Slowing down
Paul Clinton
Shortly after leaving the City Council earlier this month, Peter
Green decided to retire from Golden West College, wrapping up a
distinguished career as an educator, civic activist and public
servant.
Green said he will leave his 32-year teaching post at the end of
the school year, in the spring.
“I’ve always enjoyed teaching, and it will be hard for me to
leave,” Green said. “But I know others will come along.”
Green has taught at the community college since 1970, when he
joined Golden West’s faculty after moving to Huntington Beach from
Oklahoma, where he was the president of St. Gregory’s University, in
Shawnee.
For more than three decades, Green has taught biology, ecology and
zoology as a full-time instructor. This year, he was putting in 15
hours a week lecturing and conducting lab sessions.
Green decided to hang up his lab coat this year, he said, in part
because of sweeping changes in the science field, which has been
permanently altered by a biotech and genetics revolution.
“I felt now is the time, because there are so many [new] ideas
coming out in the biological sciences [field],” he said. “I find
myself not keeping up to date with the technological changes.”
Green cited the highly technical equipment now being used to
measure water quality as one reason for the decision.
On Dec. 2, Green stepped down from his second eight-year term on
the City Council because of term limits. He served as a councilman
from 1984 to 1992. He was elected again in 1994. Along the way, he
was the city’s mayor two times.
Green got his first taste of environmental activism in the late
1970s and early 1980s as a member of Amigos de Bolsa Chica, a group
founded to halt plans for a massive housing development on the Bolsa
Chica Mesa.
Green served as president of that group in 1980 and 1981.
Amigos members urged Green to run for the City Council in 1984.
During his two terms on the council, Green helped guide the city in
its shift from an organ of developers to a place where water-quality
issues, wetlands preservation and other environmental causes have
risen to the top of the agenda.
“I think I got on the City Council primarily for my environmental
interests,” Green said. “The balance between the environment and the
economic needs of the city has been preserved.”
In between his two stints on the council, Green secured an
appointment from then-Gov. Pete Wilson to an oversight committee that
was reviewing measures to rehabilitate the San Francisco Bay.
Earlier this month, when he stepped down from the City Council,
wife Cathy ascended the dais, replacing him on the city’s primary
decision-making panel.
With much more time on his hands nowadays, Green said he would get
back to some household projects that have had short shrift for city
issues.
“I have a vegetable garden I’ve neglected for the past few years,”
Green said. “So I’m going to concentrate on that.”
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