STRATTON MAKES SIMI VALLEY BETTER PLACE TO LIVE.

Byline: JAMES BEMIS Commentary

For me, what's most newsworthy about the coming elections is not who is on the ballot, but who isn't. For the first time in nearly 20 years, Greg Stratton isn't seeking a seat on the Simi Valley City Council.

During Stratton's 19 years on the council, including 12 as mayor, Simi Valley evolved from a largely agricultural community into a bustling city of more than 105,000 residents.

The city also saw the completion of City Hall; the opening of the Cultural Arts Center, Boys & Girls Club and Ronald Reagan Presidential Library; the passage of growth control; repeated designation as one of the nation's safest cities; and the growth of a city treasury jingling with surplus revenues.

My initial exposure to Stratton came when I moved here in 1987. As a former municipal employee, I tuned in to the televised City Council meeting to see what this community was all about.

I recall that during the public comment session, a resident complained about a neighbor who didn't mow his lawn every week and, well, it was becoming a problem. Stratton patiently explained that making people trim their lawns isn't a function of government and suggested that the resident just talk to his neighbor and ask him to clean up his yard a bit.

This, I thought, is my kind of mayor. It also turns out that he is my kind of neighbor.

For the last 11 years, Greg and I have shared a wall between our back yards, a yard where he and his wife, Ede, have held fund-raisers, victory parties and anniversary get-togethers. In ours, we've had Easter egg hunts, graduation celebrations, and one memorable 16th-birthday party with a rock band so loud that the Strattons' ears must still be buzzing. (Sorry about that.)

It's easy these days to become cynical about government in general and politicians in particular. Living next door to the mayor, though, gives one a different perspective on - and appreciation for - the unsung contributions local officials make on our behalf.

Many a Monday night I've flipped on the television, tired after work all day, to see the mayor - also tired after working all day - presiding over a late-night council meeting. Of course, a mayor's duties aren't simply confined to local matters: In the aftermath of the Rodney King verdict, Stratton's was a frequent visage on the national news, defending his city's honor against scurrilous charges of racism.

Oftentimes, the mayor's efforts bordered on the heroic.

One example: In the pre-dawn hours of Jan. 17, 1994, after the Northridge Earthquake, several of us emerged from our damaged houses to commiserate about what we had just gone through and the renovations we now faced.

Suddenly, we heard Greg's car rev up and watched him drive away, his red taillights disappearing into the dark. Our neighbor - our mayor - was on his way to the city's emergency headquarters, leaving the pressing needs of his family to manage the city's budding crisis.

Not one of us would have traded places with him.

The Founding Fathers' dream for this country was that public-spirited citizens with talent and character would lead our communities. Deeply suspicious of concentrated power in far-off places, they put our faith instead in local self-government, where residents voted for people they knew, electing to office those who won the public's trust - not because of campaign promises and slick advertising, but based on their personal virtues and the good work they'd done in the community.

Our forefathers trusted that at the local level, where life is really lived, the finest would come forth, not to secure power for themselves but to undertake the noble effort of improving their communities, helping protect their neighbors' lives and liberty, adding richness to the communal life. In order for this republic to work, local governments were endowed with the ability to determine their own futures, the Founders imagining that good men and women would shoulder the responsibility of serving their cities and towns with courage, honor and dedication.

When they dreamed, they must have had people like Greg Stratton in mind.