ELECTIONS SANTA PAULA CITY COUNCIL : Small-Town Civility Marks Race for 3 Seats

Santa Paula’s City Council election Tuesday will feature seven candidates with similar platforms vying for three seats, including two vacated by incumbents.

All candidates share the vision of making Santa Paula a tourist center by giving its downtown a face lift and strengthening its retail and light industrial sectors to create more jobs and increase the city’s tax base.

At the same time, all the candidates want to preserve the city’s small-town feel by protecting its agriculture and maintaining its greenbelt.

And they all say they want more recreational opportunities for the city’s youth, more affordable housing for first-time buyers and a mobile home rent control law to help senior citizens.

On the surface, the Santa Paula election amounts to nothing more than a popularity contest and a reaffirmation that Santa Paula is headed in the right direction--and most candidates say as much.

“The funny thing about elections in a small town is that the candidates are all friends, and there’s nothing they can say that the others can’t--except that they have more experience, are more attuned to what the city is doing,” candidate Wayne Johnson said.

But while the hopefuls go out of their way to be polite and supportive of each other, the race has been far from dull.

In fact, non-candidates from the business community have subjected 16-year incumbent John Melton to a type of stinging criticism that is rarely seen in small-town elections.

“Our city needs new ideas, energy and vision, not a four-term incumbent!” said a series of advertisements that ran in the local newspaper recently.

“I just feel some people have stayed in power for too long and lost touch with their constituents,” said Howard Bolton, former president and current board member of the Chamber of Commerce.

Bolton, who also heads the newly formed Committee for Creative Options, is married to Mayor Kay Wilson, who, along with incumbent Carl Barringer, will not seek reelection. Wilson has had several public disagreements with Melton at council meetings.

For its part, the chamber on Oct. 17 took the unprecedented step of endorsing a two-term limit for City Council members, even though there is no such ballot initiative before the voters. The chamber’s action--timed to coincide with the only candidates’ debate during the race--amounted to a thinly veiled no-confidence vote against Melton.

And while the challengers have refrained from attacking the incumbent, all six said at the candidates’ forum that they support a two-term limit.

“Twenty years of John Melton is enough. Bad News does not improve with age,” reads a sign atop an old pickup truck on 10th Street near City Hall. The sign belongs to Ray Gonzales, an auto mechanic who has been fighting the City Council since 1983, when his social club’s permission to operate a beer garden at the annual Citrus Festival was revoked.

Over the years, Gonzales has used signs to accuse the council of being racist, corrupt and dictatorial--but never had Gonzales mentioned Melton by name. In the past, most of Gonzales’ attacks were aimed at the Kiwanis Club, which runs the Citrus Festival, and at Wilson.

After the council passed an ordinance prohibiting signs on motor vehicles, Gonzales sued, and a state appellate court ruled that Gonzales was entitled to display his signs, effectively striking down the city’s ordinance.

Gonzales says the current council, which has only one Latino member, has not been responsive to the needs of the Latino community, which is close to two-thirds of Santa Paula’s population of 24,500.

“I didn’t fight in Vietnam to come back and be treated as a second-class citizen,” Gonzales said.

His campaign has struck a chord with some members of the Latino community.

The Mexican-American Chamber of Commerce has balked at taking an official position on the Gonzales controversy, but some members say Gonzales has a legitimate gripe.

“We’re sympathetic with Ray, but we don’t want to get involved in his dispute with the city,” said Vic Salas, the chamber’s first president and a current director. Salas said he will support the two Latino candidates, Bob Borrego and Jesse Ornelas, because the city needs more input from Latinos.

“Al Urias is the only Hispanic on the council right now, and it’s hard to make the system change without several sympathetic voices to fight it,” Salas said.

Gonzales’ signs--an obvious obstacle in Santa Paula’s efforts to become a tourist haven--have turned out to be the most divisive issue in the race.

In response to attempts by the city to settle the dispute, Gonzales said he would take down the signs for $10,000, and Ornelas said the city should pay. “The city could have eliminated the problem from the start by simply writing a letter of apology” for siding with the Kiwanis Club in the Citrus Festival dispute, Ornelas said.

Another candidate, Co Engelhart, said, “If Gonzales has spent so much time and effort fighting the city, he must be very hurt. I don’t see why a new council can’t sit down with him and reach a reasonable compromise.”

Melton said the city is doing its best to reach a compromise. Candidates Margaret Ely and Borrego say the issue should be resolved in court.

The other two candidates, Johnson and Flo Zakrajshek, said they don’t know enough about the issue to venture an opinion.

The criticism has hurt Melton, who by the Sept. 30 filing period had raised less than $1,000 for his reelection campaign. Ornelas’ and Johnson’s war chests--at last count the two largest in the race--are more than twice as big as Melton’s.

So far, Melton, 60, a former corporate business manager, has chosen not to fight back. Instead, he dwells on familiar themes such as protecting the city’s greenbelt agreements with Fillmore and Ventura and creating more jobs to retain more tax dollars in the city.

Like Melton, current planning commissioners Johnson and Borrego have emphasized their experience as public servants, and each has made it the central theme of his campaign.

Johnson, 50, former chairman of the Housing Authority, said remapping the 1976 General Plan, creating low-income housing and attracting fancy boutiques and antique shops downtown are his priorities.

Borrego, 63, a legislative aide to state Sen. Gary K. Hart (D-Santa Barbara), said the main contributions that he has to offer to the council, other than his longtime involvement with the community, are the regional connections he has established in county government and the state Legislature.

In addition to working for Hart, Borrego has served as an administrative assistant to former state Sen. Omer Rains and County Supervisor John K. Flynn.

Perhaps the most talked about challenger is Ornelas, 39, the son-in-law of Urias, whose seat is not up for reelection. Ornelas’ decision to run has aroused more curiosity than criticism, and as far as Ornelas is concerned, it’s a non-issue.

“I married Cristina, not her father,” he said. “I’m not looking for any member of the council to take me under his wing.”

Ornelas, a housing officer at Cabrillo Development Co., which specializes in low- and moderate-income housing, said his top priority is creating a 25% quota for affordable housing in the city.

Ely, 44, a legal assistant, said her main concern is slowing development. “If we are going to build up from wall to wall, we might as well live in the San Fernando Valley,” she said.

Zakrajshek, 60, bills herself as the “common sense” candidate and says she has no biases going into the race. “It’s best to listen to people, analyze in your mind what they say, and come up with the best decision,” she said.

Engelhart, 53, is former president of the city’s school district and public library. As a Dutch immigrant who arrived in Santa Paula virtually broke, Engelhart said he sympathizes with the plight of the low-income senior citizens and Mexican immigrants.

“I know the value of pennies,” he said. “I plan to listen to every single person that needs to be listened to, and I’ll treat everybody the same.”