[Session 1, June 21, 2007]
[Begin Tape 2, Side A]
ASTONE:
We’re back to Tax Increment Funding.
PRINCE: Okay, sure.
ASTONE: Okay, so you got the $100,000.00 base amount. Then you begin to show that if you do all these things here – years one, two, three, four … by the fifth year you’re going to generate $100,000.00 in tax revenues. Okay, you’re up to zero, right?
PRINCE: Okay.
ASTONE:
What about the sixth year? Now you add another building, now you’re up to $150,00.00 in tax revenues, and by the tenth year you’re up to a million-two in tax revenues. That means you’ve got a million-one over your base …
PRINCE: Okay.
ASTONE:
… that can be used as collateral to pay off or to do in-kind, you generate, you sell bonds and you get cash.
PRINCE: So that actually is allowing you to take on more projects – generating cash.
ASTONE: Absolutely – a self-generating kind of a thing, it’s a perpetual motion machine.
PRINCE:
Sure … so that’s what is called the “Sacramento Model”? Do you think that’s what that is? I’ve heard that reference …

ASTONE:
I don’t know … we were the first ones in the state to use it, I mean it goes clear back into the fifties, or whatever it was, yeah.
PRINCE: As an urban renewal project
ASTONE: Yeah, as a way to generate your local money, yeah.
PRINCE: It sounds pretty complicated, but it worked, huh?
ASTONE:
It’s only complicated because of the way I try to explain it. It’s really quite simple. You’re paying off your project costs, which is your share of the project costs, not the federal grant. The federal grant’s just giving you millions of dollars …
PRINCE: Two-thirds the cost …
ASTONE:
Yeah but, so you’re paying off the one-third by this mortgage, that’s generating money back to you to pay off the bonds, and the proceeds of the bonds were used to do the curbs, gutters, sidewalks, and the other things that you needed done, that you couldn’t do completely with federal money.
PRINCE: I see. So, now this two-thirds grant that was given from the federal government – what sorts of strings came attached with that? Did they have any requirements in terms of how the renewal was going to be done?
Did you have to clear properties, or demolish buildings?
ASTONE: Well, you have to do it according to your plan, the information that you presented to them. You had to be faithful to that. One of the things that they really got upset at Sacramento about was our relocation plan, and the way in which we treated the people on Front Street and Second Street that

were not residents … by tearing their hotels down. And there was a definition of a resident, but if you were a drifter and you were staying there one night a month, or whatever, you know, and the rest of the time you were staying in the “weed hotel” …you know where that is?
PRINCE: No.
ASTONE:
It’s the vacant lot.
PRINCE: Oh … the weed hotel … I see.
ASTONE: There was no legislative requirement that you relocate those people. So the people that were sensitive to their plight would make a big human cry, and there was a grand jury investigation, and there was a lawsuit filed against us with HUD. And then HUD came out with this – HUD was the big organization in Washington – with what everyone felt was a white paper – you know just to say yeah, everything’s fine, everything’s cool.
PRINCE: Now, so, it sounds like there was a discrepancy in the definition of what a resident was. Did they …
ASTONE: Oh yeah, very much so, very much so.
PRINCE: And the Redevelopment – correct me if I’m wrong – the Redevelopment
Agency felt that residents were people that rented any of these places for, what, a month a year, or?
ASTONE:
There was a minimum amount of time that …
PRINCE: Yeah, what was the minimum?
ASTONE: Oh, I don’t remember.

PRINCE: I see. Did it – what about seasonal workers, I know the area was home to a lot of seasonal workers …
ASTONE: That was another problem. Right, they were just drifting through.
PRINCE: So was that still happening in those days? Because I know that at one point it was a big center for labor, right?
ASTONE:
Sure. One year it would be … they would stay at the Union Hotel, or the
Roma Hotel. One year they would stay at the Roma Hotel. The next year those same people would come back to work the crops – somewhere around here – and the Roma Hotel would be all boarded up. Now what would they do? Well, Sacramento had a soft enough hotel market in the downtown area that there were rooms for those people.
PRINCE: So they went there.
ASTONE: They went there.
PRINCE:
So tell me about this … this grand jury, was it a lawsuit, you said?
ASTONE:
I don’t know if it was a lawsuit or a formal inquiry. It didn’t go anywhere.
PRINCE: Who instigated that?
ASTONE: People that were sensitive to the plight of the indigents and the people that didn’t have homes, and this and that.
PRINCE: Were they affiliated with any churches, or was it the Mission people, or anybody like that?
ASTONE: I think it was all those.
PRINCE: I see.

