CRIME, HOSPITAL ARE FOCUS CHALLENGERS HOME IN ON ELECTION ISSUES; LEDFORD SAYS OFFENSES DOWN.

Byline: Charles F. Bostwick Staff Writer

PALMDALE - How serious a problem is crime in Palmdale?

That question emerged as an issue Wednesday among City Council and mayoral candidates debating at a Palmdale Chamber of Commerce luncheon.

``Every local campaign gets down to one issue and that's public safety,'' said council candidate Steve Knight, a Los Angeles police officer and son of the late state Sen. William J. ``Pete'' Knight, Palmdale's first elected mayor.

Council candidate Tom Lackey, a Palmdale school trustee who is also a California Highway Patrol sergeant, said murders seem to be no longer the rarity they were when he moved to Palmdale 10 years ago and don't occur just in ``bad'' neighborhoods.

Lackey cited an August slaying at a Lancaster carwash in which a reputed gangster shot a rival in a dispute over a woman and a June incident at a Palmdale restaurant in which deputies shot to death a man holding his estranged girlfriend at gunpoint.

But Mayor Jim Ledford, the only incumbent seeking re-election, says crime is actually far below what it was in the early 1990s, when the amount of population growth is taken into account.

``I find that every election, (challengers) try to tear our community down,'' Ledford said. ``I don't think my job is to scare people into voting for me.''

Ledford told the luncheon crowd that per-capita crime is down 50 percent from what it was in 1991. He said after the forum that he had erred in his arithmetic: It is down about 37 percent.

Statistics from the Sheriff's Department said Palmdale had 620 serious crimes - ranging from burglary and theft to robbery and homicide - per 10,000 residents in 1991, when the city had about 69,000 inhabitants.

In 2004, when the population was about 135,000, it had 388 serious crimes per 10,000 people, sheriff's statistics say.

Also raised as an issue Wednesday is whether the firm building a hospital in Palmdale should be forced by the city to take in poor patients covered by the Medi-Cal program. The firm says it is looking into signing a Medi-Cal contract, but hasn't made a decision.

Council candidate Mark Walters said it is unfair that city tax money is going to help a private hospital that won't serve all the city's residents, though federal law requires it to take in emergency patients whether or not they have insurance.

Opening that private hospital in west Palmdale will interfere with getting a second built in east Palmdale, where Antelope Valley Hospital District owns land and where the mayor said city officials want a second hospital, Walters said.

``All the profitable lucrative insurance (business) will go to this private out-of-state entity,'' Walters said.

A husband-wife team of candidates - Desmond Kester, who is running against Ledford for mayor, and Marta Williamson-Cox Kester, one of nine candidates for the two council seats - both criticized Ledford for his actions as board member of the sanitation district that serves the city.

The Kesters said Ledford's actions contributed to groundwater contamination. The sanitation district is under orders from state regulators to clean up nitrate contamination in a groundwater plume underneath its Palmdale treatment plant. The district also must stop the decades-old practice of spreading treated sewage effluent on barren land to soak into the ground.

The couple also criticized Ledford's support of a sanitation district expansion plan that they said would endanger jobs at Air Force Plant 42. Part of that plan calls for acquiring land for alfalfa farming that would use treated effluent, a proposal that critics say would attract birds and increase the risk of bird strikes by aircraft.

Other council candidates running for the two seats being vacated by Richard Loa and Jim Root include John Mayfield, Patricia Shaw, Jeannette Buteyn, Craig Tappa, and Kathleen Morgan.

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THE CANDIDATES

(1) KNIGHT

(2) LACKEY

(3) MAYFIELD

(4) MORGAN

(5) SHAW

(6) TAPPA

(7) WALTERS

(8) LEDFORD

(9) KESTER

(10) BUTEYN

(11) WILLIAMSON-KESTER