NEWS ANALYSIS : Santa Ana Vote Showed Latinos They Have Voice

When a certified letter stamped with the official seal of the City of Santa Ana arrived in their mailboxes, they skimmed past “Dear Property Owner” and flipped it over, glancing at the map on the back.

What they saw made their hearts stop: The city was proposing a new redevelopment zone that would envelop the entire central core of Santa Ana. Their streets. Their businesses. Their churches. Their homes.

The city’s plan triggered an extraordinary reaction in this predominantly Latino community. Some were afraid. Some were angry. Many spoke no English and most had never protested anything before. But, one by one, about 2,000 residents boldly descended on City Hall Tuesday in a display of overwhelming distrust for city leaders and a willingness to protect their barrios.

More spontaneous than orchestrated, the groundswell was so massive that the stunned Santa Ana City Council shelved the ambitious redevelopment plan indefinitely.

The city leaders had dramatically misjudged how the community would react, and a plan they thought was a well-intentioned way to raise money for new schools and parks was perceived as an attack on Latinos.

To many of the residents, the word redevelopment smacked of mirrored office towers, sterile stucco subdivisions and touristy boutiques. They worried that it wouldn’t be long before their barrios, along with their culture and heritage, vanished.

Arturo Montez said he has never seen anything like it in the 25 years he has spent as a Latino-rights activist in Santa Ana. He believes that the turnout Tuesday may signal the start of a political movement and that it means the Latino community is serving notice to its mostly Anglo leaders that it will not be pushed around.

“When we organized the effort, we figured maybe 100 people at the most would show up,” said Montez, who is Santa Ana chapter president and state director of urban affairs for the League of United Latin American Citizens, or LULAC, which urged residents to attend Tuesday’s public hearing.

“When I got there, I thought it was a festival or something. Like Cinco de Mayo. I was wondering if I had the right place. Then I turned around, and there were police lines and the whole thing. That had to be the biggest turnout I’ve ever seen.”

Mayor Daniel H. Young listened to the emotional outpourings of residents for about an hour before he cut short the hearing and joined in a council vote to indefinitely postpone all action on the redevelopment plan. The city staff will now reach out to the community and attempt to explain the proposal Young called “dead on arrival.”

“It’s going to put everybody back to the drawing board in how to present it to the community,” said Councilman Robert L. Richardson, who is Anglo.

“Based on the number of people that were there and what they had to say, it was clear that people need a lot more information. Perhaps down the road, when they understand it, and how it serves the needs of the community and the schools, they will feel differently about it. If they don’t, it won’t go anywhere.”

Cindy Nelson, executive director of the city’s Community Development Agency, insists that the redevelopment plan is designed to help Latino neighborhoods, not hurt them. The purpose, city officials say, is to eliminate blight, not drive people from their homes.

Under the plan, 45% of the city would be designated as a redevelopment zone, which means taxes from any new development that occurs there would be earmarked for local schools and parks. They predict that it could generate $38 billion over the 35-year life of the program.

City officials stress that there are no specific development projects identified yet and no plans to seize property by eminent domain.

But many of the Latinos who live there said they have lost all trust in the leaders who govern their city, which has about 300,000 residents, over half of them of Latino origin. They fear that the streets the city will call blighted are the same areas they call home.

“I don’t trust them. What have they ever done for me? They say this and do that,” said John Abelardo, 44, who lives in the 1000 block of Pine Street in the proposed redevelopment area.

“From what I hear they are going to end up giving the city the right to sell our land through eminent domain,” Abelardo said. “They say they are not going to. But they don’t respect Latinos. They want to move us out of our homes. I won’t let them. I’m not moving.”

Margarita Sanchez, 52, who has owned a house on St. Andrew Place for more than 15 years, fears that the city will force her out of her home.

“Latinos don’t vote enough, so this is what we get,” she said. “Maybe we should kick those people out of office. They are worse than Mexico. At least there we know they are crooked. Here they claim to be helping you, then they stab you in the back.”

It was truly a grass-roots effort that got people to turn out at Tuesday’s council meeting. Montez said a few LULAC members called a few community leaders who in turn asked everyone they called to notify five or 10 others.

