Santa Ana Voters Show the Spirit of Sacrifice for the Greater Good

The people of Santa Ana on Nov. 2 weighed in on their future with an overwhelming endorsement of education’s vital role in shaping the coming generations of children. They voted to approve a $145-million bond measure for school building projects in their district.

The Board of Supervisors came forward with their own decision. Swayed by the threatening prognostications of the Sheriff’s Department, the board voted to invest a major portion of potential returns from the tobacco settlement for the construction of more jails.

As the county hurls itself over the millennial threshold, these two social investment options become powerful symbols of our future possibilities and test whether we have the public will.

The people of Santa Ana, together with the Capistrano Unified School District, surpassed the super-majority required for a bond measure. More than two-thirds of the voters opted to do the right thing for future generations.

For Santa Ana this is a remarkable achievement. A significant number of voters, for the first time, are exercising their civic responsibility and doing so with a social consciousness that has become rare in public life today.

The Board of Supervisors is taking potential funds from the tobacco settlement to fund what it otherwise could not, had it been required to pursue a bond.

Members of county staff and the board use the politically untested claim that the jail construction is a county priority. Perhaps it is a weighed response to the haunting fears that make people continue to opt for a gated community. Perhaps it is a capitulation to the reluctant voter trend seen in the outcomes at the other school districts unable to garner the super-majority number of voters willing to invest in their schools.

In UCI’s recently published annual Orange County Survey, Latinos were more likely than non-Latinos to be positive about the county’s future. That may help explain the significant step taken by the Santa Ana residents to support their schools. They are also more likely than most county residents to be concerned about crime.

Both local newspapers recently reported how the working poor are being left behind by the economic surge. Many of the county’s residents are making far less than the $11 an hour needed to provide the basic necessities for living in this county. In particular, housing costs are forcing parents to make difficult cuts in other essentials, such as food and medical care. The average rent in the county is now $1,026 a month. A significant portion of the county’s children are without health care.

These realities are a startling indictment of the region’s inability, or perhaps reluctance, to ensure that those who lend their earnest efforts to the industry of the county will receive a fair return on their investment to this thriving community. Unfortunately, the growing disparities between the rich and poor in both health care and housing are made more disturbing by social policies that seek to perpetuate the profit of some at the expense of many.

In the recent debate on how to invest the tobacco settlement dollars, there has also been much talk about debt reduction. Few would question the prudence required to husband the resources given to the public trust, but debt reduction is not an end in itself.

It should be a means to an end. It should ultimately serve the common good. It must make a contribution to the welfare and development of this community. A debt that comes before all others is that which we owe one another and most particularly those who are most vulnerable. Public discourse would go a long way to fostering the mutual accountability needed to fulfill this obligation. Recent conversations between health care advocates and county officials fortunately have begun to move in this direction.

Many of the working poor of this county are subsidizing this region’s prosperity with delayed treatment for preventable conditions, the postponement of care for their children, or resorting to alternative care in the medical black market.

The county is accumulating a financial and moral debt in lost lives and diminished human potential for which it will later be more difficult to provide restitution. Good schools for these families was a wise choice for Santa Ana. Good health care for these same families throughout the county would also be a prudent investment in our future together.

Decisions now being made in public forums and the ballot box indicate more interest in private stock portfolios and less in the public trust. Santa Ana’s dazzling last trip to the polls this century may be a nostalgic final gasp of public confidence in our ability to work together for a better future. Then again, it may be a bold, invigorating step toward a new social consensus that pursues the common good in this plural, multiethnic county of ours.