Advertisement

Mayor feted as Woman of the Year

Mayor Elizabeth Pearson-Schneider ? who announced this week she was stepping down from her post ? was honored June 2 as the Laguna Beach Woman’s Club’s 2006 Woman of the Year. She was described at the sold-out luncheon as a loyal friend; a dog lover; a chic, southern belle with the persistence of a pit bull; and an overachiever against all odds.

“She has her eyes on the prize ? and it happens,” City Councilwoman Toni Iseman said. “She was the right person to be mayor at this time.”

Being mayor could have cost her the Woman of the Year selection. The club is a nonprofit organization that zealously protects its tax-exempt status, so the committee members looked at Pearson-Schneider’s contributions outside of her official duties and found more than enough reasons to honor her.

Advertisement

“Our honoree has affected every aspect of life in Laguna,” Lee Winocur Field said.

Pearson-Schneider served the community long before she was elected to the council.

“We started community service together in the North Laguna Civic Assn.,” arts commissioner Nancy Beverage said.

Pearson-Schneider didn’t know much about the Latino culture or language when she organized an association event after moving to Laguna from Cleveland.

“I invited everyone to attend a ‘siesta,’” Pearson-Schneider said. “I’ve learned a lot since then.”

Pearson-Schneider was involved in the association’s efforts to get day job-seekers out of residential areas. In fact, she said, she almost got into a fistfight with a woman at a City Council meeting she attended to support the Laguna Canyon site.

“We argued for and against for about 20 minutes, until she finally said, ‘We don’t need leaf blowers in this town,” Pearson-Schneider recalled.

About that time, she met former Mayor Kathleen Blackburn.

“I received a letter from her ? not your usual naysayer letter ? and I thought, I want to meet this woman,” Blackburn said. “I am proud to be her friend.”

Pearson-Schneider met Councilwoman Cheryl Kinsman as a member of the association, and they served together on the planning commission.

Kinsman said among the great things that were accomplished by the then-just Pearson as a commissioner was helping to form the Civic Arts District and meeting Ernie Schneider ? perhaps not under the best of circumstances.

“He was cute, but she voted against his project,” Kinsman said.

And he wasn’t about to forget it. Schneider dodged Pearson at events they both attended.

She finally cornered him at a political meeting and forged a truce ? as one dog lover to another. He popped the question at a City Council meeting.

The couple shares their home with Kahlua, his black lab; Sophia, a cocker spaniel; and Bailey, a long-haired dachshund, both hers.

Pearson-Schneider defines the word ‘mayor,’ Iseman said.

Planning commission chairwoman Linda Dietrich is another long-time community activist who admires Pearson-Schneider.

“It’s not just the things you see her do,” Dietrich said. “The best thing about her is her loyalty.”

Pearson-Schneider has never ceased in her efforts to raise funds for the construction and maintenance of a long-awaited senior center. Two tables at the luncheon were reserved by the seniors, including Louise Buckley, who spoke on their behalf.

Friend of the Library President Martha Lydick lauded Pearson-Schneider for upping the group’s community assistance grants.

And when you see Iseman and Kinsman giggling together at a rostrum to present a city proclamation in the mayor’s honor, it brings home the difference made in the city’s political conduct since Pearson-Schneider and Iseman forged the alliance that led to a compromise on the decades-old division on the Corporation Yard/Act V/Village Entrance project.

“Elizabeth has surprised me in many ways,” said Bette Anderson, a past president of Village Laguna, which opposed Pearson-Schneider’s election to the council in 1992. “She has done some wonderful things, and we haven’t seen the last of her.”

Pearson-Schneider earned the respect of many of her harshest critics in the aftermath of the June 1, 2005 landslide in Bluebird Canyon. Within 10 days, Pearson-Schneider created a fund to help folks displaced by the landslide in Bluebird Park, but from day one she offered personal comfort and reassurance to the dazed and distraught families.

“A few days after the slide, [Elizabeth] sent me a note with a quote from Emerson that read, “What lies before us and what lies behind us is no comparison to what lies within us,’” said Diane Stevens, whose home was destroyed. “She set the tone for cooperation in the city and with the neighbors. She brought out the best in all of us.”

When the federal government declined to fund restoration of the crumbled hillside, Pearson-Schneider stiffened her backbone and crafted a time-limited sales tax increase that could be supported by the fiscally conservative as well as the more liberal element in town, to be used to rebuild the city’s infrastructure and seed a disaster fund. But she never wavered in the pursuit of state and federal funding to rebuild the city’s infrastructure, achieving her goal with the support of California Sen. Dianne Feinstein.

“There is no way I can say enough about Elizabeth,” said planning commissioner Anne Johnson, who served as co-chair of the fund-raising committee. “I was just so impressed. I really believe she worked 20 hours a day after the slide. She was always available, night and day.”

The parody Bree Burgess Rosen wrote for the luncheon said it all:

Advertisement