Five Syllable City

It was a fateful decision some 50 years ago when the 101 freeway was routed through the heart of downtown Atascadero. Those in charge then reportedly could have had the freeway directed east of downtown. But they opted instead to nestle it right up next to El Camino Real, apparently with the intention of augmenting the roadstop business that had developed along old U.S. Highway 101 in that area. Although that meant that the new four-lane freeway would cut off at El Camino Real the boulevard that extended west from the Sunken Gardens to where the high school is, preservation of the downtown must not have been assigned a very high value at that time. Expanding the roadstop business was apparently regarded as more beneficial for the community than keeping Atascadero’s historic downtown district in tact.

The configuration of Atascadero’s commercial sector today remains a reflection of that judgment made half a century ago. Since being truncated by the freeway construction, the historic downtown area has stagnated and the city’s retail business has remained dominated by a roadstop orientation. Atascadero continues to suffer from having no hub area, with the commercial district of the city consisting of little more than an elongated convenience strip paralleling the freeway for several unsightly miles. While this indicates that the decision to route the freeway through the downtown was a mistake, the point is not to second-guess a decision made when circumstances were vastly different and when it was not easy to foresee that half a century later Atascadero would be an incorporated city of 28,000 lacking a real center. The point is, instead, to put into perspective the reality that we are still trying to find a way to overcome the adverse effects of the freeway routing decision that was made all those years ago.

The good news is that if, as a community, we really want to redeem the soul of the community that was sold for the sake of roadside convenience business in the late 1950s, we can still get it done. What is necessary is to revitalize what remains of the original downtown and to replace the part of it that the freeway took away. A start has been made in revitalizing the area, with the restoration of the Carlton Hotel, the construction of the Lewis Avenue Bridge and the commencement of work on the Colony Square project. It still is necessary to rebuild what is left of the original downtown, by repairing the City Administration Building and redeveloping the blocks bordering the Sunken Gardens. The next step would then be to replace what was taken from the old downtown by relocating the Junior High School and using that strategically positioned site for the development of an addition to the downtown area that would extend eastward from the City Administration Building. On that site, an idyllic modern downtown development can be imagined. The lost downtown boulevard could be replaced with a new one, which would run from the City Administration Building out to the old West Mall bridge and would ideally be lined with structures designed to complement the architecture of the original downtown buildings. In addition, there would be a singular opportunity to take advantage of one of Atascadero’s most valuable, and most neglected assets, by bringing suitable creekside development to the stretch of Atascadero Creek extending from Lewis Avenue to the old West Mall bridge.

By rebuilding the downtown area according to such a template, Atascadero would gain an attractive, walkable, congenial hub area that would be more than just another node along the El Camino strip. Properly done, such a downtown area could be expected to become a destination to which both residents and visitors alike would be drawn for the purpose of pursuing business, social, cultural and recreational activity. The community would again have a center where, it is not too romantic to suggest, Atascadero might well rediscover the soul that was sold so long ago. In addition, we would have the satisfaction of knowing that, 50 years from now, our successors are likely to be expressing thanks for our far-sighted efforts to rebuild the downtown area, rather than lamenting a decision to remain a mere freeway roadstop.

Atascadero is a municipal corporation operating with the disadvantage of not having a chief executive officer. In a business corporation, the chief executive officer is more responsible than anyone else for the corporate fortunes. The CEO personifies and spearheads the corporation. He or she initiates action for the corporation; supervises and directs its managers; formulates business plans and budgets for it and its various departments; and stands accountable for its overall success. Although the board of directors is legally responsible for the overall management of the corporation, it delegates much of that responsibility, including responsibility for management of the day-to-day business, to the CEO. The CEO usually sets the agenda for directors meetings and proposes most of the resolutions on which the board acts. It is difficult to conceive of a business corporation conducting business effectively without a fully-engaged, authoritative, chief executive officer.

Atascadero’s municipal corporation is structured as a Council-Manager government. The City Council is Atascadero’s functional equivalent of the board of directors of a business corporation. In theory, the city manager is the chief executive officer in a Council-Manager government. In reality, though, the city manager of Atascadero does not act as an executive officer. Confirming that reality, the City of Atascadero website describes the city manager not as the municipal corporation’s chief executive officer, but as its chief administrative officer. Considerable difference exists between a chief executive officer and a chief administrative officer. In addition to being an initiator, strategist and leader, a CEO has to take positions on political and controversial matters, and to be accountable for the ups and downs of the enterprise. A chief administrative officer does not occupy such a hot seat, as he or she is expected to implement the decisions of the board of directors or, in the case of the municipal corporation of Atascadero, the City Council.

