Chaos Reigns in Lawndale After Voting : Election: After voters rejected measures designed to resolve questions on the city’s General Plan, the only thing to emerge in wake of the balloting is pointed fingers.

As a result of Tuesday’s election outcome in Lawndale, city development has virtually come to a halt, and city officials and residents are asking what can be done and who is to blame.

No one in City Hall has a quick solution to the dilemma that blossomed when voters overwhelmingly rejected three ballot measures intended to straighten out a controversy over the city’s General Plan.

But many in the city have been quick to point fingers, with blame being parceled out among the city attorney, the City Council and a group of activists who spoke out against the measures.

In general terms, the voters rejected the city’s 1976 General Plan and refused to repeal Ordinance 82, a 1963 law that requires the city to seek voter approval of the General Plan, which governs all zoning and development in the city.

As a result, City Atty. David J. Aleshire ordered a halt Wednesday to issuing building permits for fear of violating state law, which requires cities to have an up-to-date General Plan before it can allow building construction.

The city has “ended up with the worst situation that could have occurred,” said Aleshire, who authored the ballot measures.

Although nobody is willing to take full blame for the problem, everyone admits that they did not foresee all the possible consequences of the election.

On Friday, City Manager Jim Arnold relaxed the freeze slightly, allowing permits for room additions, minor repairs and the installation of appliances essential to health and safety, such as water heaters and gas furnaces.

The City Council has scheduled an emergency meeting Monday night to study the city’s legal options.

“I suspect that it will be a long and heated meeting,” Arnold said.

But Aleshire--who authored the impartial analysis of the ballot measures--was not optimistic about the city’s situation.

He said that if the city declared the General Plan to be valid and began to issue permits, it would be vulnerable to a lawsuit by slow-growth activists who sought the defeat of the measures. But if no permits are issued, he said, local developers might try to sue the city for causing them economic hardship.

“In other words, we get sued by either side or both sides,” he said.

Frank Sabatasso, a Lawndale developer whose permit to build a 14-unit condominium project on Larch Avenue is being held up, said he is upset about the situation but does not plan to sue.

“The whole City Council should resign,” he said. “There is no leadership.”

He said that each month that his project is delayed will cost him about $3,000, and he blames city officials for failing to foresee the problem.

“As a developer I try to cooperate with the city . . . but they keep changing all the rules,” he said.

At Monday’s meeting, Aleshire said he will offer the City Council some legal options, but he has no immediate solutions.

“By Monday night I hope I can give a recommendation that makes sense,” he said.

It is possible for the city to ask the state Office of Planning and Research to approve an interim permitting process, but “that could take months,” he said.

In an interview before the election, Arnold said the city is preparing an update of the General Plan, which could run 300 to 800 pages. But finishing it could take nine to 15 months, and once it is done, Arnold said, he is not sure how to get the city’s 9,700 registered voters to read and approve of something so long and complicated.

Since the election, city officials and activists have been quick to blame each other for the city’s crisis.

Before Tuesday, city officials generally supported the ballot measures, while a handful of slow-growth advocates stood in opposition, saying the measures would take away voters’ control over the General Plan.

Now the sides are unclear.

Many people--including some council members--agreed that the City Council is partly at fault for missing the deadline to file ballot arguments supporting the three ballot measures.

“To be honest with you, I think everybody’s to blame,” said Gary McDonald, a former planning commissioner and development consultant. “I don’t think one single person caused it.”

However, McDonald, Councilman Larry Rudolph and city activist Nancy Marthens said that some of the blame is Aleshire’s.

“I think it’s very clear that the city attorney failed to indicate that this would happen,” McDonald said.

Rudolph agreed, saying that Aleshire’s impartial analysis of the measures should have told the voters all of the ramifications of the election outcome.

Aleshire--refusing to take the blame--said he warned the council several times about the potential outcome of the election and said his impartial analysis on the ballot also made clear all of the ramifications.

“There is no way they can say that the people had no way of knowing about the potential disaster,” he said.

He said some of the blame belongs with the state attorney general’s office, which changed its legal opinions about Ordinance 82 between 1974 and 1988.

In 1974, the attorney general said Ordinance 82 could be ignored because it was unconstitutional. As a result, the council adopted the current General Plan in 1976 without voter approval. However, last December, the attorney general’s office reviewed the earlier opinion and said it was erroneous.

The reversal raised the question of whether Lawndale has a valid General Plan, because it was not adopted by the electorate as required by Ordinance 82.

“Everything is an outcome of the attorney general’s opinion,” Aleshire said.

McDonald, who admits that he should have been more vocal in supporting the measures, also found fault with Marthens, Steve Mino, Herman Weinstein and Virginia Rhodes, the activists who wrote and signed the ballot arguments opposing the ballot measures.

He accuses them of misleading the voters by oversimplifying the issues in the ballot argument.

Marthens responded to McDonald’s charges by asking, “Where was his ballot argument in favor?”

However, Marthens and Mino both said that when they wrote the ballot arguments they did not foresee the halt to all city development.

“We are not looking for spite and we are not playing games. This is serious,” Marthens said. “. . . (But) I didn’t want to shut down the city.”

Mino agreed and said his only intentions were to force the city to adopt an up-to-date General Plan and implement some long-term planning.

“We’re not trying to stop them from issuing building permits, we just want good building policies,” he said.