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FIRST TERM AS MAYOR 205

Store, had conceived the idea, and Jo Anne Darcy kept pushing it. Bob Martin
was able to report that the festive dinner was sold out in advance. People were
not too star struck. We were used to seeing people like Cliffie Stone and Tex
Williams in the supermarket. 13
George Caravalho was picked to join nine others in a trip to Russia and
Ukraine by the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs on the same
day that USC informed me they had a full tuition scholarship for Zhenya
Lindgardt. I made plans to go to Bulgaria and then Leningrad, with the idea of
escorting Soviet students to the U.S., and cashed in frequent flyer miles to get a
ticket. 14
Joe Edmiston of the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy drove the final
nail into the coffin of a Towsley dump by arranging the purchase of 273 acres to
be added to the Santa Clarita Woodlands. 15
I was invited to give an award to Ruth Chedsey of Agua Dulce, but made a
point of telling the audience that we had no aspirations to annex Agua Dulce.
During my second term as Mayor, when the Castaic Chamber of Commerce met
in Santa Clarita for their annual meeting, I got a good laugh when I welcomed
them to Castaic’s southern suburb. 16
Nine days after April Fools Day we published an infrastructure wish list worth
$712 million. Years later we were surprised at how many came to fruition.
Seniors were concerned about whether the council would understand how
important Dial-a-Ride service was to them. I responded that “we know who votes
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in this town and we know what our job is, which is to serve the people.”
The Dale Poe Development Corporation settled our lawsuit by paying the city
$675,000, more than twice what they had offered originally, but less than half
what we had asked.
City Manager George Caravalho picked up on K.C. Caesar’s suggestion that
we should tap the hairdressers in the city to find out what people thought. We
decided to invite them to lunch. Some people thought the idea was “hairbrained,”
and it got national publicity (and later a national public relations award),
beginning with the bulk of Steve Harvey’s humor column in the Los Angeles
Times. The result was that the hairdressers began to discuss city issues actively
with their customers. We got a lot of good input at the luncheon, with Assistant
City Manager Ken Pulskamp moderating the proceedings. Ken teased the
hairdressers during the session but my own barber, Harry Craig, had the last
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word. Referring to Ken’s balding, “All we’d have to do is shrink your head.”
Then Christo paid the city a visit. The Bulgarian, who spent $26 million
placing gigantic umbrellas in the Gorman area as well as Japan, was really clever.
He sold many millions of dollars worth of lithographs of his plans, and by
actually completing the project gained such publicity that his work was profitable.
My first reaction was that the idea was pretty weird, but I became a convert when
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I saw the finished product.
May 15 was Dodger night. I was given the job of making the first pitch.
Buck McKeon and I played catch; I knew I would have to warm up. When Buck