Animated Citizens : Pasadena: Feeling Its Oats at 100

A minor crisis had arisen in the offices of the Pasadena Centennial Coordinating Committee.

Holly Halstead Balthis, the 1930 Rose Queen and the earliest of 24 former Rose Queens who had agreed to appear in next Saturday’s parade kicking off the city’s 100th birthday celebration, had decided she did not want to ride on the mule-drawn vehicle that was to carry the illustrious beauties.

“She says she doesn’t want to ride in a mule cart,” parade coordinator Shirley Manning told her stricken co-workers--Pat Bond, the centennial executive director, and Judy Boggs, her assistant.

‘Lovely Animals’

Never mind that this would be not just any old mule cart, but an elegantly decorated hay wagon, drawn by the Smiser Mules--”very lovely animals who live in San Marino,” as Manning described them.

“Maybe we could just cover the mules with a lot of flowers and call them ponies,” Manning suggested, but Bond and Boggs doubted that would work.

After much debate, Manning, Bond and Boggs did what Pasadenans often do in difficult circumstances. They submitted the matter to a committee--in this case the Centennial Parade Committee.

Meetings were held, discussions took place, negotiations were conducted and, at last, Balthis agreed to clamber aboard the hay wagon for a mule-powered ride past the cheering multitudes.

Most Pasadena residents have never met a committee they didn’t like. There are so many commissions, task forces and blue-ribbon groups at work in this city of 128,500 that it sometimes seems that the students outnumber the studied.

Citizen Participation

Some complain that there are so many committees, nothing ever gets decided. But many others believe that, as the city begins its second century, heavy citizen participation has enabled Pasadena to make a dramatic comeback from economic stagnation in the 1960s and a long, bitter school desegregation fight that divided the city in the 1970s.

“A dialogue has developed in Pasadena,” said Nicholas G. Rodriguez, a young Latino attorney. “People joke about the proliferation of committees, but it means a lot of people are involved in seeking answers to the city’s problems.”

Pasadena is also a great place for volunteers.

“Hold up a sign that says, ‘Volunteers,’ and 100 people will come forward, even if they don’t know what they’re volunteering for,” one school official said.

The city’s most famous annual events, the Rose Bowl football game and the Rose Parade, are possible only because hundreds of apparently sensible adults are willing to perform tasks like guarding floats the night before the parade and cleaning up after the marching horses.

Almost 1,000 people have volunteered for the many centennial committees and subcommittees.

“It’s hysterical,” Judy Boggs said. “People call in and say, ‘Hi, I’m the chairman of this or that subcommittee.’ We’ve never heard of them; we’ve never even heard of the committee.”

Despite this air of chaos, Boggs is reasonably certain that the three-week centennial celebration (the official 100th birthday of incorporation is June 19) will be a success.

Said Judith Weiss, assistant to the city manager, “Pasadena has what we call in my profession an animated citizenry.”

The hordes of volunteers and “animated citizens” have quite a bit to show for their efforts in recent years.

A “headquarters strategy” pursued by the Chamber of Commerce and its offshoot, Pasadena Now, has paid off with the construction of regional or national offices for Parsons Corp., Avery International, Kaiser-Permanente Health Plan and Bank of America’s credit card operations, among others.

About 60,000 people commute to work in Pasadena, while only about 25,000 leave the city for jobs in Los Angeles and elsewhere, according to John Crowley, a member of the city Board of Directors (city council) and the current mayor.

Downtown Revival

Construction of the Plaza Pasadena shopping center on Colorado Boulevard has helped revive a moribund downtown, though much remains to be done.

The fabled “little old lady in tennis shoes” can still be found in Pasadena, but she had better watch out for some young thing in a Volvo or a BMW with personalized license plates, barreling off to lunch at the Cafe Jacoulet or the Parkway Grill.

Retail sales are up. Chic restaurants and expensive shops have opened for the yuppies who are moving to Pasadena because they can’t afford housing prices on Los Angeles’ Westside.

Heat and smog are two important reasons why Pasadena housing prices are lower than those in affluent communities near the ocean, but in fact, even the city’s air has been getting better. In 1970, there were 115 first-stage ozone “episodes” and 19 second-stage, while last year there were only 40 first-stage episodes and the second stage hasn’t been reached since 1982, according to the South Coast Air Quality Management District.

