New Irvine Council Prepares for Change : Politics: The post-Agran body has the potential for major disagreements, observers say.

The new City Council has been in office only two weeks, but changes promised by a slate of candidates that defeated Mayor Larry Agran and his allies are already becoming apparent.

Nevertheless, political observers say the new council has the potential for major disagreements, which could represent a dramatic departure from the 4-1 votes that characterized the Agran bloc.

“We have four very different people now sitting on the council,” said Mayor Sally Anne Sheridan, who defeated Agran in June. “And we don’t agree on everything.”

While they have similar views on affordable housing and the need to complete the city’s string of residential villages, council members might take differing stances on the city’s proposed monorail, the direction of the Irvine Business Complex and municipal restrictions on ozone-damaging chemicals.

Sheridan, 54, a real estate agent first elected to the council in 1984, defeated Mayor Agran by a narrow margin. Elected to council were Barry J. Hammond, 38, a self-employed mediator for businesses in legal conflicts, and William A. (Art) Bloomer, 57, a retired Marine general who commanded the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station. Both were members of Sheridan’s slate.

Councilman Cameron Cosgrove, an Agran ally, was defeated in the race, while another Agran supporter, Ed Dornan, did not seek reelection.

Councilwoman Paula Werner, elected in 1988, did not have to run this year.

The fifth council seat--vacated by Sheridan when she took over as mayor--remains under contention.

Meanwhile, the four-member council is grappling with several key issues facing the city.

One of these is a campaign promise by Sheridan, Hammond and Bloomer to immediately complete three Irvine Co. residential villages--projects that Agran’s council had put on hold because of concerns over traffic, affordable housing, schools and community services.

Last week, the Irvine Co. wasted no time resubmitting plans for one village, a 3,626-home expansion on 349 acres in the Westpark tract east of the Tustin Marine Corps Helicopter Air Station. The proposal was originally submitted to the previous council in 1987 but was withdrawn by company officials because the council failed to reach an agreement.

Under the resubmitted proposal, which is undergoing a series of public hearings by the Planning Commission, Irvine’s affordable-housing goals could be altered, city planners say. Enacted last August through a law known as the city housing element, the city’s goal states that 25% of all new developments should be affordable to households earning less than roughly $60,000 per year.

Sheridan, the most vocal opponent of the housing requirement, said she wants to make the rules more amenable to developers. Hammond and Bloomer agree.

“I don’t see the purpose of increasing affordable housing beyond state mandates,” Hammond said.

On another front, Hammond’s appointee to the city Planning Commission, Scott Peotter, might add yet another element to Irvine’s diverse politics. Peotter was president of the Irvine Values Coalition, which described itself as a traditional values group, which successfully pushed last fall for Measure N, a ballot initiative to remove references to homosexuals in the city’s human-rights ordinance.

Peotter, who has taken out nomination papers to run in November for the fifth council seat, said the Irvine Values Coalition helped synthesize a new political faction that helped elect Sheridan’s slate, and one that plans to stay involved in local issues.

“I would say people that got involved in Measure N will continue to be a voice for pro-family issues,” Peotter said. “But I don’t think you’re going to see a specific agenda.”

Martin Brower, who publishes a countywide newsletter called the Orange County Report, noted that aside from the Irvine Values Coalition, support for Sheridan’s slate was generated by the voters’ perception that Agran had single-handed control of the city.

“There were people who said enough was enough,” Brower said. “But I think it will be difficult for the new City Council to do too much, too fast, too differently. The new majority is going to have to show independence . . . and that they aren’t going to be pushed around by developers.”

Despite heavy criticism of the old majority--Agran, Dornan and Cosgrove--the new majority hasn’t rejected all of the previous council’s policies.

For example, Bloomer speaks highly of one of Agran’s pet projects--the proposed monorail system linking John Wayne Airport with the Irvine Business Complex and other cities in central Orange County. Bloomer said he is eager to use $125 million in state matching funds gained from Proposition 116, the state Rail Bond Act.

“Irvine is a lot like Disneyland,” Bloomer said. “You have all the different areas like Adventureland and Fantasyland connected with a monorail. In Irvine, we could have the same thing, except it would be for the villages of Woodbridge, Northwood and Westpark.”

Hammond, however, questions the expansion of the monorail from the airport to the Irvine Spectrum development near El Toro, saying he is against preliminary plans to use the San Diego Creek flood channel as a monorail route.

Sheridan has supported the monorail concept but remains skeptical about whether the system will actually relieve traffic congestion in Irvine.

The new council also recognizes Irvine’s growing role in Pacific Rim economics, which the previous council promoted by establishing sister cities in other countries and an International Affairs Department.

But the council might revamp the Urban Village concept for the Irvine Business Complex, a huge industrial and office park adjacent to John Wayne Airport. The concept espoused by the Agran council called for streets of high-rise buildings that combined offices, apartments and retail centers to replace existing one-story buildings that date back to the 1970s.

City staff, anticipating changes, said they are preparing alternatives to the Urban Village for a September meeting. Sheridan said she supports some Urban Village ideas, such as residential units, but is taking a cautious approach because of the slowing real estate market.

Despite the new majority’s decidedly pro-business and pro-development stance, Werner said she believes much of the city’s business will continue unaltered from the previous council’s track.

“We’ve been through a horribly divisive election, and it’s up to all of us to reach out to different segments of the community and have everyone understand that they are being treated with fairness,” Werner said. “My hope is to get the best deal for the residents, not to beat up on one another for the issues.”