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what a “no” vote was. If Newhall Land’s commercial site was going to be
developed it had to be annexed to Sanitation District No. 26. When the item came
up, Jill Klajic and I voted no. We were immediately told by staff, “You can’t do
that!”
We replied, “We just did.”
We got Newhall Land’s attention. Had they sued they might have won, but
they found it easier to communicate and negotiate than to sue, which would have
cost them a lot of time. The site was annexed to the city as well, and Best Buy
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became our largest single contributor to sales tax revenue.
The Signal could not wait to speculate on who was going to be the next
mayor. On November 19 they ran Tim Whyte’s story saying that Jill Klajic had
the support of three council members and Buck McKeon would be out of town
for the reorganization meeting, so would not be present to vote against her. I felt
that the rotation was important. I did not feel it was Jill’s turn, but the written
policy supported her and I was not going to play politics with it. Jan Heidt’s
statement represented me. “My feeling is this: That the community has a right to
see each one of us in a leadership position. I believe in the system. We all
jumped into it with both feet¼.” Jo Anne Darcy pointed out that Jill would be
responsible for representing the council and its positions.
When asked how I was doing as mayor, Jill said with a laugh, “Carl’s done
a great job. He’s been fantastic. I’m going to be a good girl, like Buck said. I’m
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going to be very nice and not cause trouble.”
Jan Heidt proposed creation of an area council to be created by inviting
representatives of eleven unincorporated communities to a meeting in the city.
Mindful of the Middle East peace talks going on at that time, I asked if she meant
Madrid or Washington. 44
Meanwhile we had voted to appoint commissioners by a system of nomination
by a councilmember, with ratification by the council. I had originally supported
that process, but decided that it was too political and voted against it. I had
received some criticism for changing my mind, but the fact was that I could see
both sides of many issues, and frequently had difficulty voting one way or the
other.
The real estate market was anemic, and growth had slowed considerably.
Newhall Land was building no residential projects. However, they were still
doing well in commercial and industrial development, in part because they owned
their land outright. Henry Mayo Newhall had bought it for about $2 an acre over
a century earlier. Also, they had the best industrial land in all of Los Angeles
County. The people of the valley enjoyed new amenities, such as the Hilton
Garden Inn and the new mall then under construction. We were making real
progress in writing a hillside and ridgeline preservation ordinance.
The last controversy of my first term came from the Anden Group, one of
what turned out to be many developers who wanted to build on the Porta Bella
area in the middle of the city. This was a brownfields project, but at the time we
did not have much knowledge about just how polluted the soil was. Anden asked