Spirit Revived

Perhaps the most important change in recent years has been “a revival of the spirit of the community,” said William J. Bogaard, a city director who just completed a two-year term as mayor. “There is a strong awareness of our history and of our strength as a community. We are a diverse people, drawn together by opportunities and traditions that give Pasadena a resiliency that most communities don’t have.”

The Pasadena of the mid-1980s is very different from the prosperous, genteel, white upper-middle-class community that existed in the early 1900s.

The populace is now about half minority. Whites, who made up almost 55% of the population in the 1980 Census, are now thought to have dropped below 50%. Latinos, who were 18.3% of the population in 1980, probably have passed blacks, who were 20.2% in 1980.

The number of Asians has increased significantly, and a large Armenian community, perhaps as much as 10% of the city’s population, has settled in Pasadena in recent years.

While building anew, Pasadena has managed to preserve many of its valuable historical structures and, in fact, has become the center of the historical preservation movement in Southern California.

A city Cultural Heritage Commission and an urban conservation unit within the city Planning Department try to make sure that historically significant buildings are protected.

Civic Prodding

In this effort they are assisted--some would say prodded--by Pasadena Heritage, a 10-year-old private organization with about 2,000 members that conducts building tours, provides advice on rehabilitation techniques and financing methods, lobbies for historic preservation and battles developers who are too quick with the wrecking ball.

Preservationists have been quite successful in recent years. A group of Craftsman-style buildings on South Marengo Avenue was saved. So was Gartz Court, the oldest remaining bungalow court in the city. The city directors were persuaded to ban demolition in an 11-square-block area of Old Pasadena, west of Arroyo Parkway.

But lately the tide seems to have turned slightly against the preservationists.

A year ago, after a Texas rancher and antique collector bought a 1907 architectural masterpiece and stripped it of valuable fixtures, preservationists proposed an ordinance that would have required city review before important interior changes could be made in historically valuable buildings.

The ordinance would also have allowed the city to exercise its power of eminent domain to buy such a building, rather than allow it to be carted off piece by piece. But businessmen, real estate dealers and many other citizens objected that the law would violate basic property rights.

Architectural Gems

As finally approved by the Board of Directors last month, the ordinance applies only to the architectural gems that were built by Pasadena architects Charles and Henry Greene around the turn of the century. Even these homes are not fully protected.

“If somebody wants to strip valuable fixtures from a Greene and Greene house, we can delay them but we can’t stop them,” said Donald Nollar, the city’s director of planning, housing and development services.

There is still wealth in Pasadena, as handsome homes in the southern and western parts of the city attest. But there is also poverty. In 1984, an estimated 17.7% of Pasadena families were living on less than $7,500 a year. As many families were earning less than $10,000 as were making more than $35,000.

In 1983, 21% of the elementary public school children came from families that were receiving Aid to Families with Dependent Children, and 54% qualified for the free and reduced-cost lunch program, poverty researcher Denise H. Wood reported in her valuable booklet, “Experiencing Pasadena,” which was published by the city’s activist All Saints Episcopal Church.

Crime is a serious problem. Last year, there were 30 murders, a city record. There were also 44 cases of forcible rape, 374 armed robberies, 330 strong-arm robberies and 1,789 residential burglaries. The numbers in the last four categories were lower than in the previous year, but were still much higher than, for example, in nearby Burbank and Glendale.

Increasing numbers of homeless people roam Pasadena streets, and sleep in parks and in abandoned buildings, despite (some say because of) the efforts of many of the city’s churches to provide them with food and shelter.

Spreading Political Power

As Pasadena’s population has become more diverse, political power has spread.

Once the city was run by a small group of white business and professional men who belonged to the Valley Hunt Club (if they liked to play tennis) or the Annandale Country Club (if they preferred golf). They were leaders in the Tournament of Roses Assn. and often made important decisions over lunch at the Overland Club.

Now the Overland Club is defunct and Tournament of Roses officials have become, as one city official put it, “quite insular--they only think about their own event. They stay out of politics and controversy and don’t have the political clout they once did.”

Today’s politicians represent many different constituencies--whites, blacks, Latinos, Armenians, homeowners, renters, developers, lovers of historic buildings--and no group dominates.

Said Nicholas Rodriguez, “There’s still an old-boy network, but the dialogue has opened and there are more players at the table.”

The city has maintained a fairly high level of public services, even in the wake of Proposition 13, the 1978 state constitutional amendment that sharply reduced local property taxes.

