Hall, Kell Speak Out on Issues--Critics Say It’s About Time

LONG BEACH — Mayoral candidates Jan Hall and Ernie Kell say they have been addressing the issues since their campaigns began last year. But some say the candidates only last week started making their stands clear to the general public.

Via media releases, a press conference and presentations before a homeowners association, the two longtime City Council members announced a series of proposals dealing with historical preservation, crime, education, development and other issues.

Several observers and critics say it is about time.

“At least now we’re getting some raising of the issues,” Councilman Tom Clark said. “This has been to a large extent a race with few issues raised or any positions taken.

“I think people are beginning to wonder if there is a campaign. A lot of people think the election is over. There is a lot of apathy out there now.”

In press releases last week and in a meeting Tuesday with members of the Naples Homeowners Assn., Hall called for an Architectural Review Board to oversee major construction, more police canine units and a threefold increase in the number of motorcycle police, who she said could pay for themselves with money raised through the additional traffic tickets they would issue.

Hall also said she would like to see the distinctively ornate Jergins Building that workers are now tearing down as the home to a downtown museum and an “arts center.”

The councilwoman said she supports creating more child care centers, including one for city employees, and she reiterated her support for limiting parking along Pacific Coast Highway so that it would become a more major east-west thoroughfare. Among other things, she said immigrants have enriched the city but that everyone in Long Beach should speak English.

During a press conference Tuesday and later in a meeting with the same Naples group, Kell said that if elected mayor he would form an Office of Neighborhood and Historical Preservation to answer residents’ questions about proposed projects and develop a plan to save the city’s remaining historic buildings. He also proposes an ordinance requiring developers whose plans call for destroying a historic building to first conduct a study seeking alternatives.

Kell reiterated his desire to create an Office of Education in City Hall to help coordinate anti-gang and anti-drug programs with the Long Beach Unified School District. Those running the two new offices would act in an ombudsman role with the public.

Hall, a councilwoman for 10 years, and Kell, the city’s appointed mayor and a councilman for 13 years, last week called for implementing developers fees to help pay for public improvements and services such as parks.

Hall and Kell found holes in each other’s proposals shortly after they were announced. And so did other people.

Regarding Kell’s proposal for an Office of Education, for example, Hall said that an additional office to coordinate existing programs would only create a new city bureaucracy that would cost more money.

Kell also attacked Hall’s ideas. Regarding her proposal to toughen traffic enforcement by increasing the number of motorcycle officers, for example, Kell said: “That’s fine. We all support that. We’re all for more police. All we need now is more funding.”

In his campaign, Kell emphasizes what is positive in Long Beach and links his name with any improvements. He has refrained from directly attacking Hall unless he is defending himself.

As the race enters its last leg, Hall has issued a new round of attacks on Kell, whom she describes as “an expert at ribbon cutting and plaque presentations but an amateur at leadership and getting things done.”

When it comes to the meatier issues in Long Beach, Hall and Kell more often agree than disagree.

The candidates both say there is a need to control growth, and both acknowledge that the council could have done more to prevent the boxy-type apartment complexes that have inundated the southern part of the city. Both candidates are opposed to creating a rent control ordinance or establishing a civilian police review board.

Kell says he is for placing a cap on how much money political candidates can spend or receive during a campaign, and Hall says she is against such plans. But neither one has voted for any form of campaign finance reform. Both now say, however, they may vote to place a reform proposal on the November ballot and let the voters decide.

As for the candidates’ latest proposals, some observers criticized most of them as coming too late, as not feasible or as simply old ideas that the candidates are attempting to recycle.

The Jergins Building, for example, is being torn down now and will be demolished within the next 60 days, according to Councilman Evan Anderson Braude, who represents the downtown area.

Braude said he was talking with city officials and interested buyers as late as last week to save the structure on Ocean Boulevard. But even if city officials were to take the building through condemnation procedures, they need 60 days to post notices, he said. So, unless the owner of the building voluntarily halts, it’s too late for the city to stop the demolition, Braude said.

