Walt Disney never asked Anaheim’s residents to pay for his projects

Walt Disney with a map of Disneyland circa 1950s. (Photo credit: unknown)

Community Editorial: Would Walt Disney Have Been So Bold?

By CYNTHIA WARD, Voice of OC

From the moment Walt Disney first set his leather loafers in the carefully plowed rows of citrus planted in our Santa Ana River bottom soil, Anaheim’s leaders welcomed him in a mutually beneficial partnership.

Our post-war city fathers accommodated Disney — within reason — back when closing Cerritos Avenue was considered a major concession to a private property owner. But as anxious as Mayor Charles Pearson was back in the ’50s to be part of Walt’s dream, he and City Manager Keith Murdoch never forgot they were stewards of the public trust, and there were lines that they never stepped across, lines Walt Disney would never ask them to cross in the first place.

Gene Autry Way – Curt Pringle’s Folly

Rush Hour on Gene Autry Way

From the OC Politics Blog

About five years ago when he was the Mayor of Anaheim, Curt Pringle dreamed of a regional transportation center for his city — a place they named ARTIC which would be the Orange County station for the equally dreamy California High-Speed Rail system which would be zipping through town on its way to San Diego, or charging northward to LA’s Union Station (over, under or through some of the densest urban residential housing in California) and onto San Francisco and Sacramento.

The Mayor-for-hire, as he was known at Friends for Fullerton Future, or Master of the Universe as he was tagged last year at the union-funded Voice of OC, didn’t stop with just a $184 million train station that would partly be paid for by OCTA’s Measure M where Board Member Pringle sat for years.  From concocted ridership projections, he fantasized that Disney patrons would be coming to ARTIC by the millions, but still needed to be transported to the Mouse’s cash registers Main Gate, miles away from the bullet train, and on the wrong side of the 5 Freeway.  Since Walt Disney already had a world-famous one, Pringle announced in 2007 that he needed a MONORAIL for the Disney visitors.  From his January State-of-the-City speech: