Posted on September 23, 2009 by christophermpaulson
The City of Alhambra? Let’s hope so.
About six weeks ago I was given the task of putting together an application for the “Most Business Friendly City in Los Angeles County” Award, presented by the Los Angeles Economic Development Corporation. This was the first time we were applying for this award, so I was eager to be given the chance to have this project and run with it. After several weeks of work, I put together a huge binder worth of material, which covered everything from the speed and ease that it takes to get City approval and entitlements in order to proceed with construction projects, new development, or improvements to existing businesses; highlights of how low and reasonable taxes and fees are in the City; and a bunch of general information about how fantastic it is to live, work, and play in the City of Alhambra. It was quite an effort, but I was extremely proud of my product that I submitted to the selection committee.
Well that was submitted by the July 31 deadline, and I hadn’t heard anything, despite being told we would be notified of the results in August. I got a call from my City Manager last Thursday while he was at the League of California Cities conference in San Jose, and he had been notified that the City of Alhambra was selected as one of 6 finalists for the award! Awesome. The winner will be announced at the 14th Annual Eddy Awards in Beverly Hills on November 12, and I think we have a pretty good chance of winning.
The last portion of the application process is producing a 60 second video about the City, essentially a commerical. I envision one of those great tourism commericals such as the one with Arnold and Maria encouraging people to visit and work and live in California:
The following are the videos produced by last year’s finalists, which were the cities of Cerritos, Pasadena, Long Beach, Glendale and Santa Clarita. Santa Clarita won last year.
The City Manager was ecstatic to hear that my application had gone onto the final round, so as my reward, he gave me the fun job of producing the video that we would be submitting. Knowing that finances are tight, I wanted to produce a great video for as little as possible–thank goodness for friends. My buddy Steve is a film studio at the Art Center College of Design, located in Pasadena. I called him to see if he thought he could produce a 60 second film at the same quality or higher as the examples provided above, he responded with an emphatic YES! He gave me some of his work to show to the City Manager as an example of his work, to see if the CM would be interested in him producing the film. The following are three entertaining examples of his work:
That was Emptyville, this is Pasadena City Hall:
And finally, Lightshow:
The City Manager enjoyed Steve’s work, and gave me the go ahead to work with him to produce this 1 minute film. Awesome! Now I’m off to write the storyboards and script, check back here sometime before the October 23 deadline to see our final product…
Posted on September 3, 2009 by christophermpaulson
I figured it would be cool to kick-off this blog with one of the most interesting events that I’ve experienced at work in the last few months. An event which has been causing national media attention over the last few weeks, and which garnered local and national media coverage right here in Alhambra. I’m talking about the Health Care Town Hall Meetings that members of Congress have been taking home to their district during their summer recess. They started in the beginning of August, as a way for members of Congress from both sides of the aisle to have an open discussion with their constituents, and try to sift through the extremely confusing 1,000 page bill. Well as we all know by now, they seemed to have gotten out of hand in many instances, and turned into angry scenes of shouting, yelling, kicking and screaming and have become violent, and as a result, have been all over the news, such as this example from Tampa, Florida:
I’m not going to waste anyone’s time here, with talking about the policy of the issue, giving my politicized opinion of the bill, the state of American health care, the politicians, or any of that junk–nope. I’m going to give you the much more interesting, behind the scenes look at how the town hall meeting that took place on August 11, 2009 went down.
As the full-time intern working directly for the City Manager of the City of Alhambra, I have the fortune to be directly involved in nearly every operation in City Hall, from redevelopment, to finance, to public works and utilities, to community services, any and every project I am aware of, including the occasional large event–such as the town hall meeting.
It all began on Thursday, August 6, 2009. The librarian walked into the City Manager’s office and told him that our Congressman, Adam Schiff (D), was planning to host a health care reform town hall meeting at the community room in our new library. The CM was immediately alarmed, and needed more information, especially considering the recent news stories that we had all seen, showing crowds getting rowdy and even violent. The CM directed the librarian to arrange a meeting with the Congressman’s people for the following day.
We met on Friday with the Congressman’s District Director and other staff, we on the other hand, rolled deep, with the City Manager, Asst. CM/Risk Manager, Directors of Utilities and Community Services and Library, Chiefs of Police and Fire, two Asst. to the CM, and myself. The Congressman’s plan was to have a 1.5 hour long town hall at 6pm in the community room next Tuesday. There would be a 6 person panel, of which he would be on, alongside a VP from Kaiser, a UCLA Med Prof., an insurance company watchdog, and a patient’s rights watchdog, to be moderated by NBC 4′s Dr. Bruce Hentzel. The rest of the 290 capacity room would be set up with chairs for his constituents and members of the public. Anyone would be allowed to enter on a first come, first serve basis, regardless of whether they lived in the district. The first problem with that plan is that the 290 capacity is if everyone is standing, with chairs, the fire marshall caped the place at 180–the Congressman was expecting way more than that.
