Much digital ink has been spilled and angst/joy/sadness is high in the SCV with the announcement that Frank Ferry will not seek another term on the City Council in 2014. The Haters are quite happy:
City haters are gonna hate, but let's not gloss over the fact that Ferry upset and offended a lot of people during his 16 years on the City Council. He bullied at times, seemed to enjoy political combat, and was very aggressive when it came to elections. He did a drive-by on Kevin Korenthal in 2010 and called some residents "developmental terrorists." Yes he manipulated the press and tried to suppress crime reporting, and he had a peculiar penchant for picking on parlors of the massage, tattoo & tanning variety. He appointed friends to committee positions and all but gave us Laurie Ender. For the longest time, I disliked him for joking about Hart High's name, even as the Indians routinely laid waste to his uppity Vikings on the grid iron during the late 90s/early 00s glory days.
No denying it, Frank Ferry could be an asshole.
And yet, assholes get things done, do they not? Here's what I liked about Frank Ferry:
Ferry was the first real City Council representative of people like my parents. He was not an old-timer SCV resident, he was not here when the City founders took control, or when the Creekside Target was an onion field or the Granary Square was the home to an airport. He didn't remember a time before Valencia and wasn't around when City founders were trying to split off the northern half of LA County. He didn't major in Animal Husbandry or grow up on a ranch in the canyons around here.
Nope, Ferry wasn't saddled with any of that nostalgic baggage. He was just like my parents and tens of thousands of other parents: he moved to a master-planned community because of good schools and low crime.
And he knew exactly what he wanted out of this community. And the young City of Santa Clarita wasn't providing it. Recall this great passage from a 2002 interview with Ferry about Valencia & the now-defunct Cafe Melisse:
Conversely, if you were born in the SCV, or spent your formative years on horseback in our canyons or on ranches & farms, you saw Ferry as a threat. He was the representative of everything you loathed about what the SCV was becoming during those boom years. You didn't take kindly to this newcomer's tamperin' with the valley's character.
So yes, there is some truth to the characterization of Ferry as polarizing. He was. He represented the new, which was necessarily in conflict with the old.
The other thing I liked about Frank Ferry was his fearlessness. Who can forget when he dressed down the Tea Party dolts who pounded the lectern at City Hall in the wake of Kellar's Proud Racist-gate? They quoted Reagan to him; he told them he had volunteered on Reagan's campaign in 1984. They demanded the City crack down on illegal immigration & day laborers somehow; he talked of his Catholic values and the dignity of all humans. He stood up to the know-nothings and even criticized Kellar, when no one else on the council dared.
He wasn't afraid of punching other Republicans in other words. Kind of like that other bombastic Republican politician with an alliterative name, Chris Christie. He was the SCV's own Chris Christie.
Finally, Ferry was fiercely loyal to and defensive of the City staff. Nothing got him more angry than criticism of the City Staff, whether it was justified or not. He was TimBen's nemesis in this respect. I liked that about him; he stood by the decisions of the Council and defended the staff, who more or less can't defend themselves publicly.
I'll miss Ferry and I wonder what it says about the SCV that both he and his hand-picked successor Laurie Ender will no longer be on the Council. Have much of Frank Ferry's constituents raised their families here and moved away, as he appears to be doing? Is the era of real growth over? Are our schools going to inevitably shrink?
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As for Me and My House,we will vote Frank Ferry
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City haters are gonna hate, but let's not gloss over the fact that Ferry upset and offended a lot of people during his 16 years on the City Council. He bullied at times, seemed to enjoy political combat, and was very aggressive when it came to elections. He did a drive-by on Kevin Korenthal in 2010 and called some residents "developmental terrorists." Yes he manipulated the press and tried to suppress crime reporting, and he had a peculiar penchant for picking on parlors of the massage, tattoo & tanning variety. He appointed friends to committee positions and all but gave us Laurie Ender. For the longest time, I disliked him for joking about Hart High's name, even as the Indians routinely laid waste to his uppity Vikings on the grid iron during the late 90s/early 00s glory days.
No denying it, Frank Ferry could be an asshole.
And yet, assholes get things done, do they not? Here's what I liked about Frank Ferry:
Ferry was the first real City Council representative of people like my parents. He was not an old-timer SCV resident, he was not here when the City founders took control, or when the Creekside Target was an onion field or the Granary Square was the home to an airport. He didn't remember a time before Valencia and wasn't around when City founders were trying to split off the northern half of LA County. He didn't major in Animal Husbandry or grow up on a ranch in the canyons around here.
Nope, Ferry wasn't saddled with any of that nostalgic baggage. He was just like my parents and tens of thousands of other parents: he moved to a master-planned community because of good schools and low crime.
And he knew exactly what he wanted out of this community. And the young City of Santa Clarita wasn't providing it. Recall this great passage from a 2002 interview with Ferry about Valencia & the now-defunct Cafe Melisse:
Like most of his constituents, Ferry is from somewhere else- in his case the San Fernando Valley, which he left ten years ago to start a family and teach high school.
"You're in a community that has grown 40 percent in the last ten years," Ferry told me one afternoon in his office, which sits across the street from the Newhall Land offices and is staffed by a former government student of Ferry's.So, if you were among the tens of thousands who moved to the SCV in the 80s/90s/00s because of schools and low crime, Ferry was your guy. He understood you and your family, your motivation for moving here. He understood you wanted a family friendly community and once he was elected, he almost single-handedly pushed the City in that direction. What followed was a building spree of parks, community centers, skate facilities and more, all focused on serving the SCV's growing youth population.
...
"I was part of that influx that came from somewhere else. Yet when I looked at the City Council, the demographics there didn't represent my family. There were people in city government who had lived here for thirty yeaers before I came. Some were into slowing growth. Other people wanted to spend more money preserving open space and on historical preservation. Who was fighting for my interests? I'm saying you can't build parks fast enough, teen centers, skate parks, more roads. The council was completely out of touch."
Conversely, if you were born in the SCV, or spent your formative years on horseback in our canyons or on ranches & farms, you saw Ferry as a threat. He was the representative of everything you loathed about what the SCV was becoming during those boom years. You didn't take kindly to this newcomer's tamperin' with the valley's character.
So yes, there is some truth to the characterization of Ferry as polarizing. He was. He represented the new, which was necessarily in conflict with the old.
The other thing I liked about Frank Ferry was his fearlessness. Who can forget when he dressed down the Tea Party dolts who pounded the lectern at City Hall in the wake of Kellar's Proud Racist-gate? They quoted Reagan to him; he told them he had volunteered on Reagan's campaign in 1984. They demanded the City crack down on illegal immigration & day laborers somehow; he talked of his Catholic values and the dignity of all humans. He stood up to the know-nothings and even criticized Kellar, when no one else on the council dared.
He wasn't afraid of punching other Republicans in other words. Kind of like that other bombastic Republican politician with an alliterative name, Chris Christie. He was the SCV's own Chris Christie.
Finally, Ferry was fiercely loyal to and defensive of the City staff. Nothing got him more angry than criticism of the City Staff, whether it was justified or not. He was TimBen's nemesis in this respect. I liked that about him; he stood by the decisions of the Council and defended the staff, who more or less can't defend themselves publicly.
I'll miss Ferry and I wonder what it says about the SCV that both he and his hand-picked successor Laurie Ender will no longer be on the Council. Have much of Frank Ferry's constituents raised their families here and moved away, as he appears to be doing? Is the era of real growth over? Are our schools going to inevitably shrink?
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