CITY'S FIRST EMPLOYEE CALLING IT QUITS AT 68.

Byline: Angela M. Lemire Staff Writer

Carmen Sarro, the city's first employee hired after its incorporation in 1987, will retire Nov. 24, taking with her a unique, insider's perspective on a community's growing pains and birth of a city.

The 68-year-old administrative clerk to the City Council twice had campaigned for Santa Clarita Valley's right to self-government as a separate county in the 1970s, only to see Los Angeles County voters defeat both efforts at the polls.

And when Santa Clarita finally earned its independence with cityhood at the Nov. 2, 1987, election, area residents flooded the new, five-member City Council with letters and wish lists - so many that a clerk was needed to manage the daily traffic.

That someone was Carmen Sarro - a native of Manhattan, N.Y., Saugus resident since 1970, founding member of the Canyon Theatre Guild and Chamber of Commerce's 1985 Woman of the Year.

``You name it, people wrote about anything that was on their mind about their city. They felt they finally had somebody who was accessible,'' recalled Sarro, who since then has read thousands of such letters and later took on other administrative responsibilities, including the city's monthly Community Calendar.

With no City Hall to report to work and five weeks before City Council members were sworn in, Sarro's first day on the job was Nov. 5, 1987.

She reported to then-Mayor-elect Howard ``Buck'' McKeon, the top vote-getter of nearly 30 City Council candidates. Also elected were current Mayor Jo Anne Darcy, current Councilwoman Jan Heidt, Carl Boyer - who later served as mayor - and Dennis Koontz.

``Buck said, `You're hired. We just don't know how we're going to pay you yet,' '' Sarro recalled recently at her Pamplico Canyon Road home, the slight hint of her New York City accent underlying her words.

Her husband, Joe, reclined a short distance away in an easy chair.

``I'd talked about retiring at the age of 62 and 65, but I kept putting it off because there always was an election around the corner that looked like it was going to be a lot of fun,'' said Sarro, who looks forward to travel, continued involvement in the Zonta Club and stage work in her retirement.

She added, ``Joe's had three strokes since the spring . . . he's doing well, but the time is right to retire.''

Joe and Carmen relocated to California from New York in 1970 with their four children, when Joe transferred within MGM Studio's accounts payable department to its Los Angeles office.

The young couple felt the change of scenery would be good, Carmen recalled, as they struggled to cope with the loss of a 5-year old son, Ricky, to leukemia.

Carmen's community involvement, that later led to politics, began with the newly formed Canyon Theater Guild, as she acted and directed theater in New York.

By the mid-1970s - as Saugus, Newhall, Canyon Country and Valencia grew to more than 70,000 people - Sarro joined movements to secede from Los Angeles County and form Canyon County. Area businesses and residents wanted tighter control over planning, development, funding and local ordinances, she said.

``People felt we weren't being represented. The county (seat) was an hour away and they didn't understand the local issues or what we needed here,'' Sarro said.

Door-to-door campaigns in two secession drives mustered enough local support, but were defeated by the majority of Los Angeles County voters. Ruth Waldo Newhall, historian for The Newhall Land & Farming Company wrote in her book ``A California Legend'' that Los Angeles County officials disapproved of losing residential and commercial tax revenues from the area, while the county firefighter union campaigned heavily against the effort, fearing jobs would be lost.

``The disappointment was so bad,'' Sarro said. ``I didn't get my hopes up again when it came around to the city election.''

In 1987, only the approval from voters within the proposed incorporation area was needed when a city formation referendum was placed on the ballot.

Although opponents argued against ``another layer of government'' and the Local Agency Formation Commission reduced the proposal from a 90-square-mile city to 40 square miles - excluding a heavily commercial area west of the Golden State Freeway that included Magic Mountain and Castaic to the north - an overwhelming majority of residents voted to form the city of Santa Clarita.

The city's official incorporation took place Dec. 15, 1987, marked by a ceremony at College of the Canyons, where new City Council members took oaths of office and passed an emergency ordinance to protect oak trees.

Sarro had been working for more than a month and set up a post office box to receive city mail.

Fred Bien, a retired city manager of Compton, also had been hired by that time to organize the city government and serve as interim city manager.

They set up a temporary City Hall in a small storefront office in a commercial building on Soledad Canyon Road. Sarro's priority was to make the City Council accessible to the public, by receiving all correspondence and distributing copies to all members and performing other clerical tasks, she said.

Sarro eventually did get paid for her work, although two months passed before she received her first city-issued paycheck. Heidt initially paid Sarro personally, Sarro recalled.

By July 1988, the city's small staff gained a bookkeeper, receptionist, file clerk, city clerk and deputy city clerk, plus current City Manager George Caravalho.

And by 1989, after a full year in business, the city had grown to nearly 30 employees, an annual operating budget of $30 million, and relocated City Hall to its current location on Valencia Boulevard.

Twelve years of memories that stand out to Sarro as having demonstrated city government at work include Bein stomping through ankle-deep snow in a dress suit to cite a resident for violating the city's new oak tree ordinance, ``hundreds and hundreds of letters'' in opposition to the city deal with Nordstrom, and city staff's emergency response to the 1994 Northridge Earthquake, for which it received numerous awards.

With severe damage on highways between Santa Clarita and Los Angeles, county emergency crews initially could not access the city, Sarro recalled.

``We were so well-prepared. We had to take care of ourselves. I guess that's what our city has always been about,'' she said.

CAPTION(S):

Photo

PHOTO Carmen Sarro, retiring administrative clerk to the City Council, had twice campaigned for Santa Clarita Valley's right to self-government.

Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News