ASTONE:
It wasn’t, it wasn’t … well at the time it was … testy, and we had to be called on the carpet about a lot of different things and you answered them the best you could.
PRINCE: Sure.
ASTONE:
I was not personally under fire because that wasn’t my role. We had other people that ran the relocation program. We had people that were well experienced in running the relocation program. For old, elderly people for the businesses.
PRINCE: So were there a lot of the businesses and some of these other residents that were there year round or – like you say, the elderly that were relocated to other areas in Sacramento – was that pretty successful?
ASTONE: That was very successful because there were not a lot of them. The biggest population, or the largest population were the drifters.
PRINCE:
I see, and that had …
ASTONE:
Antagonizers of the Redevelopment program said, you’re not doing what you’re supposed to do. You’re not doing it right.
PRINCE: Did they suggest how it should be done?
ASTONE: Oh gosh no. No, just do it better. Do it with more sensitivity. Always said, well, they’re not really a resident. They’re here today, gone tomorrow type person.
PRINCE: Did any of these people ever come to the Redevelopment Agency and, talk for themselves, or for themselves as a group or, was there anything like that ever happening?

ASTONE:
You saw that film. Watch “Marshes of Two Street,” watch the whole thing.
PRINCE: I saw it.
ASTONE: Did you see the whole thing?
PRINCE: I did, we have it here, I saw it.
ASTONE: Now, can you imagine those people, you know, coming on their own to a meeting?
PRINCE: No.
ASTONE: No. I mean, if you go there and conduct a meeting on the street they would express an opinion.
PRINCE: That would be tough, yeah.
ASTONE: It was tough, it was sensitive, we had to be careful how we responded in the media, oh yeah, it was not the thing that I was most comfortable doing.
Did I find it at all enjoyable? No, it just went with the territory.
PRINCE: And it seems that that was happening all across the nation, basically …
ASTONE: Oh, absolutely.
PRINCE: … with these urban renewal projects, in a lot of places.
ASTONE: Sure, we just happened to be the local one here.
PRINCE: So, that brings me to another question. Where were a lot of these people relocated, do you know?
ASTONE: Those that were residents --- and there were very few families. Most of them were single men. There were single women, there were some

couples, but there were many hotels in the downtown area that no longer exist where they were placed as residents of existing hotels.
PRINCE: Did that ever present a problem – just like moved from one area to another?
ASTONE: No.
PRINCE: No? It was okay?
ASTONE: It was – kind of it was, but in reality, it didn’t – I wish I had numbers. A few hundred, not a few thousand, a few hundred where the numbers become more formidable were the drifters.
PRINCE: Oh.
ASTONE:
So. But I didn’t have to spend a lot of time worrying about that because I was over here doing this other thing.
PRINCE:
I see, that wasn’t really your department …
ASTONE: My cup of water was half full. These people were coming around with it half empty. So I was, hey, this is what we’re doing. We’re going to turn this area around and turn it into a tourist attraction and places where people come to see museums and ride trains and ride river boats and everybody goes, “Oh my God, you pipe dreamer you.”
PRINCE: So that was your intention – was it – did you have, when you started this program did you have a clear idea of what you wanted to do?
ASTONE: When I started? Absolutely not.

PRINCE:
But I mean after the master plan was in … maybe a couple years in, you had this idea – you knew there was a historic preservation district and how you wanted it to be?
ASTONE: Once we – and I say we a lot, that means the collective we, that’s everybody, the private sector. Once we started opening Fanny Ann type places and D.O. Mills Restaurant, and Gaylord’s Mercantile, and Fulton’s
Restaurant and Patty Warren’s store began to function down there, I said this thing, this is fabulous, it’s going to work, it’s going to work.
PRINCE:
It was an enormous project. I mean, I’m just … my mind is boggled when
I think about …
ASTONE: But, I was twenty-seven years old, with a lot of energy and no brains.
[Laughter]
ASTONE: And a lot of huevos to go do whatever I thought needed to be done, so we just did it. I thought, hey, I love going to work. This is so cool.
PRINCE: What I find interesting too, Ed, is that you had these other examples, like you say, you traveled to Williamsburg, I know you said you had been to
New Orleans, and Fredericksburg, and some of these other places. They were doing something a little bit different, right? I mean it was a historic district, but it was different.
ASTONE: But in no place was it as concentrated an effort. They had controls and they were doing a lot by restrictive covenants. In other words, if you do something with your building, you’ve got to do it this way. But we’re not

