Is there anything that the “two Anaheims” crowd will not transmogrify into a racial issue? After reading yesterday’s Voice of OC story on the budgeted funds to renovate the Anaheim Tennis Center, it would seem the answer is “No.”
According to the Voice of OC, there is “outrage” in Anaheim that the proposed city budget includes $6.4 million for improvements to the Anaheim Tennis Center, which is adjacent to Boysen Park in the flatlands of central Anaheim.
Why the outrage over the city investing money into improving a city-owned recreation center in the flatlands? Haven’t the city’s left-wing activist elements been alleging that Anaheim Hills gets all the goodies and the Flatlands get zip?
Little Peoples Park
The “outrage” is that the budget doesn’t (according to the article) funding for Little People’s Park, a 1-acre playground near downtown. And now that the Anaheim Left has revived Little People’s Park as an icon of alleged Latino repression (due to a rock-throwing incident with the Anaheim police in 1978), what we have now is an attempt to turn Tennis Center funding into a racial issue.
The article claims Latinos are “outraged,” and quotes two Latino activists to prove it.
There’s the underlying assumption in the article — spoken and unspoken — and that tennis is a white person’s game, and not for Latinos. Isn’t that an example of racial stereotyping?
“I don’t know anybody that plays tennis,” said Marisol Ramirez, a 21-year-old resident of west Anaheim.
Well, that settles it. Yank the funding!
Ramirez continues:
“If they would have approved district elections, then we would have a better sense of our priorities in each of the districts.”
The Voice of OC article fails to mention that Ramirez is on the Board of Directors of OCCORD, which is leading the political push for single-member council districts along with its parent organization UNITE-HERE Local 11. So it’s not exactly surprising Ms. Ramirez would use this invented controversy as an opportunity to pitch OCCORD’s pet political project.
It’s not until the 15th paragraph of the article that we come across this rather important bit of information: the funding for these renovations can’t be spent on Little People’s Park:
[City of Anaheim spokesperson Ruth Ruiz] said funding for the tennis center improvements and those for Ponderosa Park come from the Platinum Triangle development and are to be specifically used for improvements that are geographically close to the Platinum Triangle.
“These funds cannot be shifted to projects outside the sphere of the Platinum Triangle development area,” Ruiz wrote in an email to Voice of OC. “As with a lot of projects in the CIP [capital improvements program] their inclusion in the CIP is not an automatic guarantee those projects will be built in a certain budget year.”
Since the article is ostensibly about funding for Tennis Center improvements, shouldn’t that key information be front-loaded for readers, rather than buried?
How many Anaheim residents use the Tennis Center? What’s the socio-economic demographic? To what extent is it utilized by youth tennis players or schools?
Those are good questions — and the article provides no answers. In fact, the only people not quoted in the article are people who use the Anaheim Tennis Center.
The Anaheim Tennis Center isn’t entitled to this funding. How much money, if any, the city should spend renovating it is a legitimate policy question and open for debate. However, that debate should be based on need and available resources. Race and ethnicity should have no place in it, because the city should seek to serve all of its citizens without regard to their race, ethnic or social status. The Mayor and City Council should steer clear of basing budgeting decisions on ethnic considerations or racial politics.
Little People’s Park was in ’78
Thank you. Missed key stroke.
Your framing of the history is a whole ‘nothing thing!
And coming again July 21st, 2013!
Many of the residents complained about park funding and here the city is putting money into a park (note not one in the hills) and the complaining continues.
Adam Elmahrek leads off with a guy boozing in Little Peoples Park. I’ll bet “Sergio” has never voted, but here he is complaining about where the city spends money.
My favorite quote from the Voice of OC was about the brown paper bag. That doesn’t actually lend credence and help their cause.
“One of the residents, a young Latino man named Sergio, walked over to the park’s small grass field, took a swig from his brown paper bag and gazed across the yellowing patches to where the children ran.”
Someone should tell Joanne Sosa to pay closer attention to what is going on with the budget. The funds allocated come from the resort district and must be used for a small number of park areas only. Her ominous warnings to the council members are hollow in that they can only spend those funds in certain parks for improvements. Pay attention Joanne !
She is horrible and a puppet of Lorri Galloway. SHe needs to get educated! Please leave Anaheim. Threats? Joanne gets her funding from Eli Home and pressures people to give because she acts like a terrorist. Watch out, Joanne. Attacks are coming on your precious Eli Home.
Joan Sosa is in charge of the Eastside Renewal Project, not the Eli Home. I am concerned about her sometimes negative impact on the Eli Home. Joan needs to be properly trained by staff there because she makes too many mistakes such as her complaint about city budgeting for attorney services for Family Justice Center. She is a nice lady but she is desperate for attention and frustrated that her views are incompatible with common sense.
James – you may not have been aware but ESCRI is a program funded and run by the Eli Home – per their website “ESCRI is a project of the Eli Home, a veteran organization that has been breaking the cycle of child abuse for over 26 years.” http://www.elihome.org/
It is just disgusting that this woman financed by Lorri Galloway, through a program that raises funds purportedly to provide services for abused women and children, attacks our city, and inspires protest and “revolution.” There is nothing “nice” about either of them.
Tom Tait looks like the biggest idiot for not knowing that the tennis center issue was NOT in the Anaheim budget. Clearly he is feeding information to voice of OC. Seriously!?!?! What a loser
The real story is why is Tom Tait, a so-called Republican, in bed with the public-employee unions? Why does we work with the Vice of OC when they are a public employee union blog? Remember, he tried to pay is part-time secretary $100k. Tom Tait is not a Republican.
What idiotic thing will he do next? Does he want to ban plastic grocery bags in Anaheim too?
Latino isn’t really a race, so how can it be racial?