy Fox and Councilwoman Judy Lazar make up the pro-business majority.

Parks will replace former Councilwoman Jaime Zukowski, who resigned earlier this year. She was appointed by Zukowski to the Planning Commission, and like her political mentor, is expected to side with Councilwoman Elois Zeanah on most issues.

But Parks said Wednesday that she will try to bring together what has been a hopelessly divided City Council now that Dan Del Campo, her slow-growth running mate, fell short of election with a third-place showing.

“I’m looking at this with an open mind,” she said. “Everyone says we’re back to a 3-2 division, and maybe that’s true on development issues. But I think we need to work together.”

One of the first tests will be the proposed $75-million expansion of the city’s Hill Canyon Waste Water Treatment Plant--the subject of a 16-month council stalemate.

Zeanah and Zukowski refused to vote for the sewer-fee hike needed to pay for the project because they considered the expansion larger than necessary. Without their support, the council could not muster the four-fifths vote needed for approval.

Parks believes the council must discuss a less expensive alternative.

“I think there is middle ground, and I hope politics do not prevent us from reaching a compromise,” Parks said. “There’s obviously some excessive components of this plan.”

Markey, meanwhile, said the plan or something close to it remains the council’s only viable option to meet state requirements and conform with plans for a nearby golf course.

“Linda needs to put her political persona aside and do the job now,” Markey said. “Let’s accomplish things as a group of five, because we don’t have much of a choice.”

Oxnard

The only thing certain now is that an Oxnard incumbent lost his seat on the City Council.

But whether the winner is Herrera or Bedford Pinkard, who led by 14 votes in semi-official totals, depends on a final tally of absentee ballots--and perhaps a recount.

“I have nothing to say about the 14 votes separating me from returning to the council,” Herrera said.

What is definite is that challenger John Zaragoza led the pack of five candidates to a first-place finish in the race.

Relishing his victory, Zaragoza said he was grateful to Oxnard’s voters.

“I’m very confident at this time,” said Zaragoza, the former director of the city’s solid-waste division. “I’m so happy with their support and the confidence they showed in me [Tuesday] night.”

Zaragoza, who won nearly every precinct by a slim margin, said he would focus on increasing public participation in city government.

Herrera said he would wait for about 8,000 absentee ballots to be counted before deciding whether to seek a recount.

But Bruce Bradley, the county’s election chief, said he would expect Zaragoza and Pinkard’s lead to widen once all the ballots are counted, which could come as soon as Friday afternoon.

According to the election totals, Herrera’s heaviest support came from La Colonia, where he grew up, and the Lemonwood neighborhood near Channel Islands Boulevard and Rice Avenue.

Pinkard said he would not object to a recount if his council colleague asked for one.

“I don’t know what pulled me over,” he said. “I have been active in the community since the 1960s and that might have played a role.”

Also in Tuesday’s election, Mayor Manuel Lopez easily won reelection, capturing 69% of the vote.

But Oxnard voters rejected Measure Z--the utility tax for increasing police and fire protection--by a wide margin.

Simi Valley

Despite a strong and surprising assault by two of the four challengers, incumbent Simi Valley council members Bill Davis and Barbara Williamson clung to their seats, each winning about one-quarter of the votes cast.

They also hung onto a chance to continue pushing a project dear to both: the revitalization of the blighted Tapo Street business corridor.

“It’s on everybody’s minds, and has been for the past two years,” Davis said. “People don’t understand the amount of frustration I’ve had that we just couldn’t walk in and knock the dadgum building down.”

The building--the Sears Outlet damaged in the 1994 Northridge earthquake--was finally razed in September, and Tapo Street merchants have been huddling over design plans for the area’s future.

Williamson said she hopes a reborn Tapo Street will help move Simi Valley toward a broader campaign of street beautification and more consistent design standards.

But the challengers had also hammered away at the Tapo Street problem. And two of them managed to steal away a healthy chunk of the incumbents’ votes.

Camarillo

Candidates with some of the most recognizable names in town were swept onto the City Council from a field of eight challengers vying for two seats vacated by the incumbents.

Kevin Kildee, the stepson of outgoing Supervisor Maggie Kildee and a former member of the Pleasant Valley Park and Recreation District’s board, won the most votes, capturing 20% of the ballots cast.

“It was a long, hard fight, a lot of work,” Kildee said. “I thought I would do well, but I wasn’t sure how well.”

The second seat went to Bill Liebmann, a Camarillo attorney who has been a planning commissioner the past six years.

Kildee and Liebmann took the seats vacated by Mayor David M. Smith, who decided not to seek reelection, and Councilman Mike Morgan, who just lost his bid for the Board of Supervisors.

