Bitterness Ebbs in Green Valley After Vote to Recall Water Board

Green Valley returned to its senses Wednesday.

For weeks, politics had seized this rustic town of 1,200 in the mountains north of Saugus with a bitterness its inhabitants had never known.

In a recall campaign that ended Tuesday, the town’s voters tossed all five members off the Green Valley Water District board, the agency that in effect controls development by virtue of its power to issue new water meters.

Some people thought the board was issuing too many permits. But others said the slate of challengers who led the recall actually intended to step up the pace of growth.

Everyone seemed to get involved except, of course, the owners of the Green Valley Inn & Store and Green Valley Hardware--the only businesses in town. They felt they needed to keep their turf neutral.

At the height of the campaign, signs both for and against the recall littered the sides of Spunky Canyon Road, the town’s main street. Partisans would stand in front of the Green Valley Inn and hand leaflets to patrons as they entered.

People even argued in the streets.

“I heard a lot of ‘sons-of-bitches,’ ” Victoria Gautschy said while sipping beer with a couple of other women Wednesday at the inn.

By mid-afternoon, however, there was hardly a sign of the unrest swept the town in the past few weeks.

Cars were lined up two deep at the Green Valley Inn. Inside, a half dozen patrons talked of ranches and horses instead of politics.

Two men who had been on opposite sides of the controversy stood arm-in-arm at the bar and joked about their differences.

“All right, this man here is a good friend of mine,” said Ron Clark, who voted yes on the recall, gripping one hand around a Budweiser and resting the other on the shoulder of Jim Kellogg, who voted no.

“He doesn’t like me, but I like him,” Clark continued. “He says he’s not happy. I haven’t talked to anyone else who’s not happy. But that doesn’t make him smart. He’s a good guy. He’s just mixed up.”

Kellogg raised his eyes condescendingly and held a thumb and fingers about an inch apart.

“The people who were elected last night have about that much experience,” he said.

The losers, he said, “were doing their job.”

But he agreed that election fever was passing.

“This time next week, they’ll say, ‘What election?’ ” he predicted.

Two doors away, all was calm in the tiny shack that stood at the center of the controversy.

The shack is the headquarters of the water district. The former real estate office has a tight and musty air, and paint peels from its walls. It has no bathroom.

The defeated board had planned to build new headquarters just across the street. When the plan was announced, the challengers protested that the town’s piping system is still 30% incomplete and that such amenities can wait.

Jeri Vincent, secretary-treasurer of the district, had no trouble interpreting the election. It means she still will be walking over to the Green Valley Inn to use the bathroom.

She took it with a smile.

“They’re pretty good about letting us in,” she said. “And we don’t have to put 10 cents in the machine.”

Even the candidates, who some thought behaved a bit uncivilly the past few weeks, sounded conciliatory Wednesday.

“The people spoke,” ousted board Chairman George Fulton conceded. “If there was enough that expressed their opinion last night to change the board, evidently we weren’t doing things right for enough of the people.”

Eileen Hoenshell, one of the five successful challengers, said she plans no sudden upheavals on the board.

“We will be studying everything to find out what will be the best and most efficient operation of the district,” she said.

Besides, Hoenshell said, many of the issues of the campaign have already been settled.

For one thing, she said, the old board, under pressure of the recall, had set a limit of one water meter per month, after allowing 55 in a single year.

Also, she said, the board had hurried up construction on the water system, which is now more than 90% complete.

So, in a show of harmony, Hoenshell and two other new board members joined three of the defeated board members in a post-election ceremony Wednesday.

They gathered up the dozens of campaign signs that their camps had posted and burned them--both sides together--in a backyard ceremony.

“We had a bonfire and symbolically buried the hatchet,” Fulton said. “And now it’s time to get about the business of putting some patches and Band-Aids on.”

Some people in Green Valley thought the making up was more important than who won the election. They think of the community as a place where longtime residents and recent refugees from Los Angeles can get along.

“You could write that everybody in Green Valley is more than happy today to see the signs out of the place,” Gautschy said.

“It’s a pleasure to see Spunky Road looking like Spunky Road again,” said the Green Valley Inn’s bartender, waitress and owner.

She declined to give her name. She was afraid publicity might compromise her neutrality.

No matter how peaceful it may look now, she couldn’t afford that.