During Thursday, September 6th’s afternoon city council
session, four representatives of the César E. Chávez
Boulevard Committee made their pitch to the mayor and commissioners.
They showed a video celebrating Chávez’s work organizing farm
laborers, and outlined an idea to find private funds to open a cultural
center in Chávez’s name. And, they asked the city to rename
Interstate Boulevard.
“We’ve got Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, we’ve got Rosa Parks,
and now we’re asking for your support with a César E.
Chávez Boulevard,” said one committee member.
In response, the council voted to open an official five-week public
comment period—instead of directing the group to follow the
official city process for changing a street name.
The process, outlined in city code, would require filing an
application with the city. Then, the committee would need to collect
signatures: 2,500 citywide, or from 75 percent of the street’s property
owners. They’d also have to pay a fee to notify neighbors, so residents
could weigh in. And the idea would have to go past a panel of
historians, and the city’s planning commission—then the city
council decides.
Moreover, the official process bars a name change at the whim of the
council, unless it’s to “correct errors in street names, or to
eliminate confusion.” In fact, the city code is very clear that the
council cannot take it upon themselves to rename a street to honor a
person. (The council recently voted to ignore that law when Portland
Boulevard was renamed for Rosa Parks.)
But, the council created a public comment period—and it’s
unclear what happens when that period closes. Also, the mayor posted a
link to the committee’s petition on his website several weeks ago. The
petition has collected 131 signatures since.
Meanwhile, organized opposition to the idea has sprung up. One
neighbor in Arbor Lodge—”another frustrated NoPo’er, sick of
getting stepped on in matters of developers and high-density zoning and
street name changing,” as she says—launched her own online
petition to oppose the idea. By Tuesday, September 11, less than a week
after she launched it, the petition had garnered 54 signatures.
(Another pro-Interstate petition has 166.) And the Historic Interstate
Avenue Businesses group ran a full-page ad in neighborhood newspapers,
begging the city to find a way to honor Chávez that is “less
divisive, less costly to small businesses, and less costly to local
taxpayers.”