On Tuesday, March 6, Claremont will hold elections for the City Council. Seven candidates will compete for the two open seats on the five-member board. The election comes at a time of great popular dissatisfaction with the current council, especially among students, and it has sparked particular interest and activism among many members of the Claremont Colleges community. There are a number of efforts underway to get students registered to vote in advance of the February 19 registration deadline.

Student involvement in the elections took on a number of forms: individual candidate visits sponsored by the Public Policy Analysis Program, a seven-candidate panel sponsored by Mortar Board, and a voter registration drive co-sponsored by Mortar Board, Wells Miller ’02, and Edward Takashima ’02.

The PPA program has been bringing candidates to campus under the auspices of its "Coffee and Conversation" program since January 31. So far, four of the seven candidates, Paul Held, Richard Bunck, Bo Bollinger, and Opanyi Nasiali, have discussed their candidacies over coffee and cookies in Carnegie 101. Zephyr Tate-Mann, Albert Quintanar, and Llewellyn Miller will be visiting at four o’clock on the afternoons of February 14, 21, and 27, respectively.

Mortar Board’s panel will feature all seven candidates. It will be held on February 26 from 7 to 9 in the evening in the Rose Hills Theatre. Additionally, Mortar Board, Miller and Takashima will distribute packets containing a local voter registration form, a letter concerning local voting procedures, and information sheets on the candidates and election issues.

They are also considering including a tag in the packets on which students can write their name and home address; Takashima and Miller would collect the tags and use them to provide home-state voter registration forms so that students could switch their registration back following the election. "The most direct way for students to influence the City Council is by registering and voting, and these tags would remove the last excuse for not doing so," explained Takashima ’02.

As for the candidates, although there are two seats on the council open in this election, there is only one incumbent in the race. Paul Held will run for reelection. Suzan Smith has chosen to vacate her seat.

Challenging Held for his seat are Bernard Bollinger, an attorney; Richard Bunck, a businessman; Llewellyn Miller (no relation to Miller ’02), an investment councilor; Opanyi Nasiali, a real estate manager; Albert Quintanar, a rehabilitation councilor; and Zephyr Tate-Mann, an educator.

Held, a 50-year old attorney and Claremont McKenna alumnus, is currently serving his first term as a council member. He describes making the council a more open, accessible, and responsive body that "provid[es] opportunities for our increasingly diverse population to participate in city governance" as his first priority. Additionally, he seeks "to improve the quality of life for all Claremont’s citizens," and wants "our resources to be focused upon the less advantaged in our community."

With regard to city-college relations, Held notes that "the colleges cannot flourish without a healthy community, and the community relies on the colleges for its well-being." For the future, he envisions a relationship "based on a growing interaction of staff and students…so we may influence each other’s actions to our mutual benefit." In an interview with the Claremont Courier, he expressed a desire to tap the resources of college staff members.

Bollinger cites demographics as a motivation for his candidacy; he feels that as a younger man with a family, he better represents the average Claremont resident than do the current, older members of the council. In terms of issues, he too cites inadequacies with the current council. "There is a sense of disenfranchisement, and it seems almost as if the decisions of the City Council are preordained," he explained.

While Bollinger does not support district-based elections as a means by which to force the council to be more responsive to the community, he has suggested assigning council members pseudo-districts for whose concerns they would be responsible during their terms.

Bollinger has promised to hold office hours at the colleges if elected. In addition, he has expressed guarded support for student-friendly businesses in the proposed Village West development. "Sports bars are a healthy environment," he said.

For his part, Bunck is no stranger to local elections; he has previously run for both the Claremont Unified School District Governing Board and the City Council. His last run for the council was derailed when a 1971 photograph of him in a neo-Nazi uniform emerged. Despite his protests that his affiliation with the group was short-lived ("less than six months") and constituted only the political wanderings of a disillusioned young man, his candidacy was effectively finished.

Bunck cites a need for a more diverse council as a primary motivation for his candidacy. "There’s this unspoken little gang of people that runs the town," he said, "and they’ve pretty well had 100 percent of the council seats for a long time." He sees changing to a district-based system of elections as a way to force diversity and rectify the problem.

