Riverside Council Runoff Begins

In coming days, Riverside voters will select three City Council members, shaping the city’s leadership for the next four years.

Mail-in balloting is underway to elect representatives for wards 1, 3 and 7 and replace retiring incumbents Chuck Beaty, Joy Defenbaugh and Laura Pearson. In November, when a packed field of candidates ran for each seat, none received more than 50% of the vote, forcing a runoff between the top two candidates in each ward. Voting ends Jan. 13.

The race to represent Ward 1 -- the city’s downtown and the Wood Streets, Northside and Grand neighborhoods -- pits businessman Dom Betro against Deputy Dist. Atty. Paul Fick. It is the top money race; both candidates have raised nearly $110,000.

The biggest issue is whether the council is a full-time or part-time job.

Fick has pledged to retire if he wins so that he could devote all of his working hours to his council job.

Betro said he would keep his current job as president of the Family Services Assn., an organization that provides counseling, child care, senior housing and other services, and as owner of Riverside’s Calabria restaurant. “I’m a manager -- it makes no sense to me, Mr. Fick’s argument that you need 60 hours a week to make sure trees are trimmed and potholes are filled,” Betro said.

“That’s not the job of City Council. That’s the job of the city manager and staff that we have budgeted very well for.”

In Ward 3, which stretches from the Wood Streets to Riverside Municipal Airport, candidates Art Gage and Mike Goldware have each raised about $95,000.

Goldware, a contracts lawyer, would be forced to relinquish his seat on the Riverside Unified School District board if elected.

He cites a record of service to the city and has the backing of several elected officials. His main goal would be easing traffic congestion in his ward, and he would look at the possibility of building new rail tracks so freight could be shipped around the city rather than through it.

“There’s no reason for freight traffic to come through the city of Riverside,” he said.

Gage said he would work to conserve taxpayer money. He said he opposed spending nearly $470,000 to renovate a fountain outside City Hall, and $1.8 million to enable Mockingbird Canyon Dam to withstand a 55,000-year flood, both items the current City Council has approved.

“Enough is enough,” said Gage, who runs an executive recruiting and consulting business. “We can’t keep throwing tax dollars away.”

The race to represent Ward 7, the westernmost part of the city, has drawn the fewest campaign dollars but is still a heated battle between Terry Frizzel, a former councilwoman and mayor from 1990 to 1994, and Steve Adams, a retired Riverside police officer.

Among the sharpest points of debate: the fate of the La Sierra parcel, a large undeveloped tract where developers had planned to build 729 homes.

Frizzel, who has raised about $7,000, says she would work to uphold two voter-approved growth-control initiatives and preserve the land, since it is one of the few remaining open spaces in the city.

“I’m not somebody that’s going to be controlled by the downtown crowd,” she said. “I’m an independent advocate of the people.”

Adams, who has raised about $40,000, said he prefers “smart growth” and would listen to all development proposals before making a decision.

He said his relationship with other politicians would benefit the ward, which he said has been ignored since it became part of the city. “We can no longer have an adversarial relationship with people downtown,” he said.

Voters may mail their ballots or drop them off Monday between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m., and on the Jan. 13 deadline day between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m., at any of five locations: City Hall, 3900 Main St.; the Janet Goeske Community Center, 5257 Sierra St.; the Marcy Branch Library, 3711 Central Ave.; University Heights Middle School, 1155 Massachusetts Ave.; or the La Sierra Community Center, 5215 La Sierra Ave.