CAMERON SMYTH NAMED MAYOR FOR YEAR.

Byline: Eugene Tong Staff Writer

SANTA CLARITA - Assuming a yearlong term as Santa Clarita's mayor, Councilman Cameron Smyth said he won't be handing out milk and cookies again, but will keep pushing the city's interests.

Smyth accepted the gavel from outgoing Mayor Bob Kellar this week after a procedural City Council vote put him in the largely ceremonial mayor's office, which Smyth also held in 2003. He is the son of a former mayor, Clyde Smyth, who held the office for a single one-year term in 1997 and had a street named for him in Valencia.

``He got the street. ... I got twice,'' quipped the new mayor about his second term.

He pledged to keep up pressure to resolve the Cemex gravel mine issue and to get the former Whittaker-Bermite munitions plant site cleaned up.

Councilwoman Laurene Weste was elected mayor pro tem. The council had moved last year to bypass Councilwoman Marsha McLean for a year as mayor. Smyth, 33, who was first elected to the council in 2002, served as mayor pro tem this year.

He held out an olive branch to Los Angeles city officials who have verbally attacked the Santa Clarita City Council in recent months over its decision to close a local winter shelter and bus the homeless to the San Fernando Valley and downtown L.A.

The crisis was resolved last week when county Supervisor Michael D. Antonovich allowed the shelter to reopen at a county-owned lot in the Golden Valley area.

Six county sheriff's deputies - rather than the usual one or two - guarded the Santa Clarita council at its meeting Tuesday over concerns that Los Angeles Councilwoman Jan Perry would lead a group there to protest the treatment of the homeless. When a solution emerged, Perry pledged cooperation to help develop homeless strategies in a letter to Santa Clarita officials Monday.

``While there are some disagreements on some issues, there is agreement on others,'' said Smyth, who referred to the just-brokered deal with Los Angeles that could block the 5,800-home Las Lomas development at the Newhall Pass.

Smyth also offered to work with county officials and town councils, even if they disagree with Santa Clarita annexation moves.

``The more we can do to keep us together - it will benefit all of us,'' he said.

Smyth said he won't be bringing back the ``milk and cookies with the mayor'' outreach effort from his previous mayoral term. Instead, he is pushing a ``healthy Santa Clarita'' slogan.

``It's time for the city to step in and help with some education program,'' he said.

Eugene Tong, [phone]

eugene.tong(at)dailynews.com