Bunck also considers preventing development in Claremont to be critical: "I don’t want Claremont changed," he said, "I want the quality of life maintained." He seeks the passage of a so-called "fifty-fifty" ordinance to require new developments to leave at least 50 percent of the land as open space, and he is against the proposed Village West expansion.

As for city-college relations, Bunck sees them as generally good. "We don’t have a lot of problems in Claremont that a lot of college towns have…[such as] students rioting, tearing up downtown…most of the people associated with the colleges are great people," he stated.

Lew Miller, husband of Pomona Professor of Economics Cecilia Conrad, cites deficiencies in the current council as a reason for his candidacy. "Claremont does not take full advantage of all its assets, including the colleges and their students. There are also neighborhoods…and constituencies…that don’t get the full attention of city hall." Moreover, he spoke of an "unhealthy lack of self-doubt" among council members.

To rectify the situation, he seeks to bring a "much higher degree of transparency to the decision-making processes" to allow citizens to participate in government on a more informed basis. Additionally, he seeks to include constituencies that currently feel excluded.

As for the colleges, Miller sees the city as standing to benefit from improved interaction with the colleges. "Whether the city recognizes it or not, the path of growth in the Village’s retail sector is linked to cultivating the college market," he explained.

He also expressed a desire to see more students on community-related boards and for city management issues to become the subject of academic projects, as is common in some eastern schools. However, he notes that student voting is critical for improved relations; currently, "the council ignores students because students don’t vote."

Following a common theme, Quintanar cites dissatisfaction with the current council as a motivation for his candidacy. "I got tired of the current government structure which allows corruption of the city government…The government in the city tends to vote unilaterally 5-0 on all issues," he said. "I wanted to bring more dialogue into our current government."

Quintanar lists opposition to the construction of the Keck Graduate Institute on the Bernard Field Station and to Village West among his top concerns. "I believe [KGI has] a good facility already in place…[and] it’s important research that students are doing on the field station," he explained. As for business expansion, he would prefer to see further development of the shopping center at the intersection of Indian Hill and Foothill.

As for town-gown relations, Quintanar feels that the colleges need to do more to be involved with the community. "You have every right to think you’re elite," he said, "but you’ve got to give back to the community at some point."

While he believes that the city is obligated only to its citizens, he does want increased dialogue between the city and the colleges, and he lamented that "we’re driving students out of the area because there is no social outlet in the Village."

Nasiali’s motivation for his candidacy is more abstract than most of the other candidates’. "I believe in community service–that’s my main point," he explained, and he cited his extensive history with local organizations and city committees, including the Traffic and Transportation Commission and the Community Dialogue Planning Committee.

As do the others, he sees a lack of openness and inclusiveness in the current council. "I want to see accountability on the City Council…There’s a perception…that the city government is not inclusive…that only a few people have access," he said. He views televised council meetings and procedures for public access of council finances as means to that end.

In light of the current electrical problems, Nasiali would also like to see the city increase business activity so as to enhance sales tax revenue and permit a reduction in the utility tax.

As for the colleges, Nasiali acknowledges that relations are not always as good as they could be. "There always seems to be the college and the city, and not so much living in a symbiotic relationship. I think this city is what it is because of the colleges." He would like to see cooperation in using shared facilities, and would also like to see students involved in city government research.

In contrast to Nasiali’s abstract sense of civic duty, Tate-Mann points to a single, concrete incident as her motivation to run; following the Irvin Landrum shooting, she decided to run for the council. She too wants to see a council that is more open and better reflects the diversity of Claremont’s residents. "My record shows that I can stand and deliver on diversity and inclusiveness," she told the Claremont Courier.

She also expressed a desire to bridge the gap between north and south Claremont, and she has taken up the issue of providing affordable housing. Tate-Mann argues that to improve city-college relations, "there should be some type of college, community, and city action board so that there could be dialogue between all three."

The election looks likely to draw more voters than the approximately 6,000 who came to the polls in the last municipal election. Nonetheless, Miller ’02 stressed the importance of student participation. "If we can get 2,000 students registered and voting, we can pick a candidate," he explained. "And in the end, the only way we’re going to get things changed is if we have someone on the council representing our views."