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212 SANTA CLARITA

At the end of September I went to New York City with a small delegation to
work on Moody’s and Standard and Poor’s ratings for the city’s bonds. We were
granted a healthy A+ rating, above average for any city, and saved the city
$52,500 per year by coming in above a BBB rating, the next one down. We used
part of the $18 million issue to buy the building in which we had our offices.
Once we owned the building we had a net income from the space we rented out
for some years. That was like having a city hall rent free. 35
In October we honored our volunteers. We held the groundbreaking for the
Boys and Girls Club facility in Newhall Park, where Mike Gordillo, Stephanie
McDougle and a young man named Yusef helped Jim Ventress, Tom Lee, Sam
Garcia, Tom Veloz and me turn the dirt. We adopted a $200 per home fee for
transportation facilities. We lost the support of Val Verde for a sphere of
influence over that community, and were threatened with a lawsuit by the Dale
Poe Development Corporation. We worked to have our entire city included in
one congressional district, one state senate district and one state assembly district.
We held a physical fitness rally for the fourth, fifth and sixth graders; Arnold
Schwarzenegger and Kathy Smith got the kids pumped and I gave the key to the
city to Schwarzenegger. A photo of that presentation wowed young visitors to my
office for years afterwards. We discussed city control of the sanitation districts,
and posted our rating as the third safest city in America, out of 119 in the 100,000
to 250,000 population range. 36
CARRING qualified their initiative for the ballot almost as quickly as the
second Canyon County formation effort, which had taken only six weeks. I
decried their effort, saying, “The political winds are blowing toward limitations
on growth, but I’m hopeful we’ll be able to inform voters the harm the CARRING
ordinance will do. It will destroy the relationship between developers and the
city, and developers will build in the unincorporated areas, which will then truly
lead to the rape of those areas, just as this area was raped.” 37
The council immediately declined to order staff to work on a growth
management ordinance, but instead to work on implementing the general plan.
Jan Heidt voiced her priorities, “Let’s finish the hillside ordinance, let’s finish the
zoning ordinance and then let’s work on an ordinance that pulls it all together.”
I had not read the CARRING proposal and had no intention of wasting my
time. They did not understand my faith that an open government, developing
ordinances in public hearings, could do a much better job than Jill Klajic and John
Drew did in private.
Bob Lathrop, a most faithful gadfly, said, “We seem to be all closing our eyes
to the reality that the train left the station at 10:30 this morning. And most of the
staff and city government were not on board.” He missed the point that we were
not going to be railroaded. 38
The problem with development on our immediate borders remained. The
Newhall Land and Farming Company was pushing for approval of their
Westridge project just west of I-5 between McBean Parkway and Valencia
Boulevard. The city, the Santa Clarita Civic Association, the Santa Clarita Oaks