August 29, 2000


Honorable Mayor Tom Daly
City Council Members
City of Anaheim 200 S. Anaheim Blvd., 7th Floor Anaheim, CA 92805

Today, we are here to accomplish the following:
First, we publicly challenge the validity of the Parks and Recreation Commission Meeting conducted on Wednesday, August 23, 2000 because it was held in violation of the Brown Act. Commission meetings are public meetings and they are subject to the rules and regulations outlined in the Brown Act. And, in fact, this meeting was called: was "the last public meeting on the master plan approval" for the park project on Santa Ana and Walnut, across the street from Betsy Ross Elementary School.

Specifically, the public meeting notice was dated August 16, 2000; the postmarked envelope was stamped August 18, 2000; and, many recipients who have attended all Park Project meetings on the master plan received the notice either on Monday, August 21 or Tuesday, August 22, 2000. In the notice there was no mention of the meeting address or the meeting time.
According to the Brown Act, all public meeting notices must be posted and mailed no less than seven days prior to the meeting date. To postdate the memo August 16th, but delay mailing until August 18, to slow down receipt of the meeting notices is a premeditated act with the intention to defraud the citizens of Anaheim. It impacted the ability for Chicanos to attend the meeting and state their opinions at this "last public meeting".

In addition, the public meeting agenda must be available to the public, however, attendees had no access to the meeting agenda until they demanded a copy. Again, this is a deliberate attempt to deter public participation and to keep commission business away from them in order to make an informed decision. This, too, is a violation of the Brown Act.
Let us remember that the City of Anaheim's Community Development Block Grant staff was admonished by the City Attorney several years ago for conducting closed door, unannounced meetings, with no access to the public while they conspired to eliminate the participation of the Neighborhood Councils. Specifically, the same people involved in conceiving and supporting the Park Project, were the same people excluded from these secret meetings. It was determined that these meetings were in conducted in violation of the Brown Act and were declared null and void. The same must hold true for this Parks and Recreation Commission meeting of August 23, 2000.

Secondly, we challenge the allocations of funding and park project development by the Parks & Recreation Staff that was secured from Federal money from the HUD Community Development Block Grant sources and a Section 108 Loan promoted by the citizens of Westside Anaheim and SOLEVAR National CDC. To date the plans submitted to HUD to secure the Section 108 Loan and additional CDBG monies were allocated for a "Park and Community Center". In fact, over 3 million dollars has been secured, however, no dollar by dollar accounting of the spending has ever been posted for public review. Monies secured for the Park and Community Center might have been inequitably diverted to the Vermont Park Project and to the proposed gymnasium for West Anaheim and Anaheim Hills. We want a full accounting of all the monies secured and spent for this project, including the "storage rent" charged on the site over the last year.

We expect this full accounting within 10 days of this letter; this means an itemized income and expenditure statement along with the documents submitted to HUD for the loan and annual budget monies. This includes an itemized income and expense statement for all other money sources or expenses paid in conjunction with this project.
Further, within the HUD request for a five year neighborhood strategic plan for Walnut Neighborhood Council, residents developed the 1997-2002 plan rev. 5/2000 and it states:

Deficiency 2.1 Lack of adequate green space and park facilities
Action 2.1.1 Develop park and community center for Walnut area (medium term 3-5years)

Deficiency 2.1 – Lack of adequate green space and park facilities (cont'd)
Action 2.1.2 Develop gym facility (long term 5 years)

Accomplishments: Staff recommends against development of gym in this area.




Desired Neighborhood Characteristic #8: Positive, on-going relationship with City.

Deficiency 8.1: Lack of two-way communication between neighborhood residents and City staff.

Action: 8.1.1: Send out neighborhood meeting information notices in a more timely manner (short term 1-3 years)

Accomplishment 8.1.1: Neighborhood Council newsletters are mailed 7 days prior to the first NC meeting of each month.

Fourth, we, once again, challenge the membership of the Parks & Recreation Commission, especially in light of the fact that member Harold Martin, ex-president of the Anaheim Union School District, used his seat on the Board to promote a racism in the school district. He has demonstrated a bias against Chicanos/Mexicanos and a pro-right wing racist agenda promoted by Barbara Coe, Glenn Spencer, and Howard Garber from the California Coalition for Immigration Reform. Repeatedly at the school board meetings he allowed people from out of the city e.g. Huntington Beach, Laguna Niguel, to use Anaheim's school board meetings to voice racism, divisiveness, and anti-immigrant rhetoric. Basically, he promotes "hate politics".
In addition, at school board meetings, he brought in off duty Anaheim Gang Unit police officers to intimidate the citizens who attended the meetings. He demonstrated once again his misuse of his job on the Anaheim Police Department, when he allowed a fully dressed officer to read the roll of the citizens attending the Parks and Rec Commission meeting on August 23 and write down their names and addresses. We suspect that he has also enlisted the aid of a Anaheim police officer(s) to sit near houses and restaurants where SOLEVAR members are conducting meetings, such as for tonight's City Council meeting. On Sunday, August 27, at 1303 Beacon, police officer, wearing a cowboy hat, stopped their unmarked car and took pictures of citizens gathered in front of 1303 W. Beacon, Anaheim, after a SOLEVAR meeting. Further, Harold Martin made the motion to accept the "Ross Park Master Plan" at the August 23 meeting. This is the same man who supports the vigilante Barnett Brothers ranchers killing undocumented Mexican workers in Douglas Arizona!