Atascadero is not unique in having its city manager function as an administrative officer, instead of as an executive officer. There is good reason for not wanting a city manager to be as political as the position of chief executive officer requires. Most smaller and medium-size cities depend heavily on their city manager to manage the bureaucracy and administrative staff that operate the city and to keep the nuts-and-bolts business of the city going on a day-to-day basis. For obvious reasons, it is not desirable to disrupt city operations by replacing your professional administrator each time there is a shift in the prevailing political wind. As a result, many municipal corporations limit the city manager to the role of an administrative or operating officer and insulate him or her from the political risks that come with the position of chief executive officer.

The problem is that when the city manager is only an administrative officer, and the mayoral position is purely ceremonial, an executive void can exist. In some places, that void may be filled by one or more members of the City Council taking it upon him or her self to articulate a vision, initiate measures and act decisively. That has obviously not been happening in Atascadero. Even if it had, however, the present structure of Atascadero’s government leaves it always exposed to the risk of an executive void and, consequently, being a city adrift without direction and leadership.

That brings me to the point of proposing that the structure of Atascadero’s municipal government be adjusted by making the position of mayor one to be filled by the voters, in elections to be held every two years. Such an elected mayor would still be a member of the City Council having only one vote, but would be the first among equals by virtue of having certain special powers and responsibilities. Among those, the elected mayor would preside over all City Council meetings; he or she would prepare agendas for City Council meetings, jointly with the city manager; he or she would be responsible for monitoring and supervising the city manager’s administration of the city’s operations and regularly reporting to the City Council on that subject; and he or she would be required annually to present a State of the City report and a strategic plan for the upcoming year.

Having an elected Mayor would be a start in fixing those things that are currently broken in Atascadero. There are challenges enough in running a city that has rapidly grown from a small town to a city of almost 28,000. The city should not be disadvantaged in trying to meet those challenges by the chronic lack of leadership, direction and effective government that come from attempting to operate without a chief executive officer.

Let us begin on a positive note: The April 8 meeting of the Atascadero City Council had a good start. The new meeting time of 6:00 worked out well. It was also welcome to have the Community Forum early in the meeting. And it was comforting to know that the new, three-minute limitation on public comments was in effect, even if its benefits were not put on display by a parade of speakers. The institution of these procedural changes started the meeting off on an optimistic note, showing that the current Council can get some things right.

When the meeting reached substantive matters, though, it was back to business as usual. Attention centered on presentations by two consulting groups bidding to do the Council’s planned study on economic development for the City of Atascadero. The protracted presentations consumed a lot of valuable time that could have been used productively, and served only to confirm what a mistake it is to proceed with this study.

By the end of the April 8 meeting, the Council had regained the hold on its tail which it had let go of two months ago. We will resist the temptation to recount here all of the Council’s bumbling in its handling of this study. Suffice it to say that at the April 8 meeting the Council voted 5-0 to award the contract for the study to the same consulting firm from Walnut Creek to which a 4-0 Council had voted to award it two months ago. So, after two months, we are back to where we were after the Council’s February 12 meeting.

Awarding a contract for up to $120,000 to do a study on long-term economic strategy, in the midst of the city’s immediate financial crisis, is irresponsible. With the city being forced to fund necessary operations out of reserves to the tune of $500,000 to $1,000,000, such a study is a luxury that the city simply cannot afford at this time.

Atascadero has immediate, pressing problems in its commercial sector, which should be recognizable to the members of the City Council, as they are to most other members of the community. The City Council should be focusing its efforts on remedying those problems, instead of preoccupying itself with a study on long-term economic development strategy. The City Council needs to direct its attention to managing and directing strategic development in the commercial sector, in the here and now. It should be engaging in city planning, implementing design standards, devising development incentives and, possibly, subsidies, jawboning with business owners, and using any and all other techniques at its disposal, to improve business conditions in the downtown, gateway and central strip areas. The Council should be vigorously working on getting a viable plan in place for restoring the City Administration Building, at the earliest possible time. It should be trying to make a deal with the School District to relocate the Junior High School out of the downtown area. It should be looking for ways to save the Colony Square project before it craters. That is just a short list of some of the immediate needs of the city’s business sector to which the Council needs to give priority.

Beyond that, there is the pressing need to manage the currently strained financial resources of the city in a prudent manner. With the city dipping into its reserves to fund necessary operations, and worthy projects going unfunded due to lack of money, this is hardly the time to be allocating up to $120,000 to a study on long-term economic development strategy. The great economist, John Maynard Keynes, made the observation that “in the long-run we are all dead.” That is an observation of which the Council members should take heed. Financially, Atascadero may well be dead before the long-run comes around, if its elected representatives do not soon start managing its strained financial resources more responsibly.

