ORANGE COUNTY - Disney-Anaheim tussle is not family entertainment
Anaheim is no Orlando. For one thing, no palmetto bugs.
But I sometimes wonder whether the Walt Disney Co. would gladly introduce the legendary insects in Southern California if it could somehow turn Anaheim into Orlando.
How vexing our Orange County city must be to the Disney people, who look at Disneyland and California Adventure and wonder what in the world they have to do to convince Anaheim who butters its bread.
No such problem at Walt Disney World in Orlando, where the company quietly bought up 42 square miles of groves, pastures and swamps in the 1960s and came to control everything on it. The end result was a world-class resort area that turns a billion-dollar profit on its original investment of a few million dollars.
No messy problems down there with city council members who support housing developments where Disney doesn't want them, or with some businessmen and residents who want to vote on Disney expansion plans.
Disney must be wondering what happened to the notion that it owned Anaheim.
At the moment, we have the prospect of dueling ballot initiatives in Anaheim. Disney wants voters to have a say on any zoning changes within the Resort District around Disneyland, such as the one approved by the City Council in April that would allow a large housing project.
To counter Disney's initiative, a coalition of business owners and residents said earlier this month it would collect signatures for an initiative that would give voters control over Disney's planned third theme park.
Disney already has succeeded on another front. It got enough signatures to force a referendum on the council's specific decision to allow a housing project.
If you're keeping score, that's two initiatives and one referendum on the docket.
Is that any way to run a city?
Nobody asked me, but my answer would be no.
We ask voters to elect city councils, but not to make planning decisions. Maybe we should, this being a democracy and all, but if we ask voters to put in as much time as council members do on big-ticket items like this, why have councils at all?
That's a subject for another day.
The way it should work is for the council members to clearly state their positions -- which they have -- and then let voters have their say on election day. Anaheim doesn't let voters determine the terms of contracts or business licenses or capital improvements, so why zoning?
