Pasadena Weighs Citywide Election for Mayor’s Post

Pasadena has nearly all the institutions usually associated with a big city--a football stadium, a respected art museum, a university with three Nobel Prize winners, a symphony orchestra, a decidedly urban school district and a City Hall that provides everything from health care to water and power.

To many in this mid-size city of 134,000, only one thing is missing: a mayor who is elected by voters citywide.

The city’s Charter Reform Task Force recently concluded that such a mayor would unify this diverse city, and recommended that the City Council put the issue on a future ballot.

The proposal to replace the existing system of rotating the seven council members into a largely ceremonial mayor’s chair every two years has come to represent the much wider debate over Pasadena’s character and future.

“If the charter reform measure hits the ballot, it is going to be about what kind of city are we going to be,” said Councilman Paul Little, who opposes the recommendation.

“Are we going to be an urban city with the kind of central government like Los Angeles, or essentially a suburban community run from the grass roots up?” he said.

A majority on the council say that they favor the concept of an elected mayor because the municipality needs a civic cheerleader. They would like to develop a ballot measure for November or for the March 1999 election.

“We’re are not in heaven. We are next to L.A. There are regional issues we need a single voice on,” said Mayor Chris Holden, son of Los Angeles Councilman Nate Holden. “The bottom line is the city’s best lobbyist is an elected mayor.”

Task force members agree. “A citywide elected mayor will unify the community and provide a bully pulpit to preach to the region,” Vincent Farhat said.

Members of the Charter Reform Task Force, including three former mayors, say that council debates have become largely parochial since 1981, when the city switched to a system of electing council members by district rather than by citywide vote.

Councilman William Crowfoot said the charge of parochialism is ironic because the district system was established to give a stronger voice to those who are often ignored in the community, particularly minorities.

In Pasadena, where the population is 47% white, 27% Latino, 18% black and 8% Asian, the vast majority of minority residents are found in the economically deprived northwest part of the city, far from Rose Parade route and the ritzy shops of Old Pasadena.

Crowfoot, who opposes the idea of a city-elected mayor, said business and labor would decide who runs for the post because they would provide the hundreds of thousands of dollars needed for citywide elections.

“The threshold decision of who is going to be a candidate won’t be made at the neighborhood level,” Crowfoot said. “A candidate for mayor won’t go door-to-door like successful council candidates.”

Meanwhile, he said, political ambition will consume the council members as they jockey to be mayoral candidates. “L.A. should be looking enviously at us, not the other way around,” said Crowfoot, who calls the efforts for change the “Los Angelesization of Pasadena.”

It is a characterization that some resent. “The Los Angeles references are code for a black mayor. It’s a scare tactic from the bottom of the barrel,” said one council member.

The five council members who support the idea of an elected mayor are Holden, Sidney F. Tyler Jr., William Paparian, Ann-Marie Villicana and Joyce Streator.

Villicana said the Charter Reform Task Force needs to address many details, including how much power to give the mayor and how much to pay him or her.

Like most small and mid-size cities, Pasadena is run by a strong city manager who works closely with the City Council. Several council members who favor an elected mayor said they nonetheless would oppose any move to shift power away from the city manager toward a mayor, as in Chicago.

“We are talking about an eighth council member with a citywide hat,” Councilman Tyler said.

Paparian noted that Pasadena has once before flirted with the idea of an elected mayor.

In a 1986 advisory referendum, voters approved in concept a mayor who was elected citywide. But a few years later, voters rejected a measure that would have made the change final. That measure also included a raise for council members, who receive $50 a meeting.

Mayor Holden said that a change may well weaken the grip of neighborhood associations on City Hall, but a real city cannot be nostalgic. “Someone needs to provide a citywide perspective and look out for the good of the entire community,” he said.