Because of Harold Martin's behavior, the City of Anaheim was reduced from one of the top ten cities for livability for Chicanos/Mexicanos, and taken down to the 90's in the annual Hispanic Magazine survey, This comes at a time when the prestigious La Cumbre de Tourismo was won from the cities of Miami and Orlando. The Anaheim/Orange County Visitor & Convention Bureau's "coup" expects to reap over $1.2 billion in package deals that will be made available to people in Latin America. The Anaheim Hilton hosts "1,500 to 1,700" Latin Americans and Mexican tourist business representatives and the City of Anaheim and its partners will be actively wooing tourist dollars from Mexico and Latin America to come into the Anaheim Resort area to generate millions of dollars in revenue. "Last year, Orange County was visited by about 1.6 million Latin American visitors, almost all of them from Mexico." (Business pg 1 OCRegister 8/29/00)!
We find this duplicity at its worst. Was the "coup" won on false information? Anaheim, the Hispanic friendly city? This at a time when Chicano/Mexicano residents have been subject to The City of Anaheim Parks and Recreation Commission staff's rudeness, racism, and arrogance and now the Commission has appointed a known racist who has abused his police power while in service to the community.

Fifth, this park project has been named "Ross" Park, however, according to Park Staff at the August 23, when asked by President Chris Whorton, staff said "no, this is not an official name". Again, we have asked repeatedly to honor our great role model, Cesar E. Chavez, United Farm Worker Union Founder and President who was recognized with a paid California state holiday and student learning/service day in all California public schools beginning March 31, 2001 with SB984 signed into law by Governor Davis on Friday, August 18th in a public ceremony on La Placita Olvera in Los Angeles.

We asked for the park to be named after him; for streets; and, yet, once again we here discriminatory statements from the City Manager Jim Ruth; City Parks and Rec staff, and even members of this City Council who have stated "we have better ways to honor people than streets". The argument "he isn't from Anaheim" doesn't hold true when you look at who parks are named after, such as John Marshall, a Supreme Court justice in 1801. And, I would like to note that even when the person is fighting for his country's freedom and becomes the first person to die from the City of Anaheim in WW II in the South Pacific, such as Joseph Soto, he is rejected, too. This is further demonstration of an exclusionary and discriminatory practice against honoring anyone of Chicano/Mexicano background in the City of Anaheim.

Sixth, we continue to support the construction of a Gymnasium called Richard Y. Ornelas Gymnasium on the Park site. However, we have been told to our faces by Park Staff:

• "we would never support a gym in that neighborhood"
• "if it was in any other neighborhood, it would be built, but not Westside Anaheim"
  

  People from the Colony:

• "those people don't need a gym, they can just run and run and run some more and then their parents can walk them downtown to My Community Center."

But today we are hearing how West Anaheim, under Esther Wallace leadership, also a Parks and Recreation Commission member, wants a gym for the West Anaheim neighborhood. This is the same neighborhood that denied housing to working poor families and has rousted families and children who are one step away from homelessness from the motel rooms that provide a roof over their head week to week.
The argument about not enough room for parking spaces seems pretty shallow when you consider the Parks Department gave Betsy Ross additional parking spaces and utilized park land to do it. If we don't have enough for a gym, how can we give away parking to the school?

Finally, throughout the years, Mayor Daly has publicly approved a sanctioned Park Coordinating Council for this Park Project and members of this council included members from SOLEVAR and residents from the Park area that have worked on this project from the beginning. This was only right because we (SOLEVAR members) were the ones who went to the Sante Fe Railroad in 1992 and 1993 to meet with their corporate officer and their real estate broker to secure the Taylor Lumber site for a park and community center. We made the area a CDBG target area after 17 years of exclusion. We researched financial resources that would fund the project; the Urban Parks Fund, HUD Section 108 loans, HUD CDBG funds, and, at that time, Office of the Mayor's money. We raised over 5 million dollars in the course of the last seven years.
We have yet to get any information we ask for, ever to be included in the planning, and ever be treated with any verbal respect at the meetings. Again, we hear the political talk but don't see anything to back it up. Anaheim City Council still holds seats for right wing conservative Republicans who promote race based discriminatory decision making in the 21st Century. But please remember--the Mexican dollar and the Chicano labor are building this City and they are also registering to vote!

Many may ask, but why are you complaining this neighborhood is getting a park; it got bathrooms; it got lights; it got a baseball field; only because this neighborhood stuck with this project for 8 long years did it get any "concessions" from the Parks and Rec staff or commission. They had to fight and endure racist insults at every public meeting held on this project. And, it is crumbs next to the millions of dollars we brought into this city for this project and it is crumbs in light of the fact that no citizen should have to put up with racist remarks or retaliation for standing up and asking for public staff and officials to give them an accounting of "their" money.
Why has this process been so outrageous to community members? It is because this neighborhood, Westside Anaheim, made a commitment to nonviolence, elimination of heroin dealers, stop graffiti, and to stop drive-by killings. Instead, the neighborhood rallied around this project. They came to City meetings held by the Community Development and Neighborhood Services department. They went to Parks and Recreation Commission meetings. They attended all public hearings on the Master Planning of the Park. HUD’s federal guidelines promote citizen participation and community building by community residents, especially those who are in the lowest economic status of the city.

The meeting on August 23 was offensive, discriminatory, and insulting to these people who have spent hours of their time and efforts to make a simple dream, a place to play and learn participatory democracy along the way, so they can make a big difference in their neighborhood and better the city of Anaheim for whom they have been residents and descendents of families that have been here for more than 300 years, the indigenous of this land.

Hasta la Victoria !
Seferino Garcia, Executive Director
Judith Serafini, Corporate Secretary
Robert Luna, Operations Director
Julia Campos, Board Member

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