The expensive study on long-run economic strategy which the Council has insisted on focusing during this time of crisis will not even be completed before the November elections. By that time, as many as three of the five members of the Council could be replaced. So the study to which this Council is devoting all this time, and for which it is spending all this money, is going to be delivered to what could be a radically reconfigured City Council. As discussed in the preceding posting on this blog, the past has shown that grand studies of long-term phenomena have a way of ending up on the shelf–nothing more than window dressing that goes ignored and yields no practical benefit. The already high probability that any consultants’ study will prove worthless is enhanced further in this case due to the fact that the Council which will get the study is likely to be very different from the Council which is ordering it.

Moreover, a study on the subject of a long-term economic development strategy for Atascadero should not be necessary. Each of the members of the Council should have a vision for Atascadero, and a plan for implementing that vision. If they are deficient in those areas, it is a deficiency that disqualifies them from serving competently as representatives of Atascadero’s interests on the City Council. And it is a deficiency that no study done by outside consultants will make up for, no matter how much of our money is spent on it. From the community’s standpoint, the only way that this deficiency can be remedied is by replacing vision-deprived Council members with individuals qualified to serve.

The unanimous insistence by the City Council on proceeding with this study is conclusive proof that a complete overhaul of the Council is in order. Before Atascadero can hope to get out of the hole it now is in, it needs to get new management which will focus on the pressing issues facing the city, manage the city’s strained financial resources responsibly and initiate  effective action directed at improving Atascadero’s economy, in the near and long terms. The upcoming Council elections represent an opportunity to address the urgent need for such new management. Capable candidates need to come forward. And voters need to look above and beyond Wal-Mart, partisanship, ideology, pet causes, and the like, in electing Council members who are qualified to take on the challenge of managing a city of 27,000 and who are representatives of the interests of the entire community and not just those of some special interest groups that sponsored their candidacy. That is square one in the revival of Atascadero, which is where, the April 8 meeting has revealed, we remain stuck in place.

I will not repeat all the reasons why spending as much as $120,000 of scarce resources for a study on the subject of an economic development strategy for Atascadero is a bad idea. The subject has been covered adequately in prior postings, which can be accessed conveniently on this website. What I will do, however, is to urge all readers, in advance of tomorrow’s City Council meeting—when the consultants are supposed to be selected to do the study—to go to the Links page of this website and click on the City of Atascadero Revitalization Plan. That will give you access to the Atascadero Downtown Revitalization Plan of July 2000.

As you will see, the Downtown Revitalization Plan of July 2000 is a formidable document, 44 pages in length and the product of a detailed study done by the firm of Crawford, Multari, Clark & Mohr. You will also see that there is much in the Plan that remains of great relevance today. Most noteworthy in that regard are the sections on Community Vision on page 6 and Community Goals on page 7. I think that you will agree that the Vision described and the Goals stated in those sections are as appealing and compelling today as they were almost eight years ago, when the report on that study was done. I think that you will also agree that we are no closer today to realizing that Vision, or achieving those Goals, than we were eight years ago. In fact, we are farther away, due to the setbacks caused by the earthquake and the continuing failure to recover from those setbacks, in particular, the failure to restore life to the City Administration Building.

The Downtown Revitalization Plan of July 2000 was obviously the result of an expensive study by consultants. The report that it produced is impressive, persuasive in its professionalism, its data, its vision for Atascadero and its recommendations. Moreover, the things that it said in that pre-Walmart era were not controversial, but were, and still are, things on which virtually all Atascadero residents would agree. Yet nothing whatsoever has come of that study. Its Vision, its Recommendations, remain just unrealized fantasies. What was clearly a well-conceived and well-executed study resulted in nothing more than a document—nice to look at, maybe, but a document which, eight years later, has had no discernible practical impact.

During this time of divisive controversy, with minimal leadership having been demonstrated by the current members of the City Council, and with the possibility of as many as three Council seats turning over in the fall election, it is absurd to indulge in the illusion that the $120,000 economic development study being planned now will be any more productive than the forgotten Downtown Revitalization Plan of July 2000. In this situation, it is the height of folly to squander as much as $120,000 for such a study, especially with the city operating at a deficit and facing the need to finance necessary operations out of reserves for the foreseeable future.

If the members of the City Council do not know how to pursue Atascadero’s economic development, they can make a start by going back to all of the unfulfilled goals stated in the Downtown Revitalization Plan of July 2000. If even half of those goals were accomplished, Atascadero would be well on its way to making a comeback.

Heading down Highway 41, west from the El Camino Real crossroads and the 101 Freeway exit, the sign jumps out at all who pass—COFFEE DRIVE-THRU. It commands attention, drawing you to look first at it and then at the little drive-thru hut set back from the road, behind an entrance fit for a grand establishment.

For the owners, the sign and the site are succeeding at least in getting their business noticed. For the Atascadero community, however, the picture is an embarrassing reflection of aesthetic insensibility in a prominent location near the gateway to our city.

