Opinion: Higher revenues, improved streets show Anaheim leaders made the right call on working with Disneyland

To the editor: Your readers were not provided a balanced perspective on the relationship between the city of Anaheim and Walt Disney Co. I was interviewed about my years as mayor, including about agreements reached between the city and the company to create the Anaheim Resort District. (“Is Disney paying its share in Anaheim?” Sept. 24)

The vastly greater-than-anticipated revenues from tourism since the resort creation are hardly mentioned. The many beautification improvements to decaying old streetscapes near Disneyland — a truly stunning before-and-after success — are ignored.

Also not mentioned are the hundreds of millions of dollars in crucial transportation improvements included in the agreements, as well as the affordable housing projects adjacent to the resort.

The major financial windfall to the city treasury from tourism should be a source of pride and opportunity for the city. Anaheim has more financial resources than most California cities, primarily due to the largesse of tourism. Yet the city has struggled in recent years to effectively demonstrate how it spends those extra revenues on community benefits, such as new parks, youth programs or street and sidewalk repairs.

Meanwhile, the city’s tourism revenues and employment base continue to grow every year thanks to the thoughtful — and unanimous — decisions made at City Hall 20 years ago.

Assemblyman Tom Daly (D-Anaheim)

The writer was mayor of Anaheim from 1992-2002.

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To the editor: For decades, Disney’s profits went to Hollywood executives and Wall Street investors, leaving Anaheim with low-wage jobs and soaring poverty — and a puppet City Council showering it with corporate welfare.

Great to see Mayor Tom Tait and his new Council majority finally standing up for their own citizens.

Chris Norby, Fullerton

The writer was an Orange County supervisor from 2003-10 and a state assemblyman from 2010-12.

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To the editor: When will our states, cities and our community leaders wise up, bind together and refuse to buckle under to the financial demands of corporations like Disney, Amazon or Wal-Mart?

In the long run, these corporate welfare deals are almost always losers for taxpayers and the health of the community. Time and again we have seen states and cities battle each other over landing a big company that will just bleed them dry.

We the people have to tell our representatives to just say no.

Paul Burns, Granada Hills

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