“We’re fortunate in having a broader revenue base than many cities,” said Donald F. McIntyre, the $87,213-a-year city manager, who contributed to this financial well-being by trimming the city payroll from about 1,580 to about 1,250 before the effects of Proposition 13 began to be felt.

Millions Needed for Repairs

Nevertheless, the condition of city streets, sidewalks, curbs and gutters and street lighting has deteriorated in recent years. About $43 million is needed for repairs, and there is general agreement that there is a need for an additional $17 million to build a new police station, jail and parking structure. City officials say there is also an unfunded liability of about $121 million in the police and fire retirement systems--a considerable amount for a city with an annual budget of $143 million.

An attempt by McIntyre and the city directors to solve some of these problems with a special assessment on all local property owners last year caused an enormous political explosion, echoes of which are still being heard.

The directors hastily backed away from the assessment proposal, but some taxpayers were so irate that they began to gather signatures for a ballot initiative that would change the City Charter, eliminating the city manager position and providing instead for a citywide elected mayor, city attorney, city clerk and controller.

They failed by a few hundred signatures last January but now are trying again, in hopes of obtaining about 5,800 valid signatures before June 23. This would place the charter amendment on the ballot next November.

In an apparent attempt to defuse the drive, city directors have appointed yet another blue-ribbon committee to review the City Charter. This group expects to submit a report to the directors by June 30 so that they will have time to hold hearings and perhaps place questions before the voters in November.

The city-manager system has been in effect since 1921, and is regarded by many Pasadenans as an example of a progressive strain running through the city’s history that has made it, in the words of one longtime observer, “a better place than it might have been.”

Social Commitment

Over the years, for example, Pasadena has had an abundance of wealthy families with strong social commitments. Often they have worked through the churches--Pasadena had 143 at last count--and none has been more politically or socially active than All Saints Episcopal, which stands across the street from City Hall.

Said a former staff member, “This church, which was built by patricians, has turned into the most visible, vocal, outrageously radical congregation in Southern California.”

John F. Scott, All Saints rector from 1935 to 1956, spoke out against the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. His successor, the Rev. John Harris Burt, championed the cause of California’s migrant farm workers.

The Rev. George F. Regas, the minister now, has opposed the Vietnam War, has spoken out against President Reagan’s support for Nicaraguan contras and has opposed congressional funding for nuclear weapons.

Shelter for the Homeless

As evidence of Pasadena’s social enlightenment, Regas cited city support for a shelter for the homeless called Union Station, which was founded by All Saints church and is now financed by an ecumenical group of churches.

“There was great opposition to the project among some business people and there was a lot of discussion about it,” he said, “but the city, in its heart, was not against the project. The city government, and the city as a whole, said, ‘We have a responsibility to take care of these people.’ ”

Regas also said he had observed “a very substantial change in the city’s racial attitudes” in his 20 years at All Saints, but conceded that there is much room for improvement.

From 1914 to 1930, for instance, blacks were banned from the city swimming pool in Brookside Park and for many years after that were allowed to swim only for three hours on Tuesday afternoon, just before the pool was cleaned, according to research done by UCLA graduate student Robin Kelley.

The National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People sued the city and won, but city officials shut down the pool rather than permit its use by blacks. It wasn’t until 1947 that blacks finally were allowed to swim at Brookside.

The pool is now closed again. City Manager McIntyre says it is worn out and needs to be renovated, but Stephen A. Mack, president of the Pasadena NAACP, attributes the closure to objections raised in the mostly white neighborhood that “so many blacks were using it.”

Racial Covenants

Racial covenants in real estate documents--intended to exclude not only blacks but also Jews, Latinos and almost anybody who was not a white Anglo-Saxon--were common in Pasadena until they were declared unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1948 (and, some say, long after that).

Today, affluent black families can be found in most neighborhoods in Pasadena and in Altadena, to the north. The city has a black police chief, James M. Robenson, a black director, Loretta Thompson-Glickman, and a black school board member, Elbie Hickambottom. Last year, Kristina Smith became the first black Rose Queen.

But the NAACP’s Mack called these “isolated cases--there has been no general black upward mobility” in the city.

No Latinos hold high positions, even though they constitute more than 20% of the population.

“We haven’t been able to have a police chief or an elected official, but we’ve been pushing for the same things,” attorney Nicholas Rodriguez said. “The achievements of black Pasadenans are our achievements, too.”

