Rail Project Drives Race for Council

City Council elections in Placentia next week could determine the fate of a $450-million rail project that has plunged the city deeply into debt and triggered an investigation by the Orange County district attorney’s office.

Eight candidates, including incumbents holding the three seats open this year, have entered the race, which, all sides say, is one of the hottest elections in Placentia history.

“This is as important to us as the national election. The city’s whole future is on the line,” said Councilwoman Constance Underhill, the only incumbent critical of the project. “Do we want to elect people who want to bring us out of this, or those who have kept OnTrac going and brought us to this point?”

But the two other incumbents, Mayor Judy A. Dickinson and Councilman Scott P. Brady, say the city’s financial situation has improved and state and federal funding will arrive eventually to pay for OnTrac.

“We have turned the corner and are doing fine,” Dickinson said. “We’ve balanced our budget and stabilized the situation. People want to blame OnTrac. I don’t believe that is the truth. We will get back on our feet.”

Governed by a board of Placentia city officials, OnTrac is an ambitious effort to build 11 overpasses and lower five miles of railroad tracks into a concrete trench. The project is designed to help revitalize downtown Placentia and accommodate the growth of rail traffic to and from the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach.

The project now faces a $12-million shortfall in state funds and considerable uncertainty over whether it will receive $225 million in federal assistance -- money that city officials have been banking on.

To keep OnTrac afloat, Placentia leaders have cut city programs, sold parkland, issued bonds and even considered replacing the Police Department with the Orange County Sheriff’s Department.

Today, Placentia is at least $31 million in debt and owes an additional $5 million to $6 million to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway Corp. for OnTrac-related work.

After a recent audit, Ray Griest, Placentia’s interim city administrator, said the city probably would have to cut more city services, projects and personnel within the year. He warned that Placentia might run out of money in late 2005 if federal and state funds don’t materialize for OnTrac and major steps aren’t taken to solve the city’s financial problems.

Heated public debate over the project and its problems has fueled an unusually contentious council election.

Six of the eight candidates assert that OnTrac, which has cost about $36 million so far, must be stopped, as now planned, or seriously reevaluated before more money is spent. All agree that independent oversight of the project is necessary.

A slate of candidates -- incumbent Underhill, former Placentia Police Chief Russell Rice and activist Joe Aguirre -- wants to overhaul OnTrac and fire the project’s team of highly paid consultants, including Christopher Becker, the executive director.

“Money is the dominant issue, and OnTrac is the dominant money consumer,” said Rice, who retired in August after 30 years with the Police Department. The project has “run the city to near bankruptcy on the promise that money was going to come someday.”

OnTrac has been managed exclusively by private consultants. More than $9.2 million has been spent on grant writers, financial advisors, administrators, lobbyists, political strategists, studies and public relations.

Becker is under investigation by the district attorney’s office, which is investigating the project’s expenditures.

Authorities are looking into allegations made by a former city attorney that Becker, when he was Placentia’s public works director, illegally used his influence to get hired by the city to manage OnTrac as a private consultant.

His original contract -- since scaled back -- guaranteed him $450,000 a year for 10 years, making him at the time one of the highest-paid transportation officials in the nation.

Becker has denied any wrongdoing. He says his professional reputation has been attacked as part of election-year politics by Citizens for a Better Placentia, a group of activists that questions OnTrac’s management.

Aguirre, Rice and Underhill say they want to reevaluate OnTrac and assign management responsibilities to the public works department as a cost-cutting move.

Slate members say they would concentrate on finishing the Melrose Street underpass and the long-awaited “quiet zone” project to stop trains from blowing their horns at grade crossings in town. After that, they say, a more gradual effort to build overpasses and underpasses along the rail corridor might be possible.

“We need to pay off our debts and get spending under control,” said Aguirre, a founder of Citizens for a Better Placentia, which is backing the slate. “Many of the things OnTrac officials assured us just have not happened.”

Similar views are held by three of the slate’s challengers, Ron Moskowitz, an information security officer for Orange County; businessman Scott Nelson; and John Hoevers, a business owner.

They support the idea of improving the rail corridor through town but say the current OnTrac project costs too much and is plagued by mismanagement.

Nelson and Moskowitz described the trench as “pie in the sky.” Hoevers says he still favors a trench for the rail line because it would reduce the need to acquire rights-of-way by condemning private property. But he said he would be prepared to go along with any evaluation that recommended against the trench.

If elected, Nelson, Moskowitz and Hoevers said, they would be more independent than slate members, who have been backed by two city police associations, and the two incumbents whose political futures are vested in OnTrac.

They also said Underhill might be vulnerable as an incumbent because she regularly supported OnTrac during her eight years on the City Council. Underhill says she changed her mind about the project after OnTrac’s problems came to light.

Dickinson and Brady remain staunch OnTrac supporters. They said they would not consider firing Becker unless he were found guilty of criminal or civil charges related to the project.

Unlike the challengers, they want to keep OnTrac’s current management because they do not think the city’s public works department could handle such a complicated project.

Though he has supported the trench idea, Brady said there have been discussions about scaling back the project to a series of underpasses and overpasses. He noted that the City Council has revised Becker’s contract, reducing his salary to about $300,000 a year.

Within the last few months, Becker and nine consultants also have agreed to forgo their pay until state and federal funds are obtained.