An Empowered Santa Ana

The hard work of hundreds of Santa Ana residents, businesspeople and city officials has paid off with the federal government’s decision to award Orange County’s most populous city the designation “empowerment zone” and an expected $100 million.

For several years Santa Ana has benefited from the state label of “enterprise zone.” That has made businesses eligible for bonuses for hiring and training residents; it also brings state tax breaks. The federal designation will send an expected $10 million a year for 10 years to the city that has pockets of appalling poverty not far from well-maintained county, state and federal office buildings.

The Clinton administration provided appropriate fanfare for its award to Santa Ana this month. It summoned Mayor Miguel A. Pulido Jr. to Washington to stand next to Vice President Al Gore and accept a plaque spelling out the city’s new status.

It was significant that Santa Ana joined cities such as New York, Detroit and Atlanta in receiving the special aid from the federal government. Orange County isn’t a rural enclave, remote from big-city problems. Its larger, older cities, most of them in the northern or central parts of the county, have problems similar to those of urban areas elsewhere.

If the problems are not on the grand scale of a New York or Detroit, it’s because the populations are smaller. The poverty isn’t in clusters of high-rise buildings, but more usually found in sprawling, low-rise structures.

America’s cities have experienced tough times. Commuters moved to the suburbs to live. Then “edge cities” grew up outside the urban cores, providing homes, shopping malls and businesses. The telecommunications revolution has aided this development.

Ground zero for urban Orange County is the congressional district once held by Robert K. Dornan and now represented by his successor, Loretta Sanchez (D-Garden Grove). It includes parts of Santa Ana, Anaheim and Garden Grove. Dornan helped get federal funds for those cities; Sanchez has worked hard there too and stood in the limelight at the Gore ceremony.

Merely throwing money at problems doesn’t solve them. Santa Ana needs to see to it the money is well spent. Business leaders want to spend some of the funds on educating and training potential employees. Residents want money used to push the crime rate down and improve the neighborhoods.

Washington insisted that the cities show they had community support for their programs. Santa Ana brought together numerous organizations and asked them to spell out how the money should be spent. The result was a 150-page application for the empowerment zone designation.

Empowerment zones were created after the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Santa Ana is Orange County’s first city to get the money and was the only one in California to get the nod this time. Nineteen other cities across the country also were named empowerment zones.

In the 1990 census, Santa Ana’s unemployment rate was nearly 6%, or close to double the county average. Inside the empowerment zone area, which covers much of the central and southeast portions of the city, the median family income was about half that of the city as a whole. The Latino population was nearly 90% in the empowerment zone, compared with 69% in the city.

The experiences of other cities recognized as empowerment zones have been mixed. The key seems to be getting everyone in the affected area working from the same playbook. Done properly, new businesses can be attracted and old ones retained. Private firms can supplement the federal funds, putting up their own buildings. The city also can issue special bonds to spruce up run-down sections.

Large stretches of vacant buildings along North Main Street in Santa Ana speak of the city’s tough times, as the recession of the early 1990s dried up capital and customers moved elsewhere.

But here and there farther south on Main Street, buildings have been refurbished. The downtown arts area also offers hope for a revitalization of the central city.

The money will be coming; the city needs to spend it wisely and get support from the various segments of the community as it carries out its plans.

But on this occasion, it justly can take a moment to feel pride in being a city on the move where good things are happening because of people’s hard work.