causing you to have to do something with your building … that type of thing.
PRINCE: So you knew you were going to have to do something like that but yours was going to be really different, completely different.
ASTONE: Got to be motivated, got to move it.
PRINCE: What I see about this project is that it was really unique in that sense that, well, you knew that the funding – a lot of it was going to have to come from private investors, right?
ASTONE: Absolutely.
PRINCE:
That were going to … so I guess what I’m wondering is … trying to find the happy medium between the private business investment to make this a viable outcome with the historic preservationists, you know, within this historic district framework.
ASTONE:
First of all, we didn’t really have issues with historic preservation. Jim was our guy. Jim had a lot to say about what we did. So we had no, virtually no issues with preservationists. I had gimmicks, I had gadgets, I had gizmos in my hip pocket to work with these property owners. I had three percent loans, I had generated a relationship with HUD in San
Francisco where I got some grant money to feed into these developments, to try to make these numbers work.
PRINCE: So that was part of the packet that you offered these people – it was attractive…

ASTONE:
In 1970, when we started, I didn’t know we were going to have something like thirty-three loan – three percent loans. That was incredible. And nor did I ever begin to even think about the fact that we’re going to have a couple hundred thousand dollars to give away as grants.
PRINCE: Yeah, wow.
ASTONE: So we were totally immersed in it. I was totally immersed in it. Jim was,
Bill Gentry was, Ted Leonard was when he came along. We were up to our armpits in it and … but it was infectious that way. You get involved, you go, this is so cool. This is so cool, what a great way to make a living.
You know, not making a lot of money but what a great way to make a living.
PRINCE: Sounds like an exciting time.
ASTONE: Oh it was. It was a fabulous time.
PRINCE: So how involved, if at all, was the public involved in this? Were there ever any public hearings like from the freeway all the way to, you know, how the land would be cleared or anything like that?
ASTONE: There were a lot of public hearings. The redevelopment process required that there would be a lot of public hearings. Now, the freeway fight was huge – that was way beyond me; I didn’t have to mess with that.
PRINCE: That was in the early sixties, right? Sixty, sixty-one?
ASTONE: Yeah, I think the article that I have was written in what, sixty-two? Traffic
Quarterly , something like that.
PRINCE: Oh, so it lasted that long.

ASTONE: All right. We had public hearings on the redevelopment plan. We had public hearings on every contract we did; we had public hearings on everything, yeah [Unintelligible].
ASTONE:
… you attended the Redevelopment Agency meetings every Monday night. They used to be on Monday nights. There were not that many major issues until much later, in ninety-one, or ninety- two, I think it was, when a guy from L.A., John Stagin wanted to build a fifteen-story hi-rise building on Capitol Mall, adjacent to Old Sacramento. You know, my
God, people went berserk. Historians, old line historians went berserk, saying you would just overshadow this precious little thing called Old
Sacramento, and it was a vicious fight, and the thing ended up being eight stories. It’s there now.
PRINCE:
Is that the …
ASTONE: Capitol Mall building – One Capitol Mall next to the parking garage.
PRINCE: Oh. Okay. Is that where fifty-five, what five fifty-five? No.
ASTONE: No this is just right there between Front Street and the freeway.
PRINCE: Oh, Okay, I see.
ASTONE:
It’s a little non descript building – it’s a beautiful building, Jesus Christ, marble in there, polished terrazzo, it’s just spectacular.
PRINCE: Now is this the green building? The one with the green glass on it, the
Emerald building, or is that a different one?
ASTONE: No, no … see what the Emerald building just sold for?
PRINCE:
No …

ASTONE: A hundred and seventy million.
PRINCE: Really?
ASTONE: The highest per square foot of any building ever in Sacramento.
PRINCE:
That’s amazing.
ASTONE:
I think it’s a hundred and seventy million; it was just in the paper. No, you know where Embassy Suites is?
PRINCE: Yes.
ASTONE: Directly across the street from there.
PRINCE: Oh, okay, I see, okay.
ASTONE: Both those kind of sandwiched in between the river and the freeway.
PRINCE: Right off the Tower Bridge there.
ASTONE: Right off the Tower Bridge.
PRINCE: So, now, and that came in much later then, that came in the nineties.
ASTONE: Oh yeah, that was a big fight, a big fight.
PRINCE: Because one of the original things that I’ve read was to have this beautiful welcoming gateway into the city. You know, one of the big reasons to redevelop the area. So was there ever any other kind of plans to extend the historic part to that area there?
ASTONE: No. The historic part was drawn here; you do the rest by planning covenants and all that stuff. But the plan, the original plan, didn’t really start at the river. It started, well, the original plan really started at the freeway. And if you’re driving you’re confined in the Tower Bridge, and then you go a block and you’ve got the Embassy Suites here and One

