GROWTH CAMPAIGNS CIRCA 1972
THE TRI-VALLEY HERALD
November 10, 2005

By Barry Schrader, Inside Bay Area

THIS column is being written the day after the Nov. 8 election, so a comparison with the greatest growth control battle in the Valley's history seems appropriate. For those who didn't live here in the early 1970s, here's a history lesson.

In the fall of 1971, a small group of citizens, concerned about double sessions in the schools, lack of water and sewage capacity and poor air quality, gathered in Jim Day's living room on Cardinal Drive in Livermore to form a grass-roots organization known as Save All Valley Environments, or SAVE for short.

Founders were Day, Clarence Hoenig and former councilman Mike Uthe, all from Livermore. When the group formally organized, Hoenig was president, C. William Moore of Pleasanton was secretary-treasurer and others — such as Marjorie Gardner of the Save Foothill Road movement and Don Miller, godfather of the no-growth movement — were officers.

Hoenig recalls that this was the first initiative drive in Livermore or Pleasanton and their grassroots movement attracted national attention. Eventually, the city councils put the measure on the ballot in April 1972 as Proposition B and it passed in both cities, effectively shutting down housing projects if there was inadequate school space and water or sewer capacity in either municipality. It was then challenged in court by a Bay Area builders association and went all the way to the California Supreme Court, where it was upheld.

Along with the SAVE Initiative, championed by the Livermore Independent but opposed by the Herald and Pleasanton Times, there were city council elections in both Livermore and Pleasanton. The list of candidates grew to 10 for two council seats in Livermore and 11 for three seats in Pleasanton.

The candidates were overshadowed by the SAVE initiative, much like what happened this week in Livermore's Measure D and city council election,and each had to take a position on the initiative and then run on that platform. But a curious thing happened. In Livermore, the two pro-SAVE candidates, incumbent city councilman Miller and planning commissioner Archer Futch, won seats to take control of the council, while Pleasanton voters chose three men on the opposite side of SAVE — Floyd Mori, Ed Kinney and Bill Herlihy.

The Independent had endorsed Miller and Futch in Livermore, plus David Bigger, Ted Lannin and Chuck Seymour in Pleasanton. The Herald backed Milt Codiroli and Bill Millard for Livermore council and Herlihy, Kinney and George Spiliotopoulos for the Pleasanton council.

I could not find the editorial endorsements from the Pleasanton Times because of incomplete files for that year. If someone knows the answer, e-mail me at the address below so I can include it next week.
Editorial support from hometown newspapers meant a lot more 30 years ago than today, so elections were won and lost based on the power of the press in many communities.

While the Independent came out the victor in the Proposition B battle, it lost a lot more than it gained when major advertisers pulled out in retaliation and, as a result, the newspaper became a weekly instead of thrice-weekly publication.

A sidelight to all this was a diversionary tactic by Livermore Councilman Roger Silva to provide an alternative ballot measure, Proposition A, that also would have controlled growth, but left it in the hands of each city council. His weaker measure went down to defeat in the April election.
Lets compare what happened in 1972 with the Livermore growth battle this week.

Similarities are evident. The group opposed to Measure D fielded a candidate slate of three — Marshall Kamena for mayor and Tom Reitter and John Marchand for City Council — which is the smart thing to do as a slate campaign is easier to run and combines resources. On the other side was David Mertes for mayor and Tom Bramell, John Stein and Bill Aboumrad for council.

The council had cleverly postponed the Pardee Livermore Trails election from June to November so they had a ready-made campaign issue to rally around. Their strategy was successful, just as it was for Miller and Futch back in 1972, who came from the same growth control group 33 years ago. So not much has changed in Livermore politics in the past three decades when it comes to growth battles.

During the 1972 campaign an opposition group to SAVE was formed by former Livermore mayors Gib Marguth and Milo Nordyke, named the Committee for Rational Valley Planning. They were joined by former Pleasanton mayors John Shirley, Silva and Bob Patterson in their futile effort to avoid the growth freeze threat they saw in the passage of SAVE.

One could write a book on the number and variety of grassroots political committees formed in the Tri-Valley to fight one or more growth battles. To name a few: Citizens for Planned Progress, Citizens for Balanced Growth, Citizens Advocating Planned Progress, Save Our Cities, Save Our Hills, Caring About Livermore, Preserve Area Ridgelands Committee, Livermore Tomorrow, Save the Vineyards, the Fertile Crescent Coalition and Friends of Livermore. I must have overlooked a half dozen others.
Something else unique about the historic 1972 election was the voter turnout. A whopping 69 percent of the registered voters in Pleasanton went to the polls and nearly 68 percent in Livermore. That was before boiler room phone banks, get-out-the-vote campaigns and automated recorded phone messages targeting frequent voters.

Compare that turnout with this weeks election, which saw about 51 percent of Livermores registered voters going to the polls.

So now you have a capsule history of the famous (or infamous) election of 1972. And as history repeated itself 33 years later, will the other side ever learn to field only the exact number of candidates needed on a slate and will developers finally give up on trying to build on the fields of North Livermore? Probably not, in either case.

The correct answer to last weeks question about the two Livermore Valley country schools torched after they were closed down was: Altamont (Summit) and May schools. Randy Moore of the Alameda County Fire Department, who fought both fires, was first to respond, followed by Peter Bailey, Helen Washburn and Karen Madsen Faraldo.

Also, Ann Homan called to report that the Morgan Territory School north of the Contra Costa County line was burned in 1949, two years after it closed. Ann is writing a history of Livermore and seeks color slides or prints of the commercial rose gardens in the Valley. If you have one, call her at 443-9440.

The history mystery quiz for next week: Who were the two men chosen mayors of Livermore and Pleasanton by their councils after the 1972 city council elections?

Columnist Barry Schrader can be reached via email at historian2@sbcglobal.net or through Box 446, Livermore 94551