Gazebo Issue Uncovers Split Over Growth in Morro Bay

For two years, the controversy has divided city government, civic organizations and many residents. It has been the subject of three petition campaigns and has been debated endlessly at City Council meetings.

Because the various sides were so intransigent and no compromise seemed possible, residents decided that the only way to solve the dispute was by a formal vote. The issue recently qualified for the November ballot here.

On election day, the heated political debate will finally come to an end and voters will have to decide which political camp they are aligned with: those who want a gazebo in the city park or those who do not want a gazebo in the city park.

‘Many People Feel Alienated’

“The gazebo issue may create more sparks than the presidential election,” said Bud Zeuschner, a former Morro Bay mayor. “Many people feel alienated from national issues because they don’t think they can make a difference. But people here realize they can have an influence on whether the gazebo goes in the park or not.”

The Great Gazebo Controversy is a “metaphor for the town,” Zeuschner said. Morro Bay, like most coastal cities in California, is divided along “more-growth versus less-growth” factions, he said, and the gazebo issue highlights that division.

“One side here likes it just the way it is and wants to preserve the small town, fishing village atmosphere,” said Zeuschner, a speech professor at Cal Poly San Luis Obisbo. “They feel the gazebo is out of character. The other group thinks the town needs a bit more spit and polish and growth. They are pushing for the gazebo.”

Leaders of the two factions are a study in opposites. Heading the pro-gazebo group is Warren Dorn, a Los Angeles County supervisor for 16 years who once made a brief run for governor. Dorn moved to Morro Bay in 1976, served as mayor in the early 1980s and founded Morro Bay Beautiful, the gazebo sponsors.

It Was Easier in L.A.

“It was easier to build the Music Center, much of the Civic Center, Martin Luther King Hospital and the County Museum of Art, which we did when I was supervisor, than it is to put a gazebo in a town park here,” said Dorn, 69, a real estate and management consultant.

Opposing Dorn is Joan Silva, who has been a waitress for 40 years. Silva, dressed in blue stretch pants, white tennis shoes and a sweat shirt and sitting beside a coffee table covered with issues of the National Enquirer, does not fit the mold of a civic activist. But when the city voted to accept the gazebo she “got mad as hell.”

“I played in that park as a kid, my children played in that park and my grandchildren play there now,” she said. “The park’s been just fine the way it is. It’s a very small park and the gazebo would just take up too much space. Who needs it?”

The dispute began when Morro Bay Beautiful, a group of residents dedicated to sprucing up the town, decided that City Park, the small park in the center of town, needed a gazebo. The group raised $12,000 and, in 1986, proposed to build a gazebo, 22-feet in diameter, and donate it to the city.

“We thought it would be a nice focal point for the community,” Dorn said. “It would be a nice place for band concerts and weddings. It would give the town a lift, a touch of class.”

The City Council did not object to a gazebo in the city. It did not object to a gazebo in a park. But it objected to a gazebo in City Park. After a spirited debate, the City Council decided that the triangular half-acre park was too small to accommodate a gazebo and suggested it be placed in the larger park in the north end of town.

Morro Bay Beautiful refused. It was their gift, Dorn said, and they should be able to decide where it would go. Dorn prefers the smaller City Park, he said, because most visitors go by it on their way to the harbor.

The issue resurfaced after the city elections later that year. A pro-gazebo mayor and City Council were elected. The new Administration decided the gazebo would look fine in the small park and they gave Morro Bay Beautiful the go-ahead.

Silva Objected

But Joan Silva objected.

“I didn’t like the way they were trying to jam this thing down our throats whether we wanted it or not,” she said. “I decided to fight ‘em on it.”

Silva needed signatures from 10% of the registered voters in Morro Bay, a city of 10,000 midway between San Francisco and Los Angeles, to qualify her initiative for the ballot. She made sure that the other waitresses at work registered to vote, so they could sign the petition. Then Silva and her husband, a retired milk truck driver, began knocking on doors.

“My husband never does anything like this,” Silva said. “He usually sits at home and watches baseball games. Sometimes I can’t even get him to vote. But he was really riled up about this thing.”

Citizens Action League, a group formed to control development in Morro Bay, assisted Silva in obtaining signatures and eventually the gazebo dispute divided the community along the issue of growth. As the dialectics of small town politics proceeds apace, the rhetoric grew increasingly shrill.

Trading Accusations

Silva bandies about terms like “conflict of interest” because, she claims, the mayor and several councilmen have attended Morro Bay Beautiful fund-raising barbecues. And Dorn accused his opponents of “dirty politics” for falsely accusing him of wanting to move the park’s shuffleboard court to make room for the gazebo.

“When I ran against Baxter Ward for (Los Angeles County) supervisor I thought I’d seen the worst kind of campaigning,” Dorn said. “But he was a pussycat compared to these people.”

Dorn slammed his fist on the table, fixed his visitor with an angry glare and denounced his opponents in the Citizen Action League as “scheming, insidious . . . no-growth fanatics.

“They are a dissident group! They don’t want anything to happen here!” Dorn shouted.

But Silva said she is not a member of the Citizen Action League, and described her concern as more basic.

“For me, this isn’t about all the complicated issues of development, zoning and growth versus no growth,” Silva said. “I’m only interested in gazebo versus no gazebo.”

The Great Gazebo Controversy is a ‘metaphor for the town.’