Council Rejects Reagan Slogan

Sometimes the ball falls short, even for the Gipper.

The Simi Valley City Council decided this week to pass on adopting “Home of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library” as the city’s slogan.

The move had been urged by Barbra Williamson, a council member who handles advertising and marketing for a local bank.

“It’s really too bad,” she said. “It could’ve been the Nixon library, the Clinton library, the Franklin D. Roosevelt library--it really doesn’t matter whose library it was. It’s just prestigious to have one of these facilities in your community.”

But the council members, while all Republicans, shied away from enshrining Reagan.

“The city government is supposed to be apolitical,” said Councilman Paul Miller, a retired Simi Valley police chief. “I was concerned we’d be seen as lining up with the Republican Party.”

Williamson said she proposed the slogan as a way to focus attention on something more positive than the city’s role as the site of the 1992 Rodney G. King beating trial, which triggered the most destructive riots in the history of Los Angeles.

“There’s no doubt about the stigma,” she said. “People who think there isn’t any just don’t have their ear to the ground. We get asked about it all the time.”

Hearing a highly charged case that had been moved out of Los Angeles, a jury in Simi Valley acquitted four white Los Angeles Police Department officers accused in King’s beating. In the subsequent riots, 55 people died, property valued at $1 billion was destroyed, and Simi Valley was saddled with a reputation it has had to deal with ever since.

If the council had agreed with Williamson, “Home of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library” would have appeared on city stationery and on signs at the city’s borders. Those signs now read: “Simi Valley--Gateway to Ventura County.”

Miller said that the library doesn’t define the city. A better slogan, he said, would pay tribute to the thousands of volunteers who work for local organizations from soccer clubs to the senior center.

In choosing not to pursue the Reagan slogan, the council relied on an informal poll conducted by Simi Valley’s Chamber of Commerce, which indicated only lukewarm support. Thirty-four members approved the idea and 30 opposed it, according to Leigh Nixon, the chamber’s president.

The Simi Valley Historical Society Board of Directors voted 13 to 2 against the proposal.

Most cities that host presidential libraries don’t build slogans around them. Yorba Linda, home of the Richard M. Nixon library, is the “Land of Gracious Living.” Harry Truman’s Independence, Mo., is the “Queen City of the Trails.”

West Branch, Iowa, however, is “The Birthplace of Herbert Clark Hoover, 31st President of the United States.”

R. Duke Blackwood, director of the Reagan library, was as politic as the Great Communicator at his best when asked about Simi Valley’s rejection.

“What they did is understandable,” he said. “We just want to be as open to the community as possible. We’re here for everybody.”