At that point we began to brainstorm some solutions. Our first position was that it be relocated somewhere else in the city or in another city–that was shot down immediately. Next it was suggested that we move it across the street to the auditorium at Alhambra High School (GO MOORS!), which would have been perfect except there was not a single seat in there because it was being remodled. I then suggested the gym at AHS–turned out that was being painted, but we were going to check the availability for next week. We then went next door to explore the gym, and according to the Superintendent, it could in fact be ready by Tuesday, the Congressman’s people were pleased with that result, and so we called the meeting and decided to reconvene Monday morning to hammer out the rest of the details.
At that point, City of Alhambra staff went to work doing our own research. My colleagues and I scoured the internet to get an idea of how big and crazy this event might in fact be. We found articles and advertisements in the local papers, including the Pasadena Star-News. Then we found that there were many other groups planning to show up to protest the event, show their support, or just participate in the democratic process. The most actively interested group was the Pasadena Patriots, a seemingly libertarian organization strongly opposed to health care reform and the public option. The Patriots had sent out an email to their members telling them to each bring 10 people down to Alhambra to protest, and to get there early. The group in support was Organizing for America, President Obama’s campaign organization, that is still actively mobilized to support the President’s initiatives. There were blogs and websites dedicated to 2nd amendment gun rights groups that were instructing members to show up to protest, everyone wanted to get in on this, even one website posted a an entry advertising that Single Democrats meet at the town hall to meet other single Dems! WOW! However, the most useful research was performed by the Alhambra Police Department, the Chief and Captain gather intel over the weekend, talking to police organizations around the country, to get info about how their town halls went. Tampa, Florida (seen above) gave the most useful info, saying their situation was what ours could have been, in which a room with too small of a capacity was used and people were denied access and therefore could not participate and they got angry, there was yelling and screaming and eventually pushing and shoving and it got way out of hand. APD was determined to not allow that to happen on their watch, we were not going to be one of O’Reilly’s Pinheads for something like that.
Monday morning rolled around, City staff met with the Congressman’s staff again, we gave them the bad news: based on intel gathered over the weekend, APD could not safely patrol and manage the expected crowd in an open environment such as the AHS gym, it was too pourous of a location with too many access points and way too vulnerable. The Congressman’s staff was disappointed, so they called him, and he headed down. The Chief of Police informed the Congressman that based on intel from around the country, it would not be feasible to hold it in the gym. So the Congressman asked what other option was available, so we suggested we treat this event in the same manner that we treat our highly successful Summer Jubilee. We have a summer street festival and concert series called Summer Jubilee, with recent acts such as Foreigner, Joan Jett, the Beach Boys, Pat Benatar, and Kenny Loggins, and we have it right outside of City Hall on Second Street.
(Note: this performance is of the Beach Boys, for Prof. Kaufman. Also note that Uncle Jesse from Full House is wailing away)
We close the street down and set up a stage on the other side in front of the high school–we would do the same for the Congressman, complete with a stage, mics, audio equipment and speakers, and set up chairs on the street in front of City Hall, this was an event we would manage very efficiently. The Congressman was very pleased with this idea, realizing that he would be able to accommodate an extremely large crowd. We were happy to help, despite having to take on the financial burden of renting the equipment, and paying overtime to approximately 60 police officers and 30 or so firefighters and other staff members. But, like the Lakers’ parade and the Jackson funeral, its just something that well run cities have to take care of, plus we have a fantastic relationship with the Congressman, so we were more than happy to facilitate his event.
This takes us to D-Day, Tuesday, the street was closed, the stage was set up, and around 3:30 the first constituents/protesters began to show up, for a 6pm event! There were tons of signs being waved, people from both sides of the aisle showed up. By 5:30 there were approximately 2,500 people, at one point in the evening there may have been as many as 3,000 people there.
It was by far the largest and safest town hall meeting on this subject this summer. There were approximately 8 news vans covering the event, all the local networks were there, as well as all the print media and radio. The event went off without a hitch. It lasted for about 2 hours, throughout the meeting there were cheers and many more jeers from the crowd, at times the Congressman was shouted down to the point where he would stop speaking and allow the crowd to settle down. And there was only a slight scuffle in the crowd, on the whole the event was peaceful, though loud and passionate. The Congressman was pleased that the event went so well, was peaceful and a productive display of democracy in action, he thanked the City of Alhambra for all of its hard work to help make this event such a sucess. It really was pretty cool to assist in the planning and execution of this event. My duties were varied throughout the night, I helped direct traffic earlier in the day, then helped our City Council get to their seats, then observed the rest of the night, looking out for any situations that need to be reported to the PD or the CM. It was a very fun day, and a great day for the City of Alhambra!
