By Doug Miller
Talk about news. Did anybody else know about this? The leaflet talked about how the Master Plan update of 1983 brought prosperity, unity and serenity to the West End by authorizing the paving of West Beech Street, fixing the West End's sidewalks and unifying the store awnings, which today are above rows and rows of occupied stores. And how the West End, the gateway to the city, has been the pride of the community ever since.
Here's my experience with all of that. Keith Grant left this paper in my hands shortly after the 2003 election, leaving me to cover a city with a lame-duck City Council, an incoming administration that had no use for the Herald, and a city manager, Harold Porr, who was spending his days surfing Monster.com.
My immediate questions to Mr. Porr involved the direction of the city, the revenue streams, the bond rating and fiscal health. I asked for a copy of the city charter and the Master Plan. The charter arrived, via e-mail, after about two weeks, since I was told at first that nobody was sure who had it or who had the authority to give it out. Finally an encrypted PDF file arrived.
I'm still waiting for that Master Plan. The problem was, nobody sounded like they knew what I was talking about. I spoke to Porr several times, trying to describe what I was looking for, but the response was, "I think we commissioned a beach plan, but it was never completed."
Another week passed, and another call came from Porr, who said the city had a Master Plan, but that his office didn't have any extra copies. I asked if it would be OK for me to swing by and take a peek at his office copy, and he replied that he didn't have one. I asked how that was possible, and he said it hadn't come up before.
Another week passed, and Porr said that a copy of the Master Plan had been located: It was at outgoing City Council President Joel Crystal's house. I called Crystal, who said he was in possession of nothing of the kind. Crystal asked if I was referring to the unfinished beach plan.
The Democrats, after January 2004, found themselves in the minority on the council, and often as not were shut out of the workings of the government. Their knee-jerk response has been to mock the GOP at every turn. Some of their points are fair, some even valid. If the Republicans are as genuinely opposed to overdevelopment as their 2003 campaign literature purported, the Democrats argued, they would have demanded the resignation of every Zoning Board member who approved the Brighton and Atlantic Hotel condo variances.
There are good arguments to be made against the Superblock. I don't happen to believe them, but then, I don't live in that neighborhood. I don't think I would've had any problem with the city selling Waldbaum's, as the Democrats did, but I don't have a crystal ball.
But for the Democrats to try to claim the high ground on the planning process is absurd. I don't doubt that the Master Plan was updated in 1983, but if so, it has been ignored ever since. The Republicans won two years ago because of the incompetence of the previous leadership. The Long Beach Democratic Party of 2005 should be running a campaign based on the new ideas its new faces can offer, and should hope the public believes that the party's staggering bedrock problems have been solved. With this literature, the Democrats are trying to change history, and to frost over a big reason they were dismissed two years ago.
