Publication Date: Wednesday, September 29, 2004
Our Town: A city forged in fire
Our Town: A city forged in fire
(September 29, 2004) by Don Kazak
Close by Highway 101, a big part of East Palo Alto's future is rising to the sky: The luxury Four Seasons Hotel has taken on a skeletal shape as construction workers scramble over the steel frame, putting more beams and pieces into place daily.
Revenue from the hotel, and the shopping center just across the freeway with the bright blue IKEA store, comprise the cornerstone of the city's financial plans, more than a decade in the making.
Those plans were put into place with an eye to the tax base they would provide the fledgling city. The plans were also made back during the city's troubled past, when gangs of drug dealers ruled the streets against an overmatched and undermanned police department.
It was an obvious truth a decade ago that development and economic success would not come to the city unless the streets were under control.
The city is facing a similar reality today. When 10 of the 12 City Council candidates gathered on Saturday for a two-hour candidates' forum at the Midpeninsula Media Center in Palo Alto, the city's worrisome recent increase in violence was on peoples' minds.
The candidates were asked to name the top issue currently facing the city.
"Regrettably right now, I would have say security," said Duane Bay, one of three incumbents in the race, along with Pat Foster and Donna Rutherford. "Our children are afraid of drive-by shootings," he added.
Bay was referring to a 15-year-old boy killed in a drive-by shooting Aug. 27, prompting residents to hold an anti-violence march through the city Sept. 11. A 23-year-old man was shot and killed while standing in his front yard July 22, one of a half-dozen killings so far this year. There were 45 shootings in the last four months of last year -- now-retired Police Chief Wes Bowling said most were gang-related.
All the other candidates at Saturday's television forum also expressed concern about the rising violence. Every week, the Weekly and other news organization receive faxed press releases from the detective bureau in the city telling of another person shot and wounded, seeking help looking for witnesses.
So public safety is back being the top issue in the city again after years of community haggling over development policies.
A telephone survey of East Palo Alto residents earlier this year by a local non-profit, East Palo Alto One, found, astoninshingly, that 65 percent of residents felt "unsafe or very unsafe" walking in their neighborhoods.
I talked with San Mateo County Sheriff Don Horsley a few months ago about a perception that things were sliding back to the bad old days in the city. He admitted to serious concern about whether police could hold the line against the increasing street violence.
All of this has happened before, and it took enormous political will and leadership to turn the tide a decade ago. In a historic City Council retreat, the five then-members made a vow to put political differences aside and work for the safety of the city and to get redevelopment moving to produce a tax base.
It worked.
Aided by police officers from Palo Alto and Menlo Park, along with the California Highway Patrol and San Mateo County Sheriff's deputies, a massive effort was made a decade ago to arrest drug dealers and end the street violence. But many of those put behind bars are now getting out again.
The East Palo Alto City Council of the 1990s was fortunate to have three multi-term mayors who provided the needed leadership and political unity: Sharifa Wilson, Rose Jacobs Gibson, and R.B. Jones.
The present City Council doesn't have that same unity or urgency.
The upcoming election may be less important that the hiring of a new police chief. The city's police department was the target of a harsh San Mateo County Civil Grand Jury report last year, and new leadership in the department is desperately needed.
People want to believe in the promise of East Palo Alto. It could become a proverbial Shining City on the Hill, with its rich ethnic diversity and racial harmony.
Meanwhile, the Four Seasons Hotel is half-completed, just like the city's hopes.
Weekly Senior Staff Writer Don Kazak can be e-mailed at dkazak@paweekly.com.
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