Politics meet passions in shadow of Matterhorn

Tuesday’s City Council meeting in Anaheim is shaping up as classic political theater.

Public policy can be dry, but, man, it gets interesting when someone adds passion to the mix.

And that’s what is going on in Anaheim, as interesting a city as there is in Orange County because of its inner-voice dialogue between the kind of city it is and the kind it might become.

That dialogue has occurred over the years in issue after issue, but perhaps never as sharply as in the current City Council debate whether to rezone to allow the construction of 1,500 condos and apartments in the so-called resort district around Disneyland and California Adventure. The project would include about 225 low-cost units.

The Disney Co. strenuously opposes the project, favoring the development of a hotel-luxury condo-commercial mix. The company sued the city in February to protect the district and is pushing for a charter amendment that would block this kind of rezoning unless voters approved it.

So, Disney is bringing its passion -- and potential clout -- to the council chambers.

Their passion is being met head-on by that of Councilwoman Lorri Galloway, bucking Disney in her push for the affordable-housing component. It’s a passion, she says, that goes to the core of her decision to run for the council in 2004.

“To me, it’s extremely important and would be pivotal to my entire career and everything I’ve worked for,” she says, when I ask how important this issue is to her.

It stems from her career as director of Eli Home, a shelter for victims of domestic violence and child abuse. That work, she says, has convinced her that women and children need stable, affordable housing to get back on their feet. And as she came to realize that that was difficult to find in Orange County, she decided to run for City Council.

And seldom, if ever, does the chance come along as a public official to vote on something so tightly knotted to your life’s work.

“To have this opportunity for overarching, systemic solutions is incredible,” she says of the housing issue. “That’s why I’m taking such a hard-line stance on it.”

I ask if she’d relent if she thought Disney and her council opponents were correct -- specifically, that a mixed-housing development isn’t compatible with a resort district.

She says she probably still wouldn’t waver, but it’s moot, she says, because she doesn’t buy the argument.

“To think that this particular project, which already has housing on it, would affect the bed tax is totally unreasonable,” she says. “It will not. They’re talking about the strength of the resort area and how much money Disney brings in in bed tax and how that would be affected. You know, the resort area makes tens of millions of dollars in taxes. That’s true, but it did that while housing was already on this property.”

She’s referring to the existing apartments and mobile home spaces in the resort district.

Galloway’s passion wouldn’t be nearly as interesting to me if the housing issue weren’t so compelling. In other words, if she were this intense about a throwaway issue, no one would care.

But this is high-stakes stuff, as Anaheim Mayor Curt Pringle artfully described in an opinion piece in the Orange County Register. “You know that old saying about biting that hand that feeds you?” the mayor wrote. “I fear that we in Anaheim are on the verge of doing just that.”

He urged that the city’s residents “participate” in this discussion, presumably meaning now and if the Disney-backed charter amendment were approved for the ballot. He also cited a compromise plan that he and council colleague Harry Sidhu have offered.

I couldn’t reach Pringle on Wednesday to ask if he has the same kind of passion on the issue as Galloway. Or, if it is simply another big-ticket item on the Anaheim agenda.

But his written words offer a clue. “Some may characterize this as a debate between a developer and Disney,” he wrote. “This debate is about the future of the economic engine, tourism, that powers Anaheim and, in fact, the entire region.”

Galloway understands the language, even if she disagrees with the mayor’s conclusion. She is unabashed in making her passion clear. She doesn’t offer up the word “betrayal,” but I get the sense she thinks she’d be doing just that to herself if she didn’t fight this fight.

“It makes me fulfill my destiny,” she says. “This is a cliche, but those things that truly are worth going after in life are not easy to go after.”

The council will take up the issue at Tuesday’s meeting, scheduled for 5 p.m.

It promises to be political theater, but of the good kind.

Politics as it should be: driven by honest points of view and pure passion.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at

dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns: www.latimes.com/parsons