Drumbeat to Battle : Booming Sound Turns Political Allies Against Each Other

Politics is the art of compromise, but two Coronado politicians have had trouble getting the hang of it in resolving a feud that has spread far beyond their Pomona Avenue neighborhood.

Three years ago, veteran Councilman Bill Adams was encouraging neophyte politician R. H. Dorman in his bid for mayor. Dorman won his election and the two were political allies.

Then Mark Adams, the councilman’s son, became a freshman in high school and began playing the drums. And when he played the drums he sometimes was joined by other teen-age musicians, and their effort could be heard nearby at the Dorman residence.

The Dormans are not rock music lovers. The ensuing noise dispute has brought police to the scene dozens of times, led to the arrest of Mark Adams and a review of the case by the district attorney.

At the moment, there is an uneasy truce on Pomona Street. The district attorney declined to prosecute, and Mark Adams has been practicing elsewhere in the last few months.

But at City Hall, nervous salaried and elected officials are still seeking to stay out of the cross fire between the two men. Everybody seems to know about the Adams-Dorman hostilities, but few are willing to speak above a whisper about them.

City Manager Ray Silver declined to talk about the matter at all, and another top city official said that being quoted about the issue could cost him his job.

Imagine the plight of Coronado Police Chief Jerry Boyd. The mayor calls up and wants an officer to come right out to enforce the noise ordinance. Of course, an officer is sent right out to do his duty, only to be confronted by a defensive father, who also happens to be a veteran city councilman.

Boyd declined to discuss specifics, confirming only that his officers “have responded to noise complaints, a number of them” in the Pomona Avenue neighborhood where the Dorman and Adams families live. (A department official set the exact number of complaints at 51 over a 21-month period.)

In carefully couched terms, Boyd said that the Coronado Police Department receives and responds to “numerous noise complaints all over town,” and stressed that all such complaints are treated in exactly the same manner, usually culminating with firm warning from the officer to “keep it down.”

Until about two years ago, Dorman, an attorney and a retired Navy submarine commander, and Adams, a civilian Navy employee with a 13-year tenure on the City Council, were fast friends with common goals for Coronado. Adams backed Dorman’s run for mayor, and Dorman squeaked out an 8-vote win over incumbent Councilwoman Mary Herron in April, 1984.

But, as the drumbeat continued, the friendship between the two men waned. In the last three or four months, an unofficial truce has prevailed, but no sign of a reconciliation between the two top officials has been noted.

The Dorman-Adams disagreement escalated to a confrontation about four months ago, when Dorman signed a complaint against the teen-age musician, who was then arrested on a charge of disturbing the peace.

Coronado city officials differ on whether the neighborhood hassle has spilled over into the political arena. One council member said that looks between the two elected officials “could strike sparks,” while a top city official saw little change in the rough-and-tumble tenor of the council meetings, “where every now and then someone takes a shot at someone else.”

At a recent City Council budget session, Adams exploded with a roar at the mayor, questioning Dorman’s intelligence.

One former city official, who refused to let his name be used, noted that both City Council members have “always had a good sense of humor, but not about this.” This, he said, “has everybody walking on eggs.”

A former city councilman said of Adams and Dorman.: “One of those guys is a single-minded cuss; the other is bull-headed.”

“Oh lord!” groaned another city administrator, “don’t drag this out in the open. We have enough tough city problems to deal with without dragging in personal issues.”

Attorney Roger Krauel, Coronado’s part-time city attorney, said that his office is not involved in such disputes. Krauel pointed out that, as city attorney, any legal action he took in the matter “would mean I would be prosecuting my own client,” a member of the City Council.

Coronado police turned the noise dispute over to the district attorney. A deputy district attorney, who asked to remain anonymous, decided that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute Mark Adams. Dorman, somewhat mollified by several months of relative quiet in the neighborhood, has not pursued the matter but has trained his sights on toughening up the language in the city’s noise ordinance.

“The way it reads now, you have to catch someone in the act and have a meter right there to record the decibels,” Dorman complained.

Mark Adams, the unrepentant cause of the Pomona Avenue fracas, has formed his own rock group, The Tao, but has wisely shifted the practice sessions out of the neighborhood to “a shed at another guy’s place.”

Young Adams hopes that someday, as soon as he finds a singer for the group, he’ll be performing sets for money and applause instead of an irate mayor with little appreciation of modern-day music.

Drummer Adams will never rate high on Mayor Dorman’s musical hit parade, no matter how hard he practices.

“That was not music,” Dorman said. “That was noise.”