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FIRST TERM AS MAYOR 207

Indeed there was no monkeying around. Unlike the county, the city showed
the political will to stand by its plan.
I spent a few hours attending the Filipino-American Association’s celebration
of Sa Karagatan. I never prepared a speech for such occasions, but tried to make
a few appropriate remarks. In spite of the recent death and destruction caused by
the eruption of Mount Pinatubo, we managed to join in some laughs.
For the Fourth of July parade Chris and I were driven through town perched
on the back of a 1954 Plymouth convertible. Sometimes the parade organizers
had us in a BMW or some other foreign automobile, and I would hear a few barbs
about being in a fancy foreign car. My own car was a Ford. That was what a
schoolteacher could afford. My council salary made the payments on my wife’s
car.
It takes a lot of time to adopt an ordinance, and the drought ordinance relating
to water conservation was adopted no more quickly than any other. I did not fear
a local water shortage, but did worry about how we would be perceived if we did
not make every effort to conserve. What was to prevent the state from taking our
local groundwater? They had already cut back on state aqueduct water, which we
paid for whether or not we were allowed to use it. Jill Klajic wanted a complete
water audit. We still need one. 23
Henry Chu summed up “Santa Clarita’s Wish List” in an article for the Los
Angeles Times on July 11. We had conducted a strategic planning session in
April, attended by hundreds of local residents who threw out ideas for
consideration and ultimately ranked their goals. At the top of the list was building
a Nordstrom department store in the mall; the mall itself was just becoming
reality. Nordstrom’s being at the top of the list made the Wall Street Journal.
Many also wanted to recruit the Raiders. I kept quiet about that, but did not want
anything to do with Al Davis. Ultimately, the problem with recruiting Nordstrom
was that they wanted $40 million to come to Santa Clarita. That dampened public
enthusiasm and that goal did not surface at the subsequent sessions, which were
held every three years. Having the public actively involved in strategic planning
was an activity carried on in only about fifteen per cent of American cities, and
few elsewhere in the world. We worked hard on achieving the listed goals, and
one result was a 93% approval rating for city government a few years later.
A major problem was the lack of public knowledge about what was going on
in our city. Voter turnout after 1987 was low. Many did not read a local paper
and we had no radio or television station providing local news. The council
scrapped a proposal for a city newsletter. The feeling was that those people who
read the papers would be the ones who read the newsletter. On the other hand,
we did begin to put more information in the parks brochure which was mailed to
every home each time new programs were starting.
Jennifer Rinkenberger, 16, of Canyon High School was featured in a Daily
News article on July 30 about her impending trip to Russia with brother Larry and
other students being sponsored by a student homestay program. She said, “It’ll
be great to be there now when the country is going through all the changes. One