“It reminds me of war drums,” said Rueben Martinez, a political activist who led the Latino movement for Bill Clinton’s presidential campaign in Orange County. “People were saying, ‘Did you hear they are going to take away our houses?’ Anytime they are going to remove your house, look out. That’s your castle. You better believe 2,000 people are going to show up.”

Martinez added, however, that much of the protesters’ concerns are based on misunderstandings and that city officials failed to explain the benefits of the project to residents.

He called redevelopment “a win-win situation for the schools, parks and the people.”

“People panicked,” he said. “I personally feel if the residents are more informed in a more subtle way, that this (redevelopment plan) is good for the community.”

But others disagree. Montez said Santa Ana residents have good cause to be distrustful, since the city has not addressed their needs in the past or reached out to hear their concerns. Few tax dollars, he said, have ever been spent to improve conditions there.

“This has been building up for the last couple of years,” he said. “This issue touches people’s property rights, and that crosses all lines of color and politics.”

Montez, who is an urban planner, said the city’s plan is too vague since it doesn’t outline where new parks or schools would be built. He compared it to a developer going to the bank to borrow money without any plans for what it would be spent on.

“It doesn’t take a Ph.D. to see the amount of housing that has been torn down at the same time that the population has increased,” he said. “Something is wrong. You have people packed into houses.”

“The facts speak for themselves,” he added. “They want to build a Mile Square Park like in Fountain Valley and clean out a whole area of Hispanics.”

Nelson of the city’s Redevelopment Agency said the area was chosen not because it is dominated by Latinos, but because of its other demographics: high density, low income, low education and high crime.

Of 102 crime-reporting areas in Santa Ana, 34 are categorized as “high-crime” areas, and of those, 30 are in the proposed redevelopment area, she said.

Mike Vail of the Santa Ana Unified School District said revenue from establishing a redevelopment area would be a creative way to fund building of new schools that are badly needed to ease overcrowding. He said there is already a $4-billion backlog on state-funded school building projects, so the state can’t offer much help.

“Santa Ana Unified is facing a school district crisis, and for that reason the district endorses the project you are considering,” Vail told the City Council Tuesday.

Council member Richardson also said he supports the plan as a novel way to find money for schools and parks without raising taxes.

If the area is designated for redevelopment, the city would freeze the taxes paid to the state on property there. As the area is improved and its value increases, new tax money would then go to the city instead of the state and would be used to build new schools and parks.

But not all school officials agree.

Sal Mendoza, who serves on the school district’s board, said Wednesday that the plan sounds good, but leaves him with too many doubts. He especially worries that it could lead to the city exerting powers of eminent domain.

“There’s got to be a more creative way of building schools,” he said. “Let’s build schools on undeveloped land, let’s not displace people.”

John Raya, a Santa Ana plumber who serves on an advisory committee that the council created to debate the redevelopment plan, said a major flaw is that it would give the city and school district the power to seize property without a requirement to replace any housing that is torn down.

“Call it ethnic cleansing or whatever word turns people on. The school district buys the property and the people go on their way,” Raya said. “It’s like Caltrans. They just pay you to move out, but ultimately you don’t have a choice. When you place that much power in the hands of government it’s hard to fight. That frightens people.”

Ernest Mendez, 67, who lives on Ross Street, said many residents of the targeted area are like him--they have owned their houses for several decades and couldn’t find affordable, equivalent houses elsewhere even if they wanted to.

“I have a pretty good house,” he said. “When I bought it, it was $14,000. Now it’s (worth) $200,000. My floors are all tile. Where am I going to get another house like that?”

Montez said the turnout was so large Tuesday night, and people were so confused, afraid and angry, that he feared a riot.

“If it was a hot day in August, they would have had some trouble,” he said. “Good thing (Mayor) Young cut it off.”

If those 2,000 people start voting in elections, he said, it would force some changes in the school board and City Council.

Even if a movement fails to materialize, activists on both sides of the issue said the council’s decision to shelve the plan proves to Latinos that their voices can be heard.

“I would say that 90% of them never knew where City Hall was before,” Martinez said. “But now they know.”

Times correspondent Jon Nalick contributed to this report.

Proposed Redevelopment Zone

Santa Ana officials say their redevelopment plan is designed to help Latino neighborhoods, but many residents fear that the city will drive them from their homes. Their protests have shelved the ambitious plan temporarily.

Shelved redevelopment zone