Center Named for City Attorney : Government: City honors John Todd, who created the contract cities concept.

When veteran City Atty. John Sanford Todd was told that the new community center at Mayfair Park was being named in his honor, he wondered for a moment whether he was still alive.

“You’re usually deceased when they name something after you,” said the 72-year-old legal veteran who has been Lakewood’s only city attorney since its incorporation in 1954.

But honoring Todd while he can still enjoy it was exactly what the City Council had in mind.

“That man has done so much for this city. If anyone was to be honored, he richly deserved it,” Councilman Larry Van Nostran said.

Jacqueline Rynerson, a former councilwoman who has known Todd since the 1950s, said that without him Lakewood “might never have happened.”

As a young Lakewood attorney in the early 1950s, Todd was a leader in the fight to stave off annexation by nearby Long Beach, which coveted the residential community and its giant Lakewood Center Mall, which developers Ben Weingart, Louis Boyar and Mark Taper had created out of acres of bean fields.

Todd devised what was called the Lakewood Plan, which made incorporation feasible by enabling the new city to contract with Los Angeles County for certain services, paying the costs of what it received and avoiding the extra expense of establishing its own independent departments such as police and fire.

The contracting concept, which Todd said came “out of the blue,” rapidly spread beyond Lakewood. Within four years, there were enough such cities to warrant forming the California Contract Cities Assn., which today includes 76 cities, 53 of them in Los Angeles County.

Sam Olivito, the association’s executive director, said there are some contract cities in every state, and virtually every city that incorporates today does so on a contract basis. “They have no choice. The economy warrants it,” he said.

Todd said he had no intention of starting such a movement in the early 1950s--he was just trying to protect his town.

“Most young people like myself didn’t want to be swallowed up by Long Beach and left out on a limb. We were concerned about being a little drop in the bucket,” he said. By forming a city, “we felt we could have better control over services by having our own elected council, rather than making the drive to the (Los Angeles County) Board of Supervisors.”

Lakewood voters went to the polls on March 9, 1954, and approved incorporation by a 3-2 ratio.

Todd, in his part-time position as city attorney, drew up all of the city’s service contracts. Years later, after contract cities had proliferated, he successfully defended them against a City of Los Angeles lawsuit contending that contract cities were not bearing the full share of costs for services.

Said Lakewood Councilman Wayne Piercy: “We’ve all been so very aware that the Lakewood Plan, known nationally as the contract city plan, was basically the brainchild of John Todd. He has continued to be much involved in our ordinance decision-making (to keep) the quality lifestyle we have here.”

Todd and his legal staff have drafted every ordinance and resolution on Lakewood’s books, including an ordinance requiring that drug paraphernalia be kept away from minors in record stores and other shops. The ordinance became the basis for a state law, he said.

Todd said his most trying time with the city was the 1970s during protracted legal battles with resident Don Plunkett over maintenance of his residential property. Plunkett was elected to the council in 1976, and he attempted to prevent Todd from pursuing some of the city’s pending legal cases against him. But Plunkett was recalled a year after his election.

“I never had a problem with anyone else on the council,” Todd said.

A soft-spoken man with a reputation for careful and precise legal research, Todd works out of a Lakewood office where shelves of dark wood are laden with law books. But not everything in his life is the law. He currently is restoring a 1928 Chevy and someday would like to try his hand at writing historical fiction.

Todd, who also has served as city attorney for several other municipalities during his career, has been cutting back on his law practice. But he said he has no plans to relinquish his Lakewood post.

He said Lakewood has turned out to be a better place than he imagined in the 1950s. “We have one of the best tree planting programs, which makes the city more distinct when it has so many houses that look alike,” he said. He also praised the parkway panels that separate residential areas from main boulevards through a system of side feeder streets.

“So many of the original residents remain. They’ve paid for their homes and maintain them,” Todd said.