Political Watchdog Keeps City Hall on a Short Leash : A Home-Front Warrior

Pat Rudolph, citizen, wanted to make a point.

So, assisted by a crane, she hung from the top of a flagpole in broad daylight--just long enough to grab the notice of the Encinitas City Council she felt was failing to keep local streets clean.

“I thought it would be funny,” she said. “And it got their attention.”

That is how Rudolph, who teaches a course on citizenship at a North County community college, practices what she preaches.

Because the longtime Cardiff resident is the consummate citizen. She calls the place “my town” and watches the goings-on around City Hall and elsewhere with the suspicious eye of a big-screen detective.

She is an activist. And she cares just as much about cross-town issues as the ones in her own back yard. For her, NIMBY-ism (Not in My Back Yard), the motivation that drives most suburban crusaders, is a dirty, selfish word.

Rudolph has been around. The former airline flight attendant and public relations worker has lived in Europe and in big cities throughout the United States. So she can’t help but get a little steamed when leaders in her adopted home make what she sees as so many, well, dumb decisions.

Six years ago, she formed the Cardiff Town Council, a vociferous political watchdog group, to keep an eye on the city officials she refers to as “skunks” and “bastards” and “fat baboons.” She rails at the personal agendas she says rule the actions of many politicians.

For her, it is all part of taking care of her hometown. And for the past 16 years, the woman with the bright eyes and stylishly gray hair has made life difficult for local officials who ignored her point of view.

“Here is a person who really cares about her community,” said fellow Cardiff resident Bob Bonde. “Pat Rudolph is always willing to stick her neck out. She puts her money as well as her mouth into issues.

“And the simple fact is, there is no issue too small for her. She is just going to be in there with both feet, fighting tooth and nail. How many people can say that?”

In any season, Rudolph has tirelessly attended long and often-dreary City Council meetings, waiting patiently for the chance to make her opinions known. She also knows how to use a telephone.

On her own local level, friends say, she can quickly rally the kind of support for an issue close to her heart as that master politician, the late-President Lyndon B. Johnson, once could on Capitol Hill.

Locals are inspired by her down-to-earth style and her passion for the issues. And, of course, there is that throaty voice that opens many conversations with: “Hey honey, we’ve got ourselves a problem here.”

But Rudolph’s detractors say her energies aren’t always good for Cardiff.

“She means well,” said one Encinitas council member. “But sometimes that enthusiasm is misdirected. Because the minute Pat Rudolph gets excited about something, it is immediately the best thing in the world. And she gets excited about a lot of things.

“On the other hand, she often places the kick right where it needs to be placed in this town.”

In the small community of Cardiff, it is not a good idea to make political enemies. Especially with Pat Rudolph.

“I don’t want to be quoted,” said another council member. “I want to avoid tangling with that woman altogether.”

When it comes to grass-roots politics, “that woman” says she can’t help herself. Ever since she moved to Cardiff in 1976, Rudolph has done what it takes to see that her town is the best that it can be.

A former airline attendant who in 1959 authored the worldwide-selling book “Your Future as an Airline Stewardess,” had seen the area on working trips to San Diego. But when she finally moved to Cardiff, she was disappointed with what she found.

Rudolph recalls seeing trash in the streets. Garbage cans left out all week long. And in the city known around the world for its beautiful poinsettias, there wasn’t a public flower in sight.

Flabbergasted, she formed the Cardiff Town Council in 1986 because she was “horrified at the sloppiness and visual decadence in a town that by all rights should have been among the most beautiful in the nation.”

Rudolph volunteered to run a campaign to clean up local streets, and approached the City Council for some financial backing to hire workers to get the job done.

From then on, friends say, Rudolph’s car could be spotted on the side of this road or in that back alley, taking care of business.

“She just came out and took on that job herself--certainly nobody asked her,” Cardiff Town Council member Bob Bonde said. “There just isn’t an issue meaningful to the community that Pat Rudolph isn’t right in the middle of.

“For the last several years, she has had every town council meeting at her house, all those people crowding in. But she wouldn’t have it any other way. That is what kind of person she is.”

Earlier this year, Rudolph once again rallied local citizen support when fellow town council member Paul Reynolds was shot and killed by a San Diego County Sheriff’s deputy.

Reynolds, a diagnosed manic-depressive, had gone to a Cardiff gas station in the early-morning hours and reportedly threatened a worker and the deputy with a small nautical knife before being shot.

The day of his death, Rudolph called for a town council meeting, and since then the group has pressured the county to continue its investigation of the matter. This week, Reynolds’ widow filed a suit against the county and the deputy who fired the fatal shot.

“Pat Rudolph is really a motherly person,” Encinitas Mayor Maura Wiegand said. “She has compassion, and it shows in the issues she champions and how she deals with people who are her friends. If someone has a problem, Pat is going to be there to help.”

Rudolph’s passion for street-side cleanliness has taken her from dogged activist to nearly pulling the stunts of a circus-performer.

