Development Foes Win in 2 City Council Races

Development dominated local elections Tuesday, with opponents of a massive housing project near Calabasas and foes of large commercial development in San Fernando victorious.

In complete unofficial returns, incumbents James Bozajian and Lesley Devine were reelected to the Calabasas City Council. The third candidate elected out of a field of seven was newcomer Michael Harrison.

All three oppose the Ahmanson Ranch housing development.

“For the next four years I look forward to making sure that Ahmanson Ranch doesn’t go through,” Bozajian said, claiming victory.

In San Fernando, with all votes counted, the top vote-getter was newcomer Maribel De La Torre, sister of Councilwoman Cindy Montanez. The winner of the race for the second of two open City Council seats was Jose Hernandez, who was seeking a third term.

Both favor retaining a small-town atmosphere in San Fernando and have looked skeptically at big retail development. Incumbent Mayor Silverio Robledo, who favored bigger development, was defeated for reelection.

Influencing the Calabasas race, the owner of Ahmanson Ranch, Seattle-based Washington Mutual Inc., plans to develop nearly 3,000 acres of open land into 3,005 homes, with office and retail space.

The project would dramatically increase traffic in Calabasas and the west San Fernando Valley and adversely affect the area’s air and water quality, opponents contend.

Bozajian, a 35-year-old Los Angeles County deputy district attorney, said during his campaign that he will push the Los Angeles City Council to find ways to buy the property and preserve it as open space.

Environmental consultant Devine, 58, and real estate attorney Harrison, 49, have vowed to fight Washington Mutual by appealing to its shareholders in an attempt to create internal opposition and enough publicity to stop the project.

Candidates Marcus Allen Frishman, a State Board of Equalization member, and Karmen Brower, 58, a writer, campaigned with promises of getting Calabasas to work with Washington Mutual to reduce harm to endangered species, such as the red-legged frog and the San Fernando Valley spineflower, and to improve the city’s air and water quality.

Leslie Abraham-Wolf, 51, a former medical communications executive, said she ran for office because she felt people in power running the city didn’t know what was going on. Matthew Hooper, 23, vice president of an Internet development company, listed as a priority an improved relationship between the city and the Las Virgenes Unified School District.

In San Fernando, the big campaign issue was economic development, as in years past.

The candidates were divided into two camps--one favoring a bustling downtown with nationally known retailers and the other preferring to keep the small-town feel for the city’s commercial area.

De La Torre and Hernandez bested Robledo and Maria Elena Tostado, who preferred more mainstream retailers in the heavily Latino working class city of 25,000.

Hernandez, 70, a longtime Cal State Northridge professor of Chicano Studies, has twice served as the city’s mayor. He and Robledo, 37, an engineer and financial consultant, have strongly disagreed on many issues in recent years.

Throughout the campaign each side accused the other of dirty campaigning. Only days before the election hundreds of residents received fliers containing a photo and statement from state Sen. Richard Alarcon (D-Sylmar) purportedly asking voters to stop Robledo, Tostado and Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Sylmar), who has long supported the two San Fernando candidates.

Alarcon denounced the fliers, saying he has long supported Robledo and would never lend his name to such campaign literature.

*

Times staff writers Jason Song and Grace Jang contributed to this story.