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Friday, February 10, 2012
Four former mayors speak in public forum
by Jonathan Mendick, published on May 17, 2010 at 9:04 PM
Storyline: Making History in Sacramento
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A Sunday night panel with four former Sacramento mayors took a lighthearted tone at the Time Tested Books/Midtown Monthly Living Library series. Topics included Burnett Miller's alleged pornographic doodlings during council meetings ("You claimed they were pornographic," he said to Anne Rudin who kept several of them); Heather Fargo's love of animals; the expectation that Rudin look like Gloria Steinem ("aviator glasses, long hair and militant," she said); and Phil Isenberg's ability to politely interrupt people ("he knew how gently to cut everybody else off, so nobody hated him," said Miller).
Nearly 100 people, most appearing to be over 40, showed up at Time Tested Books to listen to the former mayors talk about their experiences and answer questions. Tim Foster, editor of "Midtown Monthly," moderated the hour-long public forum, which included both laughs and serious conversation.
The all-Democratic panel discussed recurring issues from past and present City Council meetings including the strong mayor system, containerized waste, city-county consolidation and the tax/spending conundrum. A camaraderie seemed to be evident between the mayors, who were all consecutive mayors from 1975-2008, not counting former mayors Joe Serna, who passed away in 1999, and Jimmie Yee, who was not present.
The former mayors joked with each other, even when they disagreed, but they all agreed that they didn't like calling Sacramento a "world class city," which elicited cheers from the crowd.
"When you can't raise taxes and you can't cut spending, games are all that are left," said Isenberg, who was mayor from 1975-82 before serving in the California State Assembly. He was known as a budget expert when he served in the Assembly.
Isenberg said some of the toughest City Council meetings he ever attended were about racial tensions. After the forum, he recalled a meeting in the early '70s when he was a councilman where hundreds of African Americans showed up.
They were there to support a young black youth shot by police officers who were looking for a gang of armed robbers in the Del Paso Heights area. The kid was innocent and unarmed, and the people demanded that the city fund his defense attorney.
After being asked by audience members, others spoke of their favorite accomplishments.
Isenberg said one of the things he is proud of was a number of City Council measures supporting the arts.
"The grandfather of the (Sacramento Metropolitan) Arts Commission is Burnett Miller," he said. "I got interested in the (SMAC) Art in Public Places ordinance."
Rudin, the first woman to be directly elected by voters, initially found the socio-political climate difficult.
"I had a lot to prove," Rudin said. "I had to prove first of all that I didn't have to be a militant woman - the term 'feminist' was a bad word - and that (I) could do the job, had enough of a background to hold (my) own there and understand public policy issues."
She said her favorite accomplishment was helping to establish the Regional Transit's light rail system.
"One of the things I did work a lot on were animal issues," said Fargo, who served from 2000-'08. "I still believe that if the animals could vote, I'd still be mayor."
Before leaving office, one of the last things Fargo accomplished was to help fund a giraffe barn at the zoo, she said. She's currently writing a book on animal issues. She also mentioned helping the community with water issues, the general plan for the Sacramento River, parks, libraries and community centers.
Responding to a questions by Foster on the current strong mayor initiative, Fargo said that while some things could be changed to make it better, she thinks it's "important for the mayor to sit with the City Council."
"My last year on the council, I was head of developing the river plan," said Miller, the last World War II veteran on the City Council. "About three years later, when I became the mayor, we got a barge on the river. The barge was the greatest thing. That and to develop a monkey cage out at the zoo."
Photographs:
1. Left to right: Rudin, Miller, Fargo, Isenberg
2. The audience
3. Time Tested Books
4. Isenberg
5. Rudin
6. Miller
7. Fargo
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There is wisdom in these people, and we need that so desperately now...
feminist was a bad word, then like now, women have to be feminists without calling it that.
animals aren't stupid. they would never vote for kevin johnson.
The reason why it's a game is that no matter how efficiently government operates, no matter how many people are laid off or new systems are implemented, it will simply never be enough. If Sacramento's city staff consisted of one manager/secretary/planner/janitor, paid minimum wage with no benefits, people would still complain about the cost of government because they had to wait for the staff person to finish fixing the toilet at City Hall before approving their building permit.
It's a game, and it's fixed--there is no winning that argument because it's a semantic black hole.
So often people rail about governmental inefficiencies without ever having stepped foot into a senior role at a large private firm and witnessed first hand just how inefficient such organizations are, not to mention the bloated senior manager compensation, largely at the expense of extraordinarily substandard wages paid to those employees lowest on the corporate ladder...
But they heard somewhere, no doubt on Foxnoise or some other right wing knuckle dragging neanderthal info source, that 'gummint is bad -- baaaadddd' parroting the pre-senile Reader's Digesting president Ronald Reagan's 'govt is the problem - not the solution' without any consideration of the implications of that preposterous sentiment, as if corporations were paragons of efficiency.
Our media has put forward this sort of mythology for decades, and it's time to disabuse lesser evolved ordinary mindsets of this hokum, which is so profoundly demonstrated in recent years by the economic meltdown and the sources of this prolonged financial miasma that has vexed us all...
Government is a barometer of civilization. Corporations are barometers of greed. Perhaps right wingers should do the math more effectively when weighing these two entities...