The Police Department is 18% black and 15% Latino, but only because black and Latino organizations joined forces to win a 1983 federal court mandate that set affirmative action hiring goals for the Police and Fire departments and for the city’s public works agency.

Problem Area

Some of Pasadena’s worst problems are found in the northwest part of the city, a predominantly low-income, minority area plagued by most of the social ills of a big-city ghetto--high unemployment, crime, drugs, gangs, third-generation welfare recipients and unmarried teen-age mothers.

“There are two Pasadenas,” said John Perkins, a black minister and former Mississippi civil rights leader who runs the Harambee Christian Family Center in Northwest Pasadena. “There is the Pasadena of the Rose Bowl--very pleasant and rich, filled with good people--all cities should be made up of people like that.

“But there’s another Pasadena, here in northwest--it’s one mile long and five or six blocks wide, and it’s one of the heaviest drug-user and supplier areas in the country.”

There are no banks or other financial institutions in northwest. The last supermarket in the area closed five years ago, and people without cars must travel considerable distances by bus to buy food.

Since last Sept. 1, a special police task force has made more than 1,600 arrests in northwest Pasadena, mostly on drug charges, and much of the blatant drug trafficking has been cleared from the streets. But Perkins said dealers have become more sophisticated, and now make drug deliveries in pickup trucks equipped with beepers.

The Harambee Center (the Swahili word means, loosely, “let’s get together and push”) and other community organizations sponsor neighborhood crime watches and offer educational and recreational opportunities for northwest children and training programs for adults.

City Revitalization

The city has pledged $35 million over the next five years to revitalize the area, and there are thick books in City Hall spelling out the plans, but so far little has happened. Attempts to encourage new businesses along Fair Oaks Avenue and Lincoln Avenue, the main streets in the area, have met with scant success.

Some believe that the solution is “gentrification”--occupation by middle- and upper-middle-income families who will rehabilitate the housing stock, forcing out the poor.

This is what many northwest residents fear--that they will be bulldozed out of the way to make room for expensive apartments and condominiums.

“Gentrification is a four-letter word in northwest,” former Mayor Bogaard said, “but if the neighborhoods of today change over time because people buy into them and improve their houses, that’s OK. I think there’s a big difference between unleashing the bulldozers and a gradual improvement in the standard of living in a neighborhood.”

But some doubt that this approach will work.

“I expect Pasadena to remain home for a large number of low-income people because they can’t afford the other communities around here,” said Jay Jackson, president of the Western Business Development Center, which provides financial and technical assistance to small, minority-run businesses. “All this talk about ‘gentrification’ and the development of a ‘tourist economy’ flies in the face of the fact that low-income people have no place to go.”

So Pasadena enters its second century with mixed prospects but with a number of advantages--an active citizenry, a progressive tradition, an apparent desire to solve some of the problems of race and class and, perhaps not least important, the right size.

“If you have too many poor people or too many homeless or too much crime, you just can’t cope,” poverty researcher Denise Wood said. “But here the problems are manageable, if we have the will to solve them.”

PASADENA BY THE NUMBERS

Population (1986 est.) 128,526 Ethnic, Racial mix (1980): White 54.67% Black 20.21% Latino 18.37% Asian 5.19%

Median Income (1985) $22,141 Under $10,000 24.0% $35,000-$50,000 11.8% $50,000-75,000 7.8% Over $75,000 4.5%

Median House Price (1984) $118,750

School Enrollment (1985) Public 22,393 Private (est.) 5,000

Public School Ethnic, Racial Mix: Black 41.4% Latino 29.3% White 23.4% Asian 2.3% American Indian 0.2% Other 3.4%

Welfare Recipients (1983)* 19,770

Air Quality: 1985 first-stage episodes 40 second-stage episodes 0 1970 first-stage episodes 115 second-stage episodes 19

Voter Registration (1986): Democratic 30,566 52% Republican 24,432 42%

In 1980, Pasadena favored Reagan over Carter, 20,786 to 16,479.

In 1984, Reagan beat Mondale 22,223 to 20259.

In 1982, Tom Bradley outpolled George Deukmejian for governor in Pasadena, 20,158 to 17,444.

Major Employers: Jet Propulsion Lab 5,500 Parsons Corp. 3,700 Pasadena Unif. School Dist. 2,475 Caltech 2,400 Pacific Bell 2,305 Bank of America 1,400 Kaiser Permanente reg. office 1,400 City of Pasadena 2,390

*Includes duplications; some people are eligible for more than one program.