A Voice for Slow-Growth May Have the Last Word

There’s not much room for anyone to eat in Elois Zeanah’s dining room any time soon.

Not with the dozen or so boxes filled to the brim with city staff reports sitting on chairs and around the floor. Not with the countless binders stuffed with notes on the table. And not with the stacks of newspapers highlighting City Council decisions scattered around the room.

But the former city councilwoman, whose tenure ended two years ago after she served two terms, likes it that way. She may not sit at the dais anymore, but Zeanah still keeps a close eye on City Hall. Especially on Tuesday nights, when she’s glued to the television set to watch council meetings.

“You better believe I’m there,” said the 59-year-old, who now balances most of her time between writing a thesis to earn her bachelor’s degree in social sciences from the University of Alabama, renovating her luxurious Lynn Estates home and sorting through her old City Hall files. “And when I’m not here, I tape it so I can see it.”

With Ed Masry and Linda Parks dominating the Nov. 7 election, Zeanah is looking forward to council meetings more than ever. Zeanah, who survived a recall effort in 1997, was often on the losing end of 4-1 votes during her tenure and crusaded to find fellow slow-growth candidates in election years to bring a majority to the council. But the panel never had more than two.

Now, there may finally be three: Masry, Parks and Mayor Dan Del Campo, who ran on a slow-growth platform in 1998 and is considered the swing vote on the council.

“This landslide victory makes me feel like my long fight was validated,” said Zeanah in her Mississippi drawl, with a beaming smile.

It’s no wonder Zeanah feels that way. As the minority voice on the council for years, she had little opportunity to grin. She was also attacked by foes who said she recklessly accused some city officials without substantiation, and that she waited too long to approve a sewer rate hike to pay for the Hill Canyon Wastewater Treatment Plant--which eventually cost the city hundreds of thousands of dollars.

“It was difficult to try to work collaboratively in a cooperative manner on various issues,” said Councilman Andy Fox, who served with Zeanah from 1994 to 1998. “The waste-water [plant] is a classic example.”

Public opposition was so strong that a committee, Yes! Remove Elois Zeanah, was formed and spent more than $280,000 in a 10-month effort to have her voted out of office a year early. But Zeanah withstood the recall, receiving two-thirds of the vote in November 1997.

“They were trying to recall me to get rid of my slow-growth voice,” Zeanah said. “They were afraid they were going to lose their majority in 1998, and that’s what it was all about. They wanted to hopefully ruin my reputation and tear me all apart.”

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Zeanah supporters say she emerged from the recall effort as strong as ever.

“I consider her a modern-day heroine,” said Jaime Zukowski, a fellow slow-growth proponent who served with Zeanah on the council from 1994 to 1998. “It takes an extraordinary amount of energy and courage to devote that much of your life in such a vicious environment.”

Zeanah says she only asked the tough questions nobody else wanted to ask. But when her second term ended, she decided that somebody else could ask those questions. It was time for her to spend more time with her family and work on her health. In early 1998, she was diagnosed with sarcoidosis, a rare, chronic autoimmune disease that attacks the lungs and is aggravated by stress. Her health has since improved greatly, she said.

Her opponents cheered Zeanah’s decision to step aside. Chuck Cohen, a local attorney who represents a number of developers including those behind Dos Vientos Ranch, said he had more than his share of arguments with Zeanah.

“It really got to the point where I did not feel comfortable at all being in the chambers,” Cohen said. “I am more relaxed now and feel more at home and welcome.”

Linda Parks, who has experienced her share of losing battles on the dais, characterizes Zeanah differently.

“It’s like Muhammad Ali,” said Parks, who served with Zeanah during the latter’s last two years in office. “She floats like a butterfly with residents but stings like a bee with developers. She is very sweet, open and honest, but, man, she’s not a pushover.”

Zeanah hasn’t set foot in City Hall since she left office, but she said she might drop by a council meeting sometime down the road. For now, she’s most comfortable at home.

She walks three miles nearly every day to maintain her health and works daily on her thesis paper, which is due next month. Zeanah will graduate from Alabama in May, with her husband, two adult children, six siblings and their families all watching.

Since she met her husband, James, in Gordo, Ala., in 1962, Zeanah has been following him around the country for his schooling and jobs. And in each city she has lived in, she has signed up for undergraduate courses at local universities, including Cal Lutheran University when the couple moved to Thousand Oaks in 1977.

“Life hasn’t handed me a bouquet,” she said. “I’ve worked my way. I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I earned what I’ve had.”

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And that includes what could be the first slow-growth council majority in the city’s history after the most recent election.

“Elois was a successful part of the building and momentum of that movement,” said Herbert Gooch, chairman of the political science department at Cal Lutheran University. “I think you can say she is a winner from this election.”

As for the 2002 election, Zeanah says she has no plans to run. But should Masry and Parks prove to be the only consistent slow-growth advocates on the council, she might reconsider.

“It is the only thing that would get me out of political retirement,” she said. “I take this personally.”