COFFEE DRIVE-THRU is a study in disproportion. The sign is too big, too bright, too free-standing and too close to the road. The driveway next to the sign is too long and too stately and the little drive-thru hut to which the driveway leads is too small and eccentrically shaped. In addition, the parcel on which the little hut sits is oversized for such a small building. On top of all of that, this clumsy assemblage stands too far apart from neighboring buildings, causing it to command too much attention. The overall result is something completely out of whack, a miniature monstrosity of misfitting pieces.

COFFEE DRIVE-THRU is also a misfit socially, as it appears to be completely impersonal and detached from any community. From the look of the sign and the structure, it is readily apparent that COFFEE DRIVE-THRU is not designed for the clientele of either a modern coffee shop or a traditional diner or donut shop. And with no name to associate the establishment to any recognizable person or enterprise, COFFEE DRIVE-THRU bespeaks no past or future, no relationship either to Atascadero or to any franchise based elsewhere. COFFEE DRIVE-THRU just stands in existential isolation, offering no prospect of a personal touch.

With all the problems facing Atascadero, these complaints about a little coffee dispensary might not seem to be very significant. Yet COFFEE DRIVE-THRU symptomizes some of the deeper problems plaguing our commercial sector.

There is a dehumanized quality about COFFEE DRIVE-THRU that is all too common in the commercial areas of Atascadero. In Chris Day’s recent Viewpoint article in the Tribune (find the link on the “Resources” page of this website), he refers to friends of his who think of Atascadero as the “land of 1,000 metal buildings.” COFFEE DRIVE-THRU is like another one of those metal buildings, nameless, faceless and impersonal. It should probably be situated on Traffic Way, the dehumanized name of one of Atascadero’s main arteries, where there is a freeway interchange leading to a lifeless downtown area. Or perhaps COFFEE DRIVE-THRU should be located in one of the many areas on the overly long El Camino Real strip, where it could take a rightful place among many other banal buildings put up without apparent regard for how humans would react to them.

Locating COFFEE DRIVE-THRU on Highway 41, next to the most important Freeway interchange in the area and not far from the major crossroads at El Camino Real and 41, spread the malady affecting other parts of Atascadero to a location that had not before been grievously afflicted. Compounding the problem is the fact that the place where COFFEE DRIVE-THRU is located is one of the most widely traveled areas in Atascadero, by visitors as well as residents and, as such, is a location where the image of our community is shaped and widely projected.

As COFFEE DRIVE-THRU is less than a year old, it represents another example of our existing city government’s approach to governance. We need to ask: Did anybody give serious consideration to the impact of the aesthetic features of this project before it was approved? Did anybody recognize that this is an important location where signage appropriateness, and building and site proportionality, have to be considered especially carefully? Or was the proposal by the business owners just reflexively approved, without applying any planning or aesthetic standards, and without regard for the fact that this is a sensitive location where the city’s image may be at stake?

None of this is intended to cast any aspersions on the owners of COFFEE DRIVE-THRU, who are presumably honest, hard-working people, deserving of the opportunity to pursue their business profitably in Atascadero. The point is, instead, that the city government could, and should, have given them direction on signage and construction standards that would have spared our community the adverse effects associated with having yet another tacky-looking business in a very prominent location.

It would be nice to conclude by referring to some favorable considerations offering Atascaderans basis for optimism about the future. Unfortunately, however, the insensibility syndrome represented by COFFEE DRIVE-THRU will soon be manifested further in the high-visibility, crossroads area, in three new construction projects that are in the works on the east side of El Camino Real between the 101 northbound exit ramp and Highway 41. Before long, drivers in Atascadero’s gateway area will be greeted by three drive-thrus in a row. To make sure that visitors know where they have landed, there will be a Welcome to Atascadero sign. It will be flanked by 1) the Lube-n-Go drive-thru now under construction, 2) a new Carl’s Jr. drive-thru, and 3) a soon-to-be-approved Rite Aid drive-thru. How the traffic will flow, and how it will look, with all those driveways running in and out—times three—remains to be seen. It is difficult to muster up much enthusiasm, though. Indeed, the situation makes one think that the Welcome to Atascadero sign might better be replaced by an Atascadero DRIVE-THRU sign. That kind of sign, modeled on COFFEE DRIVE-THRU’s, but three or four times bigger, would probably fit right in and might be more expressive of where we are at this point in our city’s planning and development than a conventional Welcome sign.

UPDATE: During the last week of 2008, the COFFEE DRIVE-THRU sign was replaced. The replacement sign gives the establishment the identity of Misty Brew Roasting Co. and is reasonably well-designed. It is encouraging to see this improvement in such an important area of town.