Hometown Pride : Paramount Residents Hold Heads High Over All-America City Award

With the exception of a few months in Missouri when she was very young, Peggy Lemons has spent all of her 32 years in Paramount, growing up, going to school, marrying and raising her children.

But when people would ask where she lived, Lemons was not always straightforward.

“I told them I lived real close to Downey or Long Beach. And I said it very quietly,” Lemons said.

Like a lot of residents, Lemons was not proud of her hometown. A hay- and milk-producing community in the beginning, the city was one of 84 of the nation’s suburbs--including Bell Gardens, Compton and Huntington Park--which were declared urban disaster areas in a 1981 RAND Corp. report.

Downtown Paramount was decaying, dozens of the stores were empty, there were serious graffiti and gang problems and many of the city’s shabby homes and apartments needed paint and repairs. Abandoned vehicles sat on many of the properties.

Since then, however, the community of 40,000 has undergone a rebirth. Through redevelopment it has a shiny new downtown and shopping center, new homes and apartment complexes. And in part because of several innovative city projects, the neighborhoods are clean and a there has been a reduction in graffiti and gang activities.

Named for Award

Out of civic pride, Lemons and others have started to acknowledge where they live. And their pride received a significant boost recently when Paramount was one of 10 cities to receive an All-America City Award from the National Civic League.

“We are no longer quiet about where we live,” said Lemons’ husband, Don, a freight car repairman for Santa Fe railroad and a real estate salesman for a Downey realty firm. “Paramount has come a long way.”

The Lemons’ family, including daughters Shannon, 5, and Brandy, 7, were considering moving a few years ago. But now they are adding about $35,000 in improvements to their home.

“The city has really improved,” agreed Stanley Glass, 90, who has lived in the city for 67 years. “Paramount was once a dilapidated, run-down place with a few bars to drink beer in.”

The city’s new image started to take shape about eight years ago, Mayor Charles R. Weldon said recently, when the City Council hired Bill Holt as city manager, Richard R. Powers as director of community development and Sandy Groves as finance director.

(Powers was recently hired to be Norwalk’s city manager. And Groves will be his assistant.)

‘City Was Dying’

“The city was literally dying,” Weldon said, “but the council, along with some very talented staff people, started to do something about it.”

The Redevelopment Agency acquired more than 100 business sites to make way for $150 million in urban renewal along two blocks of Paramount Boulevard, the city’s major thoroughfare. Now, there are more than 38 retail shops on the west side, where the major store is a Vons market. And on the east side, there are 25 shops anchored by a Miller’s Outpost clothing store.

Powers said the city’s philosophy was to build up the downtown, then create housing to attract middle-income residents.

Since 1985, more than 24 acres have been zoned for new housing. Two different single-family housing tracts with 2-, 3- and 4-bedroom homes have been completed. Ten multifamily or apartment units are in various stages of development. All of the projects were undertaken by private developers who invested more than $75 million while the Redevelopment Agency contributed about $1.6 million, ,raccording to Pat West, deputy city manager.

Some residents worry that the housing boom has been too much, too fast. In fact, a slow-growth measure on the November ballot calls for reducing the maximum residential density for new apartments.

But redevelopment was only one of the changes that city officials and civic leaders pointed to with pride when they applied to gain All-America status from the civic league.

Each year, the league honors communities that have brought government, business and residents together to attack “major issues or problems,” said John Parr, president of the nonprofit New York-based organization. Four other California cities--Inglewood, Carlsbad, Colton and Richmond--were among the 94 entrants. But only Paramount was among the 10 national winners.

Paramount spent $250 to enter the competition. And when five residents and three council members traveled to Houston in June to make a presentation before the Civic League, the trip cost about $10,000. The city is expected to spend another 15,000 to $20,000 in promoting the award, designing a new city logo and holding a recognition dinner for civic and city officials.

White House Visit

In a couple of months, city representatives are also expected to join other national winners at the White House, where they will receive their All-America City awards from either President Reagan or Vice President Bush.

The city’s award, according to Parr, came largely on the strength of three municipal programs.

Through a Public Safety Innovations program, residents are called on to evaluate the performance of the Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies who provide local law enforcement service under a contract with the city.

Peggy Lemons was part of that involvement as a Neighborhood Watch captain and a member of the city’s Public Safety Commission.

“Whenever we went to (Neighborhood Watch) meetings, they always bogged down into gripe sessions about how bad our deputies were,” Lemons said. “Many (deputies) were rude. Maybe the deputies knew our reputation as a high-crime area and they didn’t want to be there.”

Under the citizen-evaluation system, each resident has the opportunity to rate a deputy’s performance as courteous, indifferent, rude, excellent or poor. Residents can write additional remarks on evaluation cards and then mail them to the deputy’s supervisor.

Validate Performance

“We think it was a good concept,” said Sheriff’s Lt. Bob Mirabella. While the department regularly evaluates its deputies, Mirabella said, the cards act as “another way of validating” performance.

A program called Alternatives to Gang Membership is an early intervention project for 10- and 11-year-olds in the Paramount Unified School District.

Tony Ostos, an instructor with the project since it originated in 1982, said it is the first in the nation to try to turn youths against gangs at such an early age. The program is part of fourth- and fifth-grade students’ curriculum in the Paramount school district. The students are exposed to films, lectures, posters and puppet shows that point out the destructive effect of gang activities on gang members and their families. Violence, graffiti, drugs and tattoos are discussed with the aim of discouraging the youths from joining gangs.

In the six years of the program’s existence, about 3,000 students have participated and an estimated 250 community meetings have been held with parents and other residents, according to city data.

Gang Uniforms Absent

“Youngsters are staying out of gangs.” said Ostos, a former probation officer who has a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UC Riverside. “I can see it when I walk on campuses and in the neighborhoods. I don’t see the gang uniforms.”

Finally, a program called Let’s Get Paramount Neighborhoods Lookin’ Good brings community volunteers together with city crews, tenants and property owners in cleaning, painting and fixing up neighborhoods.

Almost the entire congregation of the 1,400-member Emmanuel Reformed Church has been involved in the project, including member Robert Ibarra.

“This is a great way to help the community, help the elderly, to do God’s will,” said the 20-year-old Cerritos College student.

Frank Edwards, a 77-year-old resident whose home was recently painted by project workers, agrees: “This is a good program. I have to hand it to city and these people. You won’t find many like them.”

New Developments(1) - 172 apartments(2) - 66 apartments(3) - 136 single-family homes(4) - 192 apartments(5) - 35 single-family homes(6) - 62 apartments(7) - 92 apartments Statistics

Population: 43,035

Area: 4.80 square miles

Incorporation: Jan. 30, 1957

Median household income: $20,992

Median home value: $62,700

Median Age: 26.7

Racial/ethnic mix (White,60.9%; Latino, 50.9%; black, 7.3% other 31.8%; Total is more than 100% because racial/ethnic breakdowns overlaps)

Source: Donnelley Demographics (1987 estimates)