Kildee said some of his goals include pursuing the city’s recently established redevelopment project to help Ventura Boulevard merchants, and explore ways to fund Camarillo Library and learn the inner workings of City Hall.

Liebmann also cited redevelopment agency activities as a top goal, but said one of the first things he wanted to do was call for an efficiency audit.

“We need to identify areas where cost savings can be realized,” Liebmann said. “The city hasn’t had it done in the 32 years it’s been in existence.”

Santa Paula

In perhaps the county’s most racially charged municipal race, Santa Paula voters chose incumbent Robin Sullivan and close political ally Jim Garfield to fill the two open seats over council veteran Al Urias and well-known restaurateur Gabriella Araiza Reeves.

Bitter invective from some candidates’ supporters and ethnic divisions framed the contest, but Garfield believes people will see a less antagonistic council.

“I don’t know what precinct by precinct reports will show, but I thought I had a lot of Hispanic support,” he said. “I see probably Sullivan, [Councilman Don] Johnson and Garfield agreeing on a lot of things because I think we have a lot of the same aims and purposes, but I don’t see that as racial, I see it as philosophy.”

Former Santa Paula High School board President Victor Salas Sr. easily beat Elizabeth Noriega Ruiz for the vacant city clerk post. The retired businessman has said he intends to be more than simply a “record keeper” and will take a proactive role in municipal affairs.

Fillmore

Both Santa Paula and Fillmore voters rejected making the city clerk and treasurer posts in each municipality appointive rather than elective.

“We kind of screwed up,” Fillmore Mayor Roger Campbell said. “We didn’t try to inform the people why we were doing it and that was a critical mistake. The general public doesn’t want to lose elected officials.”

Campbell had better luck in his bid for a fourth council term, winning one of three available council seats along with incumbent Scott Lee and newcomer Evaristo Barajas from a five-candidate field.

Barajas, Fillmore’s first Latino councilman since 1984, successfully built on his council campaign of two years ago, when he lost by just 34 votes. The businessman enjoyed widespread support from residents and even his fellow candidates who believed the city’s majority Latino population deserved a voice in government.

“I believe I have a little different point of view than anybody else on the council,” Barajas said. “But overall I’m going to work with them so we can get the community going.”

Port Hueneme

Incumbent Toni Young and retired engineer Murray Rosenbluth emerged victorious and took the pair of council seats sought by six candidates in a low-key contest marked by little disagreement on most issues.

“He knocked on every door and I didn’t knock on a single door,” said Young of Rosenbluth’s first-place finish in the polls.

Confident of reelection, Young was more concerned with the fate of a trio of measures on the ballot in the city, measures A, B, and C. All three passed.

The passage of measures B and C means that an existing utility tax used to financially support the city’s police force instead of contracting with the Ventura County Sheriff’s Department remains intact. And due to passage of Measure A, Port Hueneme can now also expect a greater degree of independence from the state by joining Ventura and becoming the county’s second charter city.

Ojai

Voters chose traffic guru Suza Francina and Ojai Valley Land Conservancy Executive Director Ellen Hall from among half a dozen candidates vying for two open council seats. Mayor James Loebel and Robert McKinney decided not to seek reelection.

The environmentally conscious pair enjoyed the best name recognition among the challengers, said Francina, a frequent council speaker and unsuccessful council candidate two years ago. But the two are unlikely to bring major changes to the council, she said.

“Youth will be more of a priority for us because we’re both parents of teenagers,” she said.

Moorpark

Councilman Pat Hunter will succeed outgoing Mayor Paul Lawrason, taking 37% of the vote in a race that pitted him against a fellow council member, former planning commissioner and a retired rancher.

Hunter said one of his first steps as mayor will be to streamline City Council meetings to help Moorpark residents who often wait hours for public hearings.

“We can improve, make the meetings more efficient, while still maintaining the highest level of objectivity,” he said.

The pace and intensity of development dominated discussion in both Moorpark’s mayoral and City Council campaigns. Hunter said he will evaluate projects based on their impact on the city’s residents and infrastructure.

“How does this project affect the people who live in Moorpark?” he said. “Is it going to overcrowd our schools? Is it going to burden the library?”

Businessman Chris Evans appeared to have won a seat on the City Council, gathering 23% of the total vote. He agreed with Hunter’s approach, saying he preferred managed growth to no growth.

The race for the other council seat appeared too close to call Wednesday. Real estate agent Debbie Rodgers Teasley seemed close to unseating incumbent Eloise Brown, leading her by 61 votes. But with thousands of absentee ballots still to be counted, neither candidate considered Tuesday’s results final.

“I’m not going to give up until the last ballot is counted,” Brown said Wednesday.

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