Taking the reins

Pasadena is certainly not a city in complete disrepair. From its hard-working Northwest to its tree-lined southern districts, Pasadena is a beautiful city incomparable to others in the San Gabriel Valley, the Los Angeles Metropolitan area, or even Southern California.

There is a quiet divide in our city. It’s been long ignored by the politicians who allegedly represent all of us but truly only represent some of us. A dialogue is beginning to unravel in this city and there’s no time like the present to get some more of the issues out there that matter to us all.

If you were to ask the mayor, the state of the city is just fine. According to the mayor, crime is down. According to the mayor, rent control is an unnecessary situation to look into. I guess 9,800 or so people would agree — I mean, that’s how many people voted for the mayor in the 2003 election.

But what about the rest of us — the 140,000 who didn’t vote for him? How about the 54-some-odd percent of people who rent in this city? How about the nearly 15 percent of this city’s citizens who live below the poverty line? If you asked us what the state of the city is, it would completely negate everything the mayor and others on City Council have been chiming in about.

High rents just don’t affect the poor and indigent citizens here. High rent is an issue that affects all of us. Affordable housing is something that anyone could agree is necessary in this city.

Politicians in this city, with a few exceptions, are very inaccessible. It’s obviously fair to say that City Council can be, at times, a “good ol’ boys” club, protecting the interests of those who vote for them and shutting out the rest of the citizens who probably didn’t even know elections were held in March.

My goals as your candidate for mayor of Pasadena are simple. I want to listen to the issues concerning the rest of us. I want to get people out to the polls and get people more informed about the true issues this wonderful city faces. It’s been very “hush hush” and “members only” when it comes to the divide in this city, but it’s very apparent to me and others who aren’t privileged enough to have last names like Gamble or Huntington, who don’t come from a well-to-do lineage, or who simply make less than six figures a year and have a family to feed, an apartment to pay for and taxes and bills to pay.

Yeah, I know, I wear eyeliner and really don’t own a suit. I know I may look like someone who doesn’t even belong in politics. Isn’t that what this city, this state and this country need, though? Someone you know you can trust because they don’t even look like a politician? When it comes down to it, the eye-makeup-wearing, 25-year-old “Goth” (me) and the 68-year-old (hey, I found out he’s NOT 170 years old) avid bicyclist with the staid image (the mayor) are both human beings.

I represent and embody everyone in this Crown City. I want to be a politician who stops ignoring the issues that our Northwestern friends face. I want to be a politician who ensures that elementary schools don’t get closed down just because rich people want to send their kids to private school. I want to be a politician who finds that people don’t get unjustly ejected from their homes because Bogaard & Co. got some sweet deal with a condominium developer.

The arrogance of the people who currently “represent” those in this city is absolutely awful. Pasadena was never meant to be Westwood nor Santa Monica. I’m very sure, with as much money as this city has, that we can find a happy medium as well as tend to the issues that nobody else wants to talk about. Citizens shouldn’t have to pay to park on their own streets overnight. Citizens shouldn’t have to be subjected to an “Inclusionary Housing Act” that doesn’t even work for most in this town. 

I know the theme of the mayor’s address was “Generations to Come.” I think the theme should have been “Generations to Come — So the Generations Here Can Go.” It’s all out there in the media now: the mayor opposes rent control and other basic rights we all should have.  There are people that have lived in this city for more than 20 years and have been here before the Paseo came, people who were promised they would bask in the benefits of Pasadena’s new image, people that are, quite frankly, the fabric of this city — and they are getting, for lack of a better word, hosed.

Under this entire guise as a “rock star,” I’m just an average person who faces regular issues like everyone else. I live paycheck to paycheck, I wake up every Sunday morning for about 17 weeks a year to watch football, I like to go to my local watering hole and play darts, and I’m a very patriotic person. I feel that I’m a true “outsider” to the exclusivity of Pasadena politics and I’m truly the right choice to be your next mayor — “the People’s Mayor,” to use a cliché.

Take a look at what city politicos have done for YOU.  And when your answer to the last query comes to “Well, just about nothing,” then go to the polls on March 6 and vote for Aaron Proctor.  If you truly don’t want Pasadena to fall from the average person’s grasp, then take hold of the reins now, before it’s too late and we’re all packing our bags to move elsewhere because we can’t afford to live here anymore.

Pasadena turns 121 years old this year.  Let’s make sure it’s a good, fair and wonderful place to live for our children by the time it turns 171.

Stand and deliver.