Thumbs Up & Thumbs Down July 28, 2025
Thumbs up: to our Library Director, Charlene Williams, and her excellent staff for recognizing the importance of honoring and supporting local authors. We now have an entire community section in our library where you can find these books.
Thumbs up: to the very generous PG folk who not only raise money to improve the outdoor landscaped environment in our town, but do much of the hands-on work to maintain the areas themselves. See stories in this issue about the improvements made to Chase Park east and west, Caledonia Park, and the City Hall complex.
Thumbs up: to Public Works Director Daniel Gho, who partnered with these citizens to assist them in the approval process and other issues in order to achieve their goals in getting these landscaping improvements successfully completed.
Thumbs up: to Pubic works Staff and citizen volunteers for the hard work done to make our Magic Carpet so stunning again this year.
Thumbs down: to the deer in our beautiful cemetery who help themselves to the flowers placed on graves. Yummy!
Thumbs up: to the efforts of members of Citizens for a Transparent P.G. for their work to put to a public vote whether the Mayor and City Council’s raises should be supported.
Thumbs up: To the members of the citizens group, who are working so hard to raise money to rehabilitate and improve Chautauqua Hall. The group, working under the umbrella of the Pacific Grove Heritage Society, is led by its president, Steve Honneger, working with Jean Anton. The hall has not had much work done on it for many years, and it looks like this group is well on its way to getting enough money to both restore it and improve it.
Thumbs up: to the City of Pacific Grove regarding athletic courts in the City’s recreation complex on Junipero. This is a case of the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is the good: Great job by the City in updating the athletic courts, however
Thumbs down: to the City’s neglect of the building, the grass, and other landscaping of the Recreation Department complex on Junipero. This is the bad and the ugly: If we don’t have the money for a complete landscaping job, we can at least water the grass and weed the place. City property should never be allowed to get in this shape. Other simple upgrades would help with the building itself. Maybe a Painting Picnic/Party would get our volunteers to paint the place. We can do better! This is a case of urban blight if I ever saw it. We encourage our homeowners to keep up their property; the City should do the same.
Thumbs down: to our former City Manager ( Ben Harvey), who is now working in the City of Ojai and who has already been sued for misconduct in the course of his job. We paid a lot of money to rid ourselves of him. It was money well spent.
Thumbs up: to our City staff who finally got our clock in the City Hall tower in working condition. It was former City Councilmember Dan Miller’s constant nagging about the issue that, after more than a decade of disrepair, the clock was fixed and chimes right on time every hour. Dan deserves an atta boy as well. After all, there was a special fund to get this work done, but for some reason, nobody did it. Our city’s public presentation in public spaces, particularly in government complexes, must be maintained. These things should represent that our town is well-managed and taken care of. The tower clock, visible all over the downtown, did not work for over a decade!
Thumbs Down: to Mayor Rick Smith’s off-the-cuff and his arbitrary reduction of the time for public comment, which occurred during Council meetings. One time he cut the time to two minutes, another he cut time to 90 seconds. If the time needs to be limited, this should be decided in a public discussion of the issue and voted on by the entire City Council. People prepare their comments, many read them, and they do so with the expectation of having three minutes to give them, which has long been the rule here.
Thumbs up: to City administrative staff members who have discontinued their arbitrary decisions as to whether and even who will have the benefit of showing pictures at public comment.
Thumbs down: to the City’s Museum Advisory Board, which arbitrarily denied, without explanation, the request for the opportunity to have a presentation of The Butterflies issue before them at their monthly meeting. These meetings are frequently cancelled due to a lack of issues to be considered. These advisory boards work for all the citizens of Pacific Grove. If there was a good reason for the board to deny an opportunity to learn about this popular project, it should have been provided. How do they advise the City Council if they don’t have all the facts? This board was never asked by City staff to even consider this important issue directly affecting the Museum, nor to advise the City Council and the public about it. How can these issues be discussed in public, by the public, if they are not allowed to be presented in an agendaized public meeting?
Thumbs up: To the idea that all our boards and commissions and the City Council should have established, written, criteria as to the handling of requests for an item to be agendized.
Thumbs Down: to our City Council, led by Mayor Smith and Councilmember Walkingstick, for arbitrarily and summarily denying the acceptance of the gift of the iconic The Butterflies stained glass window to the City. This beautiful window graced the front of the Holman Building for decades. The gift included the costs of installation. The City’s Museum Advisory Board did not offer any input. Curioiusly, City staff did not ask them to.
The City Council, for their part, made quick work of the matter, and despite widespread public and business support for the project, as well as the unanimous recommendation of the City’s own Natural Resources and Beautification Committee, gave it barely a nod, and based their decision on the thinnest of pretexts. This is a shame and represents a significant loss to our town. Why did this happen? Who knows? It makes no sense. This doesn’t pass the smell test.
(Disclosure: Editor Susan Goldbeck led the B.B.B., which promoted a return of The Butterflies to P.G.)
Below is a drawing of The Butterflies stained glass window as it might look installed in the PG Museum, the only site the City Council considered in public, and it was but a glance at that. There was no discussion of the validity of the vague criticisms raised by the Museum’s private, non-profit management board in a letter to the Council, or how the City might find a workaround to make this gift happen. What were the “unplanned financial and operational burdens” raised in the letter? And, there was no discussion of the issues that might hinder installation. No oral staff presentation at all. No fiscal impact given. This was an off-the-record done-deal.
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