Foe of Arena Accuses Anaheim of Errors in ‘Mad Rush’ for Project

ANAHEIM —  In the city’s haste to build an $85-million indoor sports arena, officials committed “irregularities,” leaving the project’s approval vulnerable to legal challenge, an opponent of the plan said Thursday.

Attorney Robert Coldren, who represents the owner of the Orange Tree Mobile Home Park next to the proposed arena site, said procedural mistakes that surfaced Wednesday while the City Council was clearing the way for construction are “representative of the breakdown of the system in the city of Anaheim’s mad rush” to approve the arena.

For example, Coldren said, city officials presented both a zoning petition ostensibly filed by a dead man and apparently backdated signatures on city documents in an attempt to meet deadlines.

City officials acknowledged making mistakes in preparing documents on the arena, but Deputy City Atty. Malcolm E. (Max) Slaughter said Thursday that he does not think it could invalidate the council’s Wednesday votes on the arena project.

The council voted to rezone property, to approve a required environmental study and to buy more land for the arena, the last steps needed before construction can begin as early as February.

Coldren and other arena critics contend that the city has improperly rushed approval of the 20,000-seat arena because of competition from Santa Ana, which is proposing a nearly identical facility. Coldren said his client is “strongly considering” suing to halt Anaheim’s project, based on the procedural mistakes that surfaced Wednesday and what he called defects in the arena’s environmental report.

Although Mayor Fred Hunter insists that the arena has not been improperly rushed along, other officials in City Hall think more care should have been taken.

“We have moved too fast,” said Councilman Irv Pickler, the only dissenting vote on the project.

Moreover, the Anaheim Planning Commission was “rushed like crazy” by city officials to approve the report, according to commission Chairman Lewis Herbst.

“It has been railroaded through,” Herbst said.

Things moved fast Wednesday as the City Council held a final hearing on rezoning land for the arena.

Placed before the council was a three-page, Dec. 13 Planning Commission resolution recommending the rezoning. On the first page, several property owners were identified as having asked for the zone change to permit construction of the arena and a parking lot--land the city is trying to buy.

Among those listed were Clayton Gray Scarbrough and his wife, Grace. Scarbrough died in 1984, and his widow lives in an Orange convalescent home, according to their son, Gene Scarbrough, who is his mother’s property trustee.

Neither he, his mother nor their attorney requested the zone change, Scarbrough told The Times.

When asked about the discrepancy on Wednesday, Planning Commission secretary Edith Harris and her boss, Zoning Director Greg Hastings, said the property owners were mistakenly identified as the applicants because of “a typographical error.”

Actually, the officials continued, city officials sought the zone change on their own authority.

Harris produced a new front page for the resolution, deleting the property owners’ names and identifying the city as the petitioner.

City Clerk Leonora Sohl later said the documents had contained mistakes “because they were done in such haste.”

At about the same time Wednesday, attorney Coldren was suggesting that the council could not legally vote on the zone change because neither version of the resolution had been signed by Planning Commission Chairman Herbst, as Coldren said is required under city law.

Harris and Hastings had told The Times earlier in the day that the resolution would probably not be signed by Herbst until the commission’s next meeting, Jan. 3.

But shortly after that conversation, Harris said later, Deputy City Atty. Slaughter “thought that it was necessary, I guess” to have the document signed immediately.

At about 4 p.m. at Herbst’s Fullerton metal fabrication factory, “I got a call saying they (city officials) have a problem,” Herbst recalled. “They needed some documents signed. Max (Slaughter) brought it personally.”

Harris accompanied Slaughter to Herbst’s factory. But Harris said later she mistakenly took the wrong version of the resolution for Herbst to sign--the version identifying the dead man as applicant.

And although Herbst and Harris signed the paper Wednesday, the typed document states that it was “signed and approved by me this 13th day of December.”

So when the council concluded its public hearing and approved the arena zone change Wednesday afternoon, the final version of the Planning Commission resolution in the city file was the one signed by Herbst and Harris on Dec. 27, but dated Dec. 13.

And on the first page, deceased Clayton Gray Scarbrough is once again identified as one of the people requesting the change.

When asked Thursday which of the three versions of the resolution is valid, Slaughter said, “The signed one, of course.”

However, Harris said Thursday, yet another resolution to be signed by Herbst will be drafted “to correct the clerical errors” by deleting the property owners’ names again and inserting the city as applicant.

Coldren maintains that when the council began hearings Dec. 14 and concluded them early Wednesday afternoon, there was still no signed Planning Commission recommendation on file, as required by city ordinances.

Consequently, Coldren contends, the council’s Wednesday approval votes were invalid.