Keller Resigns as City Clerk of Hawthorne After Criticism : Government: Council has 30 days to decide whether to appoint a pro tem successor or schedule an election in November.

Following up on a promise he made to the mayor last week, Hawthorne City Clerk Patrick E. Keller has officially resigned his post, nearly four years after he moved to Hawaii and several months after he began telling city officials that he would either return to Hawthorne or quit.

In a two-sentence letter that he sent by facsimile machine to Hawthorne city offices from Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, Keller made his resignation official Thursday evening.

“Effective this date, I resign my office as city clerk,” Keller wrote. “Thank you for the opportunity to have been associated with the city government of Hawthorne.”

City Atty. Michael Adamson said the City Council now has 30 days either to appoint someone to serve the two years remaining in Keller’s term or to begin making plans for a November election to fill the post. The council has canceled plans to stage a residency hearing Monday night, which was to set the stage for removing Keller from office. No further action will be taken against him.

“I’m going to close and seal my file on this,” Adamson said. “We’re not going to do anything else.”

Keller had been collecting $600 each month for serving as Hawthorne’s city clerk, a post he first won in a hotly contested election in 1981. He was reelected in 1985 and again in 1989--two years after he moved to Hawaii.

When he was first elected, Keller was very involved in city affairs and supervised the computerization of the city clerk’s office. But he gradually distanced himself from the day-to-day operations of the office, which include maintaining records of city ordinances, minutes of council meetings and administering municipal elections.

After moving to Hawaii, Keller said he called the city clerk’s office regularly and for a brief time continued to fly back for the twice-monthly council meetings. But eventually, he concluded that his presence was unnecessary.

“The position of city clerk is a figurehead,” he said, comparing his position to that held by the Queen of England. “The elected officeholder essentially only sets policy.”

Keller said he only ran for a third term in 1989 because no other candidates sought the job and “I felt obligated to help out the city.”

He said he moved to picturesque Kona-Kailua on the island of Hawaii, where he owns a beauty salon and sells real estate, to escape the “rat race in Southern California.”

City officials did not know until last week that Keller had not been maintaining a Hawthorne residence--a requirement for the post--and was instead using a friend’s address for his voter registration.

Community activist Frances Stiglich, 73, who prompted the inquiry into Keller’s residency when she questioned the council about the expense of his collect calls from Hawaii, said Keller should have resigned “a long time ago.”

“The council people knew about this and they should have done something about it,” Stiglich said. “There’s been rumors about him for a long time, and I never saw the man in two years I’ve been active in this city.”

Three of the five council members have said they are inclined to appoint someone to serve the 21 months remaining in Keller’s term, rather than spend $50,000 on a November election for the abbreviated term.

“I can’t see throwing away $50,000 when we’re having trouble right now balancing our budgets,” Councilman Larry Guidi said. “Appointing someone . . . sounds like a feasible way to handle it.”