Rebel, Recall, Reneg, Repeat : Residents are known for showing they are fed up with civic leaders. Now, some officials are losing patience with the people. : Inside Metro: News, people and events in Los Angeles County’s communities

People remember Covina as that conservative east San Gabriel Valley city where voters rebelled a couple of years ago, recalling the entire City Council for passing a 6% utility tax.

It was the town where recall leaders rode the anti-tax wave to seats on the council, then voted for an even bigger utility tax. They had thought the government budget was made of grain-fed filet mignon, they admitted, and instead found out it was ground round. No fat left to trim.

Of course, that lit a new recall fire. Covina became known as a pacesetter in the recall business, spurring taxpayers in several other cities to follow suit.

But if Covina was among the first places where the public was willing to show it was fed up with its civic leaders, it now is the place where city leaders are publicly fed up with the people.

Councilwoman Linda Sarver says that if voters reject the second tax this November, she’s leaving the city herself. The city manager says one more council shake-up and he’s out, too. And a second council member says no one should think about moving into his city.

“I just don’t care anymore,” said an exasperated Councilman Tom Falls, a Los Angeles County deputy district attorney who says he has grown weary of Covina politics and is unlikely to run again. Covina, his home since 1965, now brims with “motor-home conservatives,” he said. “Their kids have grown up, they’ve got their motor homes. They don’t need the parks, the schools. They don’t need it, so the hell with the rest.”

Not that Covina doesn’t still offer a good life, he said. The Police Department can still keep up with the job at hand. “[But] I wouldn’t advise anybody to move into town. In fact, I would say run as far as you can, as fast as you can.”

Not the stuff of Chamber of Commerce promotions. But the municipal bickering in Covina has turned particularly vicious, with charges of vandalism and stalking connected to public decision-making.

The trouble began when the previous council passed the 6% utility tax two years ago. Voters protested that the council had passed an unnecessary tax, and had done it in a highhanded way, holding a minimum of public hearings and convening them in off hours.

A recall movement swept the entire council out of office and brought in some of the leaders of the anti-tax movement to replace them.

But last year, a majority of the new council, including three people who rode the anti-tax wave to office, voted in an 8.25% utility tax that would cost the average householder $185 a year, saying the city could not survive financially without it.

“I was wrong,” Sarver said of her no-tax pledge, shortly after her pro-tax vote. “Maybe I was a little naive; I thought we could make the cuts to make up the difference. At least I’m big enough to say I was wrong and do what’s best for the community.”

She and other council members pointed out that they had held numerous hearings and said that after they had explained the situation to the public, voters understood and supported the tax.

Not all of them understood. Another recall drive was launched, but foundered when a judge ruled in May that the petitions were incompletely worded. In June, the battered council put the tax on the November ballot. Still, anti-tax forces have fired up another recall movement against three of the council members.

“The issue now is [council members] Tom O’Leary, Linda Sarver and Tom Falls’ arrogance. They broke their promises not to put in a utility tax,” said Hank Vagt, a recall leader and influential backer of the original July, 1993, recall. Responds O’Leary: “Frankly, I’ve had enough of the recallers. They know they are going to lose on the tax issue in November so this rabidly anti-government mob is starting another recall to have something to do.”

The two council members not targeted by the drive also have called for the resignations of the three. Councilman John M. Wilcox was the only council member who voted against the tax; his unlikely ally is Councilman Chris Christensen, who voted for the tax but who had made his support for a tax clear during the campaign. Both say the three other council members deserve to lose their posts because they reneged on campaign promises.

In this 45,000-resident bedroom community built on turn-of-the-century orange groves, it is more than just name calling. Shortly after Sarver endorsed the higher tax last year, a stalker made numerous calls and broke into her home at least twice, forcing her in April to relocate to a secret address.

“I’ve been followed home from the council a few times, and one night I came home and couldn’t get in the front door because someone had put toothpicks in the lock,” she said. “I’m a single mother of four. It’s scary.”

Council members’ cars have been spat on, the city manager’s car was scratched and the mayor claims one recaller told him to carry a gun for protection. Public officials talk about the city having lost sight of its municipal motto: “Friendship is traditional.”

“It has gone beyond the political and become personal,” Sarver said. But one tax opponent says the town is just as good as ever--or would be, with a few key people out of office.

“I would go out and have a good time with Tom O’Leary any time he wants,” said William C. Mason, co-chairman of Covina Citizens for Good Government. “I just don’t want him to be mayor.”

O’Leary isn’t looking for any good times with Mason and company. When 3,000 people successfully rallied in a downtown park against the release of convicted rapist Reginald Muldrew in Covina, O’Leary said, everybody came to voice support except the “motor-home conservatives.”

If anti-taxers kill the tax this November and force the closure of the city library and one of three fire stations and abolition of the parks department, Sarver said, “I’ll move out of Covina.”

City Manager Fran Delach says he’ll follow Sarver out of town.

“If the tax goes, so do services,” said Delach, a 19-year Covina resident. “And I don’t want to live in a community that has that quality of life.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Covina Inside Out

CITY BUSINESS

Date founded: April 8, 1886

Area in square miles: 7

Number of parks: 9

Number of city employees: 308

1995-96 budget: $28.4 million

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Etnic Makeup

Other: 1%

Asian: 7%

Black: 4%

Latino: 26%

White: 62%

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PEOPLE

Population: 43,207

Households: 15,488

Average household size: 2.75

Median age: 32.1

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MONEY AND WORK

Median household income: $38,907

Median home value: $201,300

Employed workers (16 and older): 22,222

Self-employed: 1,567

Carpoolers: 3,014

Source: Claritas Inc. Annual household expenses are averages for 1994. All other figures are for 1990.

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WAYNE’S WAY: In the 1992 hit movie Wayne’s World, Wayne and Garth of Saturday Night Live fame partied on in Covina. The city’s excellent streets doubled in some scenes for the pair’s hometown, Aurora, Ill.

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TWO STORIES: No one is entirely sure how Covina got its name. According to the most credited account, the city’s founder, Joseph Swift Phillips, hired Frederick Eaton in the 1880s to survey his 2,000-acre tract. Eaton coined the name Covina, short for “cove of the vineyards.” Eaton, who was clearly a long way from the ocean at the time, thought the valley area embraced by hills looked like a cove. And in his surveying, he noted old vineyards left by earlier landowners. But in another account, Phillips’ wife coined the name from a similar word in the language of the Gabrielino Indians.

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JUICE: The city’s main street, Citrus Avenue, is the only remaining hint that Covina was once the No. 1 citrus-producing area in the country. The first orange groves were planted by Joseph Madden 15 years before the city incorporated in 1901.

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STAR POWER: For years Al Pacino was a occasional visitor to Covina’s downtown. His father, Sal Pacino, for two decades welcomed guests to “Pacinos”, a cocktail bar and restaurant with an old-fashion residential hotel above it in 200 block of Citrus Avenue. Two years ago, Sal finally closed the doors on the popular establishment after run ins with the state Alcohol Bureau of Control and city code enforcement officers.

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RECALL: The July 1993 recall of the entire City Council was first time an entire council was recalled by voters in California. But it wasn’t Covina’s first recall. Back in the 1940s, a recall election removed several of the council members, but they all won won office again at the next election.