LOCAL ELECTIONS / MISSION VIEJO MEASURE A : City Hall Trashing Leaves Council in Quandary : Rejection of $18-million project by 3-1 vote is stinging blow to majority. Proponents start rethinking situation, suggest a scaled-down facility may get be acceptable.

MISSION VIEJO —  One day after voters dismantled a proposed $18-million city hall, city officials vowed to return with another plan to build a town center.

But after seeing the project rejected by an overwhelming 3-to-1 margin Tuesday, council members are divided over whether to wait before bringing a down-scaled version back to the voting public.

“The margin was shocking to me,” said Mayor Sharon Cody. “I think people were sending a message to us, and I want to make darn sure what it is before coming back to them.”

On an Election Day that saw voters throughout the county say no to any measure with a price tag attached, other Mission Viejo council members interpreted the rejection of Measure A as a protest against the size of the proposed city hall, not of the building itself.

“I don’t think the sentiment is that no city hall should be built,” said Councilman Robert D. Breton of the proposed 80,000-square-foot complex. “I think we should go back to the drawing board, scale it down and bring it back as soon as possible.”

Although a depressed state economy made voters reluctant to raise their own taxes for a new city hall, Breton said the recession has also created low interest rates and a soft construction market “that could save the city millions. This is an optimum time to build.”

The landslide defeat was a stinging blow to a council majority that has already invested $1.2 million in developing the project--money that council members say was spent on studies that can be used to revise city hall plans.

“After working so hard on this, it’s pretty depressing,” Councilwoman Susan Withrow said. “I think the community needs a little breathing space now.”

The measure’s demise came after a bruising campaign with a local citizens group that has opposed the city hall plans since last September.

Both the Citizens Action Committee and council supporters went door to door in the last weeks before Election Day and sent flyers that harshly criticized the other side. Last month, the city filed legal action to block the group from putting its own city hall question on the November ballot.

But on Tuesday, “citizens didn’t want to spend money on a Taj Mahal, which is what the city wanted to build,” said Gary Manley, leader of the citizens’ committee. “We weren’t surprised at the results. From being on the streets we knew the passion on the part of people against it was so strong, anybody undecided would be swayed.”

Manley criticized the council for “conducting a campaign of major deceit. I don’t think anybody believed for a minute we needed a building four times the present size of City Hall.”

The city currently rents an office building at $400,000 annually. Manley said Mission Viejo could use a new city hall, but the building should be no more than 40,000 square feet--half the size proposed by city officials.

Despite the rhetoric that marked the Measure A campaign, council members made the first move Wednesday morning to mend fences with the Citizens Action Committee.

In a phone call to the group’s chairman, Gary Manley, Cody agreed to set up a six-person task force composed of representatives from both sides to gather input for a new city hall.

But it’s an uneasy truce at best, with both sides acknowledging that candidates for November’s council elections are likely to rally around the city hall issue.

Manley said the committee’s next move will be to begin a drive to make sure Councilman Robert A. Curtis isn’t reelected in November. Both Curtis and a political foe, Councilman William S. Craycraft--the only council member to vote against the city hall plans--are trying to hold on to their seats.

Curtis was a major force behind the city hall project. He arranged last year for the Mission Viejo Co. to trade the 20-acre town center site for development concessions.

“Bob Curtis has been a source of divisiveness in the first council (in the four-year-old city) and the present council,” Manley said. “He works for the interests of himself, not the interests of the people.”

Curtis said the group’s announcement comes “as no surprise here. (Members of the CAC) have had their guns aimed at me since I’ve taken office. Maybe they want to make this city facility a political issue, but my position is that it’s better for the city to own than to rent, and I will follow the direction of the electorate on its size.”

Other council members said they hoped that the city hall project wouldn’t poison the November elections. “Rather than being a political football,” Breton said, “let a new city hall be the playing field that unites us.”