SANTA PAULA (California) TIMES

June 16, 2006

Council prefers Mill area for new Farmworker Monument

By Peggy Kelly

The Farm worker Monument Committee has been meeting and the City Council received a report on the progress of project during the May 15 meeting.

The idea of creating a Farmworker Monument was first presented by Albino Pineda to the Council in February and the committee - including Councilmembers Gabino Aguirre and John Procter - has redesigned the original proposal, identified three possible locations as well as crafted a preliminary plan to seek funding.

Assistant to the City Manager Elisabeth Amador told the Council that committee member John Turturro - a city Planning Commissioner - was “Behind the redesign” of the monument.

The committee - which also includes Latino Town Hall President Bob Borrego - decided on an 18-foot wide monument, with “tiles along the middle part” that could be used to recognize donors said Amador.

The monument will feature bronze statues of a crop picker and a citrus worker she added.

Options for monument placement are Veterans Memorial Park along Mill Street, an area in the Railroad Plaza between the Mill and the Rose Garden and the southeast corner of Santa Barbara and 9th streets.

Amador noted that the Ventura County Museum of History & Art’s Agricultural Museum is slated for the Mill and that the monument perhaps could be incorporated into the design.

The estimated cost of the monument is up to $300,000; initial funding of $50,000 is already secured and Amador said that the agricultural and community in general will be the focus of a fundraising effort.

Veterans Memorial Park was the last choice of the committee amid concerns that a new monument “would take attention away from the Veterans Memorial,” Amador noted.

The Railroad Plaza site would include trees and brick walkways that would “take people from the Depot to the monument to the Mill,” said Aguirre.

The monument will be a well deserved tribute to the contribution of farm laborers and the committee plans to “look for an artist who will not only give us the best art but also the best deal,” he added.

Funding would be invested with the Ventura County Community Foundation for annual upkeep costs.

City Manager Wally Bobkiewicz noted that the hiking and bicycle trail is planned for the Railroad Plaza and all the players would have to be consulted including the Ventura County Transportation Commission, which owns the Mill and is the city’s landlord for the railroad corridor property.

Councilwoman Mary Ann Krause said her siting preference is the Mill where the monument would have a “lot of prominence when the Mill opens as the museum...I think it deserves its own time and place,” best suited by either the Mill or the Santa Barbara/9th streets location.