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Wake up. It's time for a new City Hall
Friday, July 25, 2003 2:25 a.m.
One of the negative factors you can get from experience is "knowing" what
can't be done. With enough experience, you become aware nothing is
possible. You know all the ways in which nothing can be accomplished, all
the reasons why it can't happen, all the difficulties you'll face.
And if your imagination soars like an eagle's, there's always someone else
with plenty of experience who's there to bring you back to earth with a
bang. Last Wednesday the City Council got together at a public meeting with
a group of local citizens and a few outsiders to discuss how to help solve
our ongoing series of budget crises. Crises is a plural word. We've never
had just one in the 39 years, nine months and 25 days I've been privileged
to be a part of Pacifica. Some of our difficulties are self-created. The
city owns a very valuable piece of land near the San Francisco jail in San
Bruno. Instead of treating it like a pure source of cash, there's been talk
of selling the acreage to a land trust, to add to the hundreds of acres of
open space already not being beneficially used on our eastern ridges.
Though I learned the principles of Alex Osborne's Brainstorming methods
almost fifty years ago, they're still valuable. For example Wednesday night
if we'd been following the rules of brainstorming, John Curtis wouldn't
have squashed my little brainstorm like an ant at a picnic. It's obvious
when the land near City Hall is developed for housing, commercial
development, or a combination of the two, parking may be at a premium.
Therefore I suggested we might explore cantilevering some parking to make
some double use of the airspace over the freeway on the east side of
Francisco Boulevard. John's instant response was (1) earthquakes, and (2)
Cal Trans is too difficult to deal with. It might have been more helpful if
John had bounced off my brainstorm to come up with a further brainstorm of
his own, but no matter. I woke up a while ago because I couldn't sleep as
my brain swirled around the problem of where to put our new City Hall for
maximum benefit and minimum cost. And I realized that thirty years ago,
when city engineer Dave Thompson, later to be City Manager, had two
problems, he solved each of them by using funding sources from the other.
He wanted a pier. He needed a sewer outfall. He had adequate funds for
neither. So the sewer outfall became a fishing pier. Funds were found for
each from outside government sources, and together they worked to solve
those two particular problems. Unfortunately, other problems shortened the
life of our sewer plant. Now we've a new sewer plant, right across the
highway from our new police station.
Just north of the police station is the Shelldance nursery property, owned
by Cal Trans. On the west side of the highway the land is owned by GGNRA.
An eagle of a City Hall, soaring over the highway, could be reached by
roadways from three or four directions. A road up the berm, another from
south of the Moose Lodge, another from the police station, and perhaps a
fourth from eastern Fairway Park would do the job. There are lots of
details to work out, funding sources to secure, questions to answer. I've
presented my brainstorm. Don't squash it, John. Build on it. Expand from my
concept. Don't tell me why we can't do it. I've enough experience to know
exactly why it can't be done. Instead tell me how we can accomplish it.
Then let's do it!
Paul Azevedo can be e mailed at Paul@thereactor.net.
Check The Reactor's website at www.thereactor.net.
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