The Insensitivity Is Official

The American Dream doesn’t always come easily. It is harder to come by when people who are pursuing it, especially immigrants in the land of opportunity, are ill-treated by insensitive public officials who ought to be helping. An example is the Santa Ana city council, which has twice victimized Miguel Pulido, owner of the Ace Muffler Shop on East 1st Street.

Last year city officials signed an agreement for developing a neighborhood shopping center that would have forced him to move his shop. Later they said that he could stay. Last week they went back on their word and voted to condemn his land.

What the city is doing is not only wrong, but the way it has gone about it is also wrong. Pulido was not notified of an impending Redevelopment Agency vote to condemn his property; the matter was not even on the agency’s agenda. And the condemnation was started after several city officials last month assured the shop owner that they had abandoned their efforts to force him out. Mayor Daniel E. Griset even personally visited the muffler shop to tell Pulido to “sleep easy.” Then came the nightmare condemnation vote, opposed only by Councilman John Acosta.

The city says that it is forced to proceed with the shopping center because it has been threatened with a lawsuit from the developer if it backs out. Pulido plans to keep fighting City Hall. He should.

Pulido, an immigrant from Mexico City, bought the muffler shop 14 years ago after working in it for 10 years. Business is thriving. Other shopping centers have successfully incorporated auto-repair shops in their designs. This one could, too. Some developers were ready to consider doing that for Pulido’s shop, but not the one with which the city signed its agreement.

The city was too anxious to sign any agreement that would force out a growing and successful 24-year-old business that was anything but a blight. Above all, having signed the agreement, it should not have assured Pulido that he was safe.

The mistakes have been all the city’s. But Pulido is the one who may have to pay for them.