Time of Renewed Resolve : Leaders Cite New--and Old--Goals for New Year

As Orange County enters a new year, community activists, elected officials and municipal leaders countywide talk about their top priorities for the coming 12 months. Here is a sampling of their New Year’s resolutions:

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Registered nurse Judy Curreri, a community activist and former Dana Point City Council member, is determined that 1997 will see renewed public awareness of health-care issues. As supervising public health nurse for a segment of Orange County from Tustin to San Clemente, Curreri said she hopes to develop more community outreach programs, such as projects with homeless shelters, and to help citizens reap the most benefit from managed-care health systems.

Quote: “My energies are in promoting better health care in Orange County. . . . We’re trying to make public health nurses be more cost-effective. We’re looking at ways to reach more people. . . . We need to be more charitable and remind citizens that we have disabled people living in Orange County.”

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Miguel A. Pulido Jr., mayor of Santa Ana, hopes to work with school officials to open up more campuses after hours for activities such as a youth soccer league. Four schools are now open after 2 p.m., enough to accommodate 4,000 youths, Pulido said. Over the next four years, he hopes to arrange enough locations that 16,000 youngsters can participate.

Quote: “It’s part of a continued focus on crime reduction to make available more and more after-school activities so that [children] stay out of trouble and are more productive.”

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Eight years ago, Luci Grismer of Placentia helped found Citizens Lose on Utility Tax to repeal the city’s 4% utility tax. Though the group, known as CLOUT, has yet to succeed, Grismer, 69, vows good-naturedly that she will not retire from the cause and that 1997 will be the last year of the tax.

Quote: “The city has found a golden egg, and they don’t want to let it go. But they don’t know how determined I am--my mother lived to be 92. . . . We have to get it on the ballot. Unless somebody complains, it’ll just go on and on.”

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Capt. Scott Brown of the Orange County Fire Authority resolves to reduce response times for emergency medical services. The average for paramedics and other workers is now five minutes and 46 seconds, considered acceptable by the authority’s 19 member cities. But studies have shown that putting a paramedic on each emergency vehicle could lower the average response time to four minutes and 57 seconds.

Quote: “We can get a paramedic to your front door . . . one minute quicker, and that’s our goal. . . . Our mantra will be to focus on our system of service delivery. We are meeting and often exceeding our response times. We are looking into the future and saying, ‘How can we do it better?’ . . . Time is of the essence. Your chances of survival are much improved.”

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Two anti-euthanasia animal shelters have been built in South County since 1995, and the volunteer groups that support them need to coordinate their efforts, said Sharon Cody, former mayor of Mission Viejo and president of the Dedicated Animal Welfare Group, known as DAWG. On Cody’s agenda for the new year is creating a South County symposium to address issues such as pet abandonment.

Quote: “As hard as we’ve worked for these shelters, we’d love to empty them and sit there like the Maytag repairman. The way to do this is let people know that spaying and neutering their pets are the way to prevent animal overpopulation. This would be the perfect year to network better with other pro-humane shelters and come up with a coordinated effort to deal with this problem.”

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Mildred Daley Pagelow, a Cal State Fullerton professor and researcher in the field of domestic violence, said that her focus for 1997 will be on educating young people about the issue. Family violence is finally being recognized as a major societal problem, said Pagelow, who is on the advisory board for Laura’s House, a San Clemente shelter for women. The challenge now, she said, is to not grow complacent.

Quote: “We have treated the broken bones of women. Now we have to work toward prevention. We’ve come so far, but nobody can sit back and accept the laurels. Our society still preaches violence as a solution to our problems, and we need to show young people that this isn’t the way. Education in schools and the home is always the bottom line.”

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Tu Dzung, founder of the nonprofit Asian-American Senior Citizens Assn. of Westminster, hopes to implement new programs for Vietnamese seniors in the early part of the new year. Among them are English classes, a nursing home and a house for abandoned elderly who have no relatives or whose children cannot take care of them.

Quote: “We want for the seniors to have places where they can go and share their experiences with other people their age so they will not feel alone. America is their second home, but because of circumstances they can’t control, such as the language barrier, they have yet to assimilate. These programs would serve as bridges to make their lives easier.”

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Bill Turpit is director of Families-Costa Mesa, a new consortium of agencies working to solve social problems in the city’s westside. The new group was founded with county funds in memory of Roy Alvarado, a popular anti-gang counselor who died of cancer in April. Turpit said the top priority for 1997 will be keeping youths away from gangs and drugs without Alvarado, who had earned the respect and friendship of many teens at risk.

Quote: “We lost a strong advocate for those efforts in Roy Alvarado, but we have found the opportunity in Families-Costa Mesa and other programs to move on. We don’t want to lose this opportunity to make some real gains. . . . You work with the whole family. You work with the kids at school and at home, and you also rely on other sources in the community, such as churches, so there is an effective network.”

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Wayne L. Peterson, Laguna Beach mayor, said that his city’s biggest challenge in the year ahead will be “the El Toro [airport] problem.” But beyond that, he said, the city must find new space for recreation, especially for youth soccer programs.

Quote: “We very much need to play a bigger role in what I call ‘community services.’ That could be a community center, improved senior center, teen center, youth sports [or] office space for the nonprofits. . . . The soccer field is just part of this bigger picture.”

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Fullerton resident Sabrina Hall has been lobbying her City Council to designate a spot for a “bark park” where dogs can frolic free of leashes without disturbing nearby residents.

Quote: “North Orange County really needs a dog park. So many people want to see this dream become a reality in 1997.”

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Newly elected San Clemente Councilwoman Lois R. Berg sees Proposition 218 as her biggest challenge in 1997. The measure, approved by voters in November, limits municipalities’ ability to levy taxes.

Quote: “We have a lot to deal with with Prop. 218. The question is how do you provide citizens with the services without taxation? There are not any easy answers. . . . It has to be a combination of citizens and city officials working together to come up with solutions.”

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Santa Ana resident Wendy Tobiska, active in three PTAs, has set her sights on enlisting more volunteers this year. The goal is to expand the number of parent organizations working with city schools to provide such simple services as reading to children.

Quote: “If a lot of people put in a little bit, then a few people don’t have to put in a lot. If we could add 50 more volunteers to donate as little as half an hour a week, we would have done something.”

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Carole Walters is a founder of the Committees of Correspondence, a county government watchdog group. In the coming year, she said, the organization’s mission will be to press the Board of Supervisors to take a more “hands-on” role in the wake of the county’s late-1994 bankruptcy and to delegate less power to Chief Executive Officer Jan Mittermeier.

Quote: “The people elected the supervisors to run this county, not the CEO. When the bankruptcy hit, the supervisors gave a lot of power to the CEO, more than anyone in that job has ever had. It’s time the board took back some of the power.”

Compiled by Times correspondents Kimberly Brower, Jeff Kass, Debra Cano, John Canalis, Frank Messina, Jennifer Leuer, Mimi Ko Cruz, Lori Haycox and Leslie Earnest.