Gateways Cities Partnership Focusses On Goods Movement, Housing & Education

Richard, you will be participating in a Civic Entrepreneurs Summit in Long Beach on September 19th and 20th, sponsored by the California Center for Regional Leadership. The summit will address regional challenges and share regional sucesses. What will be at the top of Gateway Cities Partnership's agenda for that conference?

There are two items at the top of our agenda: transportation and housing. With regard to transportation, we are really talking about port growth and the concerns that we have in terms of economic growth in the region and dealing with some of the problems that we have as a result of the increase in international trade. We want to ensure that the predicted growth in the economy isn't stunted.

Who are the stakeholders in the Gateway Cities Partnership, and what goods movement challenges are they facing?

Basically, our main stakeholder is the Center for International Trade and Transportation at CSU Long Beach, whose executive director is Marianne Venieris. We have at the table all of the segments of the industry, ranging from Boeing Aircraft Corporation to the longshoreman's union, to steam ship line operators, to the PMSA, to the California Trucking Association, to importers, and exporters. Everybody is at the table, and they all have growing concerns about the lack of infrastructure.

There are two kinds of infrastructure. The first is the built infrastructure like our roads and railroad systems, but the other is people. The latter is a real concern because we are facing a shortage of truck drivers this year, and it looks like we may be for a while. If we don't have trucks to get the cargo out of the port, we are going to have backups at the port. If we do have enough trucks to get the cargo to the rail, a lack of real rail infrastructure could pose serious problems over the next two or three years, never mind the difficulties posed by the highly congested road system in the area. This is a multifaceted problem.

Many economists around the state are predicating continued growth in the logistics industry at the kind of pace we have seen over the last ten to fifteen years. My concern is that unless we comprehensively address some of the issues that I have just mentioned in the very near future, the economic growth in the logistics industry could be jeopardized, as well as the general economic growth for the state. In addition, there are side issues like pollution, congestion, and other community concerns that could affect the industry.

What are the region's housing issues? What housing initiatives are being advanced or considered by Gateway Cities Partnership?

I believe that our problems here are driven by a significant shortage of housing, which is pushing prices sky high. In our region-which is basically 26 cities from Montebello in the north to Long Beach in the south, and the Alameda corridor on the west to the Orange County line on the east-we are short about 14,000 housing units. The only place we can build multi-family housing is going to be along our main boulevards. We will not be able to, nor would we want to, try and change the character of stable single-family home neighborhoods. There is an opportunity to put multi-family housing along major transit corridors and commercial boulevards that have seen better days, all throughout the region.

When you talk to the community, the number one item on their agenda is community revitalization. People realize that some of their single-family neighborhoods are crumbling because there are too many rental homes that are not being taken care of by landlords. If you have one bad block, it can drag down the whole neighborhood. More and more houses will decay. As a result, we are concerned about both community revitalization and building additional housing in the region. We recently established the Gateway Cities Community Development Corporation, which will be addressing the revitalization. Our first house is now in escrow. The plan is to buy houses that are basically the worst on the block, fix them up, and work with the community members to makeover the whole block. Once we build some political capital with the community through this process, we will then want to turn our attention to the transit corridors. I think it is vital from a policy perspective to provide transit-oriented housing and workforce housing because so many people are priced out of the single-family home market.

Gateway Cities is involved in education,.You have partnered with New Schools Better Neighborhoods in working with the city and school district of Paramount. Address the educational agenda of Gateway Cities and what you bring to the table.

We are concerned about both basic education and workforce training. Simply not enough children are making it out of high school ready to face the rigors of academia or the work arena. There are too many kids without sufficient grasp of mathematics to succeed in either college or learning a trade. In the city of Paramount, we have formed what we call the Paramount Education Partnership, and we operate a comprehensive program within the city that this year has a budget of close to $1 million. This program has provided education to about 2,000 children and their families, ranging from pre-kindergarten to adults. The program provides tutoring in math and English and homework help. There are 300 children that are taken every second weekend to Cal State Long Beach to take part in the math, engineering and science academy there.

We literally do door-to-door marketing of education through our education Promotorés. The Promotorés are women from the community who are recognized as leaders and they act as a source of encouragement for other mothers in the community to get involved in their children's education. We basically market education as a product. We teach the parents how to get involved, that they have rights, but that they also have responsibilities. Currently, all of the classes are filled. Imagine this, we operate from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. Monday through Friday and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, conducting elementary school classes, high school classes and workforce training and we don't have an empty seat.

One of the communities we have worked with in Paramount is, in fact, a very challenged community, in what is called the Sans area of the city. It is so called because each street begins with a saints name such as San Marco and so on, and this is where we have located our learning center. We were delighted to be able to bring together NSBN, the school board and the city to create additional open space for the community and enable the expansion of services in the new elementary school. This is terribly important because these are the kids who have the least chance of graduating. Now they have wonderful new facilities as a result of this partnership.

Why is a regional approach needed to the policy challenges that you have talked about in this interview?

We are exploring how best to address problems in regions like the Gateway Cities, the Inland Empire, or the San Joaquin Valley. You can create as much policy as you want in Sacramento and convene as many blue ribbon commissions as you want, but unless you have troops on the ground who are willing to enact the strategies that are developed, you are not going to have any real progress. A number of the civic entrepreneur organizations around the state have been able to put together programs that have real relevance to their communities. Our work has been in housing and education. In other communities it is different. Last year, though, many of us worked on workforce development projects. These projects were very diverse, but each reflected the particular needs of their respective communities. That speaks to why these regional organizations are so valuable, because they do reflect the differences of their regions.

Lastly, implicit in the approach of the Gateway Cities Partnership is the idea that we need both regional solutions and the cooperation of civic and elected leaders to successfully respond to the growth and revitalization challenges of our communities. If this is a correct assessment, please elaborate on the value of the upcoming Civic Entrepreneur's Summit in Long Beach in September?

The challenges we have talked about are regional challenges, but they are regional challenges that are actually being replicated in other areas. For the Gateway Cities region, the economic vitality of our communities is at stake because so many people in LA County and the Gateway Cities region derive their income from the activities that are associated with goods movement through Long Beach and the San Pedro Port complexes. At the same time, communities near the ports want to prevent further growth of the ports because of pollution and congestion. People have called for no net increase in diesel emissions. The port goals may be a bit unrealistic, but these communities are going to have their say, and they may slow the growth of the port complex.

What is happening in the Gateway Cities region is also happening in the Inland Empire and the High Desert, where they are experiencing growth in logistics activities. If for any reason, the ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles slow down, there will be an attempt to bring more freight through Oakland and even Seattle-Tacoma. The reality is that if even a small percentage of the goods movement traffic at the LA and Long Beach ports is moved up the coast, the affected communities will experience problems to those that we have in Southern California. It is a regional issue here, but it is also a regional issue around Oakland.