Two years ago, when city officials threatened to rescind the annual $5,000 they allocated for her street cleanup program, she wanted to get their attention.

That is when she pulled the publicity stunt of hanging from the flagpole.

For years, that decidedly public approach has become Rudolph’s trademark in her quest to “battle diabolical things.”

When Rudolph later threatened to bring in bags of trash and dump them inside City Hall to make her point on the cleanup efforts, politicians took her seriously. Her funding has continued.

After years in airline public relations, living in places such as New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles and Switzerland, Rudolph knows how to attract attention.

She regularly seeks out reporters and activists about the latest goings-on around Encinitas City Hall. Her voice is husky. If she doesn’t reach you the first time, she calls back twice.

There have been lots of issues with which to tangle, things that really bug her.

Like the city proposal to build an expensive staircase to Swamis Beach, not far from a perfectly good paved access ramp. Or the city’s desire to plow up several blocks of sidewalk art created by local Cardiff residents to build a wheelchair access--on a hill where she says no wheelchair would ever roam.

Years earlier, Rudolph had galvanized an effort to build the sidewalk--so that the elderly could walk to the store without risking their lives on the road--by inspiring locals to buy sections of concrete, which they decorated with signatures and kiddie art like stick figures of boys and dogs.

After Rudolph rallied citizens to the issue, the city backed off from its wheelchair access plan.

“I haven’t been a fan of everything Pat Rudolph has done, but building that sidewalk is an example of the good that can come out of her advocacy,” Encinitas City Councilman John Davis said.

“We need all kinds of people in this city to accomplish things.”

Then there is the so-called City Hall complex debacle. That is where the city paid $5 million for a building in which to relocate City Hall--without first investigating to discover that the 30-year-old building needed hundreds of thousands of dollars of termite and asbestos removal and a new roof before renovations could begin.

Rudolph is among a growing number of people who would like to see City Manager Warren Shafer fired over that matter.

Shafer has deflected the criticism, saying there would have been complaints if the city had gone the other route and hired a high-priced consultant to investigate the purchase, so he doesn’t feel like he can win on this one.

“There are watchdogs in this town, but there is no one like Pat,” Mayor Wiegand said. “She is really aware of the way this city spends its money. She counts pennies.”

But not much gets Pat Rudolph’s blood boiling hotter than the city’s handling of the house on Urania Avenue.

Rudolph said Encinitas has played the despicable role of slumlord with a house the city owns off busy Leucadia Boulevard in a largely Latino area known locally as “Tortilla Flats.”

When the city incorporated six years ago, it inherited the house from the county. Since then, it has quietly sat on the structure--biding time until it is demolished for an eventual widening of the busy east-west corridor.

For years, officials rented out the three-bedroom home, which leaked badly when it rained and failed to meet many of the city’s own housing codes, Rudolph said.

Then, recently, when city officials talked of tearing down the one-story house, which has sat boarded-up for 19 months, Rudolph got mad.

In a city with a shortage of low-cost housing, she thinks there are higher uses for the house than a deadly dance with the wrecking ball.

“Look at all the homeless families in this community,” she said. “There is a need for space by all kinds of groups, from groups that help rape victims to those who take in battered wives.

“And with a little work, this could be the perfect space. But what does the city want to do after years of playing slumlord? Tear it down, of course. It is just shocking.”

Recently, Rudolph called Encinitas’ code enforcement officer and asked that she cite the city for violations at the site. She hasn’t heard back yet.

Upon the urging of Rudolph and others, Encinitas now will consider bids from local nonprofit groups that would renovate the house. Last week, public works officials sent letters to such groups soliciting their attention.

On a visit lately, Rudolph pointed out the bilingual “No Trespassing” sign the city has erected to chase away vagrants. She pointed to the peeling paint, dying trees and dead bird in the front yard, now used as a parking lot for nearby nursery workers.

“Charming,” she said.

While he begs to differ on her opinions, Nelson said he is glad there are watchdogs like Rudolph out there.

“Absolutely,” he said. “There is always more than one side to every issue. And Pat Rudolph and others are always there to give us the other side.”

Meanwhile, Rudolph has been on the phone to local nonprofit groups to rally their interest in renovating the place and taking up headquarters there. But dealing with city bureaucracy has “been like quicksand. You sink deeper the more you try to get accomplished,” Rudolph said.

It doesn’t matter that she lives clear across town. Fighting for places like the Urania Avenue house is what being an active citizen like Rudolph is all about.

“It is a concern about humanity,” she said. “It has got nothing to do with the personal self.”

So, with a stiff upper lip, Rudolph will go to City Hall when the council next discusses the matter of her adopted house. There will soon be other battles as well.

Rudolph expects to be exasperated over the issues that crop up around Encinitas. And angry. And incredulous. But never bored.

“The things that happen around here,” she says with a sigh, “sometimes, they are just so ridiculous.”