Too Late to Affect It

Renee Simon, a Kell supporter who is chairwoman of the Coalition to Preserve Historic Long Beach, said: “I wish she had talked about this when there was something they could do about it.”

Kell’s proposal for an Office of Neighborhood and Historical Preservation also was rebuked by several people who noted that the city’s Cultural Heritage Commission already is charged with protecting landmarks.

“That’s what we’re in place to do,” said Rita Woodbury, a Hall supporter who is immediate past chairwoman of the commission. “And we have been working since 1979 to do that without a lot of support from the administration. Ernie Kell’s interest in preservation is a new one.”

“We have no funding whatsoever,” Woodbury continued. “We have one-quarter of a staff person’s time and the bulk of the work that the commission does is volunteer work by commission members.”

Braude, Clark and Hall agreed, saying that the money that would pay for a full-time employee and a part-time secretary to run Kell’s proposed Office of Neighborhood and Historical Preservation could be better spent.

Simon agreed that the council has not been very responsive to preservation efforts but she called Kell’s proposal an “excellent idea” and “very creative.”

Preservation and limiting growth has become a key issue in the campaign for the full-time mayor’s job. In a Los Angeles Times Poll conducted last Sunday, overbuilding was listed third among voters’ concerns. Crime and drugs were viewed as the two biggest problems by the majority of the 339 voters polled.

Luanne Pryor, a mayoral candidate in the primary who barely missed making the runoff, said she is not surprised that the two candidates have picked up on the preservation theme that dominated her campaign.

“City government is not in touch with what the public is feeling. That’s why I did so well (during the April 12 primary),” said Pryor, who was beat out by Hall for the runoff by 1.4%.

Pryor credits herself for raising issues in the campaign. And last week, Hall and Kell conceded that Pryor should be given some of the credit.

“She’s brought some good issues to the campaign,” Kell said. But he also insisted: “I do feel that we have been addressing the issues all along. . . . I don’t feel the issues have changed. Maybe they are just refocusing.”

Hall said she, too, has been addressing issues--mostly in smaller neighborhood forums across the city.

Pryor Backers Courted

Kell has been the most successful of the two candidates in courting Pryor’s supporters. He said he has the endorsement of Villa Park Mobile Homeowners Assn. and of Friends of the Parks--two groups that had endorsed Pryor. Long Beach Area Citizens Involved, a liberal activist group that strongly backed Pryor, does not plan to endorse either Kell or Hall.

Pryor herself does not plan to endorse either candidate. Of the two, however, Hall’s record “is certainly better than Ernie’s on preservation,” Pryor said.

Hall has long touted her neighborhood theme and cites various examples in her district where she said she went to bat for residents in situations where they were pitted against developers.

When development plans were drawn 11 years ago for the southeastern part of the city bordering Orange County, for example, they allowed for 32,000 residential units near the then-proposed Marina Pacifica Mall and the Market Place Shopping Center. A committee that Hall chaired slashed that number to 3,200 units and demanded that developers build a bicycle path, restore a wetlands area, widen Pacific Coast Highway and include other public improvements, she said.

Last year, when the council voted on a plan that would have partially restored the historic Pacific Coast Club, Hall was on the losing end of a vote to save the castle-like building on Ocean Boulevard. Kell voted against saving the structure because, among other things, the plan called for extending part of the building onto the beach. The Pacific Coast Club is now being demolished.

“Ernie has been mayor for four years and there have been some very good suggestions that have been made and they have not been implemented,” said Hall, who also criticized Kell’s proposals for new education and neighborhood offices in City Hall as redundant.

Kell said he is not “going to comment on every ridiculous comment that Mrs. Hall makes. We beat her 2 to 1. She’s running now a desperate campaign. My suggestions were sound and I stand by them.”

Pryor was cynical of the call by both candidates for new developer fees and other programs. “I think it’s all just talk,” she said, noting that both have been on the council for at least a decade and could have worked toward their goals long before election time.

But that’s “part of the political process,” said Braude, a newer councilman.

“A lot of ideas come out during the campaign. They save them for the campaign. That doesn’t mean they are bad ideas.” Sometimes, Braude said, “solutions come out of them.”