New Age City : Pasadena Puts an Emphasis on Human Services

So you remember the good old days, when Pasadena was the home of beer magnates and chewing-gum heirs, a palmy little city where the folks on “Millionaire’s Row” called the shots at City Hall.

And you recall the Pasadena of the 1970s and early 1980s, a boom town whose leaders, according to proponents of slow growth, never met a developer they didn’t like.

Then you might not recognize the Pasadena of the 1990s. This San Gabriel Valley outpost of “old money” and new office buildings has become, over the past decade or so, the soul of municipal kindness, a sort of Mecca of New Age reform.

“There’s a new breed at City Hall,” acknowledges City Councilman William Paparian. “We’ve gone into a completely different orbit.”

You can say that again, snap critics from different ends of the political spectrum. Depending on whom you talk to, Pasadena’s wide-ranging efforts to do the right thing have become so onerous that businessmen and investors are treated like gate-crashers at a church social, or else the reforms are so “nebulous” that they rarely translate into actual programs.

Still, the changes are apparent.

The new Pasadena boasts of police who employ the “personal touch”; an anti-AIDS program that disseminates condoms; “bicycle friendly” streets, and the county’s only shelter for the homeless east of Los Angeles.

And, as of three weeks ago, there’s a new “holistic” approach to government in which everybody, from department administrators to school janitors to tree pruners, will be asked to serve as on-the-spot human service workers.

“It’s everybody’s job,” City Manager Philip Hawkey says.

The home of the Rose Bowl and the Tournament of Roses Parade nowadays includes a cultural mixture of blacks, Latinos, Asians and Armenians, most of them fiercely protective of their neighborhoods and openly critical of the old ways of doing things.

“The little old lady from Pasadena,” says Paparian, referring to the Beach Boys’ 1960s song about loopy California lifestyles, “now wears huarache sandals. And she speaks Armenian.”

Because the city went from at-large elections to district elections in 1980, the newcomers have a voice. “The move to district elections--that was a major shift,” says Rick Cole, one of the more liberal voices on the seven-member City Council. “I wouldn’t be on the council without it.”

In terms of policies and programs, there has been an increasing emphasis on responding to everybody, even the poor and disenfranchised.

For example:

* Pasadena police officers have been exhorted by their superiors to be badge-wearing social workers, employing fairness and firmness as well as the “personal touch” on their daily rounds. Police Chief Jerry A. Oliver--hailed by city officials as “sensitive and caring” when he took office two months ago--boasts that he has never fired a gun in his 20 years of law enforcement.

* The City Council has approved an anti-AIDS plan, which includes the creation of an AIDS hospice and drop-in center, sex education for teen-agers and distribution of condoms. Hundreds from the AIDS activist group ACT UP/LA, sometimes given to disrupting governmental meetings, came to the council chambers two months ago to applaud.

* A shelter and soup kitchen for the homeless and destitute stands within walking distance of Pasadena City Hall. Union Station, which feeds more than 200 people a day, was built two years ago with a $275,000 city-approved Community Development Block Grant, and it continues to receive city subsidies for operating costs.

* After years of complaints about neglect, the City Council has made the mostly minority neighborhoods of Northwest Pasadena its top priority. In the mid-1980s, the council promised a multimillion-dollar infusion of services and projects.

While the city has been getting in touch with its feelings, developers have been forced to endure one of the strictest growth-restriction measures in the state, limiting new residential construction in the city to a meager 250 units a year and large commercial construction to 250,000 square feet.

The so-called Growth Management Initiative, which was approved by the voters two years ago, has helped to clamp a tight lid on development in the city and contributed to a general anti-business atmosphere, says Bruce Ackerman, executive vice president of the Pasadena Chamber of Commerce.

“They’ve just made it real expensive to do business in Pasadena,” Ackerman says.

And now comes The Plan, which was unanimously approved by the City Council three weeks ago.

The Human Services Strategy and Management Plan is largely the brainchild of Mayor Jess Hughston, a folksy retired schoolteacher who often adjourns council meetings for “din-din.” In essence, it ties all of the social programs in the city into one package and presses all city workers into service as human services outreach workers.

“Most city councils spend practically all of their time on how they’re going to use the land in the city,” says Hughston, who proclaimed himself the “human services mayor” when he took over the job last year.

The responsibilities of city government will now be divided between human services and the “urban environment”--”people and things,” according to Councilwoman Kathryn Nack.

“Say a meter reader goes to the home of a senior citizen to read the water meter,” Paparian explains. “He notices an accumulation of daily newspapers on the driveway. He might ask if that person might be experiencing an infirmity that someone ought to take a look at.”

Council members talk about the city’s role in human services as that of a “catalyst” and hope to focus the resources of the city’s 350 or so nonprofit organizations on individual cases. But an $840,000 “endowment” has been set aside for the plan.

There has been muttering about all of this from both conservatives and minority groups. Pasadena blacks still fume about a 1985 city commitment to spend $35 million to upgrade Northwest Pasadena. Five years later, only $25 million had been spent, most of it on routine maintenance. “It was fraudulent,” says Don Wheeldin, a neighborhood activist.

And some are not convinced that the Pasadena Police Department--which gives telephone callers on hold the music of Bartok or Brahms--is with the program.

“They’re no shining lights,” says Carol Heppe, director of the Police Misconduct Lawyer Referral Service, which refers people to lawyers who specialize in excessive-force cases. The service referred 27 Pasadena cases last year, she said, and has referred 21 so far this year.

Blacks acknowledge a lot of goodwill at City Hall. “But the implementation . . . has been the weakest link in the chain,” says Gerda Steele, a consultant and former member of the Pasadena Commission on Women.

Meanwhile, the new style is barely noticeable to some Pasadenans. Ask people on the streets about it and you often get blank stares. “I don’t really follow city government,” says Kenneth Galeano, a cashier in a downtown parking garage. “I just go to work, then I go home.”

But the city’s conservatives complain about “bleeding heart” programs. “Police and Fire Department staffing, the appropriate level of sanitation services--that’s what the City Council should be discussing,” says longtime resident Bill Hoge, past president of the California Republican Assembly.

Worst of all is the attitude toward business, business people say. The double whammy of bureaucracy and the Growth Management Initiative--which will be put to the voters again next year--has made investors wary. “By and large, most developers wouldn’t try to fool with it,” says architect Robert McClellan. “There’s not enough time or money these days to make the effort.”

Members of the City Council--which three months ago dropped the title of Board of Directors--urge patience.

“We’ve long recognized that Pasadena is a divided city,” Hughston says. “One section is very low income, the other is moderate to high income. It’s time to pay some attention to the lower-income portions.”