Iseman eyes third City Council term

Toni Iseman doesn’t much like asking for donations to fund her re-election, but it is the price she is willing to pay to serve on the City Council, which she says is a privilege and an obligation to her community.

“I don’t like asking people for money, but it is an affirmation or rejection,” she said.

Iseman, who is running for a third term, considers the campaign a valuable review of her past performance and the public’s expectations for the future. She sees the next four years as pivotal for Laguna.

“Ken Frank has talked about retiring as city manager at the end of his contract (Oct. 1, 2009) and selecting a new city manager may be the most important vote the council will make,” Iseman said.

“We also have the opportunity to improve our water quality, which will take not just the will of Laguna Beach, but the cooperation of other communities. I want to refine our summer shuttle service. And I want to make sure we do the Village Entrance and that we do it right.”

Iseman would like all city departments impartially evaluated, as is done at Orange Coast College where she counseled before retiring.

“We dreaded it as educators, but we always got better as a result,” Iseman said.

She cites as accomplishments: chairing the Waste Water Committee, which tapped the skills of the citizenry to resolve water-quality issues and stop sewer spills; supporting the creation of the Design Review Task Force; attacking the hillside grading and construction of houses that do not fit into neighborhoods; urging the policing of illegal motorcycles and finally moving ahead on the use of city-owned holiday palettes for the design of note cards, to be sold as fundraisers for nonprofit projects.

Her proudest moment in the past two terms, she said, must be the compromise she and fellow incumbent candidate Elizabeth Pearson-Schneider forged to end the decades-long debacle over the redevelopment of the Village Entrance and the relocation of the city maintenance yard.

Neither woman felt at the get-go that they had the slightest chance of coming to an agreement, and both took heat for their compromise proposal.

“Some people thought I had given away the store,” Iseman said. “And I will never forget hearing Elizabeth say [at the public presentation of their proposal] to her supporters, ‘Anyone who can’t compromise can just leave.’”

The compromise ushered in a period of mostly amicable council discourse even on issues that divide not just the council but the city.

But those same eight years have also brought disappointments — the court decision that prevented the Mar Vista project from going back to the Design Review Board was one; federal limits placed on the city’s ability to accept or deny installations of communications antennae is another.

The hardest pill to swallow did not have to do with being on the City Council — it was not being reappointed to the California Coastal Commission. Her application, she said, was undermined by the opposition of former supporters in the Surfrider Foundation and Sierra Club.

Both groups denied lobbying against her reappointment, but Iseman saw it differently.

“It appears there is a full-court press to unseat me,” Iseman said at the time

“But when I took my oath for the commission, it was not to the Surfriders or to the Sierra Club, but to the state of California. I am independent, and I owe no political debts. My problem is that I didn’t do a good enough job communicating the reasons for my positions.

“People need to understand that unless we have a couple of hundred million dollars in Orange County to buy land, we have to accept that projects will be developed.”

One of the most contentious issues heard by the commission was the development of the Bolsa Chica in Huntington Beach, which last week reconnected with ocean water for the first time in a century.

“That was an amazing environmental victory,” Iseman said. “Crystal Cove is an environmental victory and so is the Nix Nature Center in the Laguna Coast Wilderness Park.”

Iseman’s environmental credentials have roots in the park.

She was an early opponent of development in Laguna Canyon and took overt and covert action to promote her views.

In recent years it has become common knowledge that she was the “Phantom” of the canyon, planting anti-development, Burma Shave-type signs along the roadway, when the Irvine Co.’s huge “Laguna Laurel” housing and commercial development seemed inevitable. She served on the board of Laguna Greenbelt Inc., created to acquire and preserve open space.

Iseman has lived in Laguna Beach since January of 1970. She raised her only child, Nick, here and says she cherishes still what first drew her to Laguna.

“I need your support so I can continue to protect our unique town,” she wrote in a letter to voters. “I will stand strong to guard the essence of our town.”

Iseman’s first exposure to politics came when she was 7 years old, growing up in Nebraska where she was born in 1945.

“I had had my appendix out, and I was recovering on the couch when Sen. Carl T. Curtis came to see my mother, who was in the League of Women Voters,” Iseman said. “I knew something special was going on.”

Iseman grew up in a divided household. Her father was a Republican, but her mother secretly voted for John F. Kennedy.

“She couldn’t tell anyone,” Iseman said.

Iseman favors open discussions.

“Hearing opposing views and comparing them to yours is extremely valuable,” Iseman said. “Decisions by the council are too important to make through one set of eyes. Five minds are better than one.

“Some of the best ideas come from public testimony, and we are a council that listens.”

To hear more about Iseman and her views, voters are invited to attend two upcoming campaign events. For more information, see Election Notebook on Page A4.