Capitol Mall there that open up more than the Tower Bridge, but you’re still confined and then you come to the freeway and then it’s blown wide open. All those buildings going down the Champs Ellysee ?
PRINCE: Right.
ASTONE:
Except we don’t have any Champs.
[Laughter]
PRINCE: What happened to that plan?
ASTONE:
That’s one of the biggest wasted assets in Sacramento. I don’t know of any plan to activate that, seriously, I don’t. I gave up on that years ago.
PRINCE:
Wasn’t that the original number one, or was that number two, or do you know? The Capitol Mall Project?
ASTONE: That was part of the Capitol Mall Project, first one, yeah.
PRINCE:
So I know now you’ve got this big grass strip going down. I know for the last year, few years or so, they’ve had, they’ve tried to get public involvement in designing something for this. But it doesn’t really seem like there’s really much happening there.
ASTONE: There’s nothing happening there.
PRINCE: They redid the John Moss Federal Building, that looks a little bit better and they’ve got this Union Bank going in over here, but …
ASTONE:
Someday …
PRINCE:
… and they’ve got this old Wells Fargo Building that just got torn down and now something else is going in there …
ASTONE: Someday somebody will deal with Capitol Mall.

PRINCE: Yeah. So tell me, what do you think – is there something that you wish you had done differently – or that you feel is your least successful thing?
And I’m wondering about what you would consider your most successful plan also.
ASTONE:
Well, I’ll talk about the latter first.
PRINCE: Okay.
ASTONE: The most successful is the fact that it’s there. I mean I could take you down there right now and we could go have a beer and we could enjoy it and you could shop, you could take a river-boat ride, you could take a train ride, you could do a lot of different things. Irrespective of how we did it, and who did what and this and that, I got to be part of a major, major transformation of a very important part of Sacramento – it’s where the city was founded, where it started. And the fact that it is a reality gives me an immense amount of pleasure.
PRINCE: So do you feel, would you call that your legacy of your role there?
ASTONE: Well, to me personally – oh absolutely. Sure, because I was one of the key implementers. I was not an historian, I was not an engineer, I was not an architect. In fact people said, “Well, what are you?” And I said, “I’m an implementer.”
PRINCE:
Weren’t you the “father of Old Town?” I’ve heard you referred to that.
ASTONE:
Yeah, yeah, right …
PRINCE: Father of Old Town.
ASTONE: … ill-conceived bastard child.

[Laughter]
No … but it’s there. Forget about the – you know, all the planning and all the gymnastics, and all the stuff, and this and that … I feel so good about the fact that I had a hand in doing, in bringing this thing online. I will never, ever take credit for it. I’m given way too much credit. Just like today, at the Pony Express thing – right – They give me a very nice plaque, a certificate of appreciation for all that I’ve done in my years there to assist them with the Pony Express Re-ride, reenactments. And that’s fine, except I didn’t set up the PA System, I didn’t put up the traffic guard,
I mean those are other people. So I recognize that I am a figurehead and
I’m given way too much credit for things that other people did. Now, conversely, I’m given a lot of blame for things that maybe I had a hand in but other people did, unnecessarily. And there are people that are critical without knowing the truth, without knowing, you know, the Paul Harvey version – the rest of the story, parking meters, for example.
PRINCE: Tell me about the parking meters.
ASTONE: What do you want to know?
PRINCE:
Well, I’ve read that they really destroy the – I guess the historic authenticity of the buildings, or you know, that there’s a problem with parking and they have to be there. So there’s, you know, it’s a controversial issue …
ASTONE: Oh yes, very much so, very much so.
PRINCE: Just like the handicap ramps, right?

ASTONE: Very much so, very much so. The parking meters are easier for me to talk about.
PRINCE: Okay.
ASTONE: We had a situation where there was no off-street parking. Literally, there was no off-street parking. We had two-hour parking limits that was not well-enforced, and we had employees and business owners parking on the streets while at the same time, bitching and moaning about the fact that they didn’t have customers. Well, I should not have said “bitching and moaning …”
PRINCE:
No, that’s okay, I just wanted to make sure that was on.
[Laughter]
ASTONE: Capture those moments.
PRINCE: No censoring here, that’s okay.
ASTONE:
No, no, no, we’re way past that. So, anyway, we had … pretty soon you get fed up with the whole thing. Then I go to stand before the City
Council on my budget. And we’re up to about a half a million dollars in subsidy from the city to operate Old Sacramento. So some of the Council said, “What do you think you can do to cover this deficit?” And I want to say, “You dumb jerk, why should I have to do anything to cover it? Isn’t that the price that Sacramento should pay to have this wonderful asset down there?” But instead I say, “Well, I’m not sure, we’re looking at ways to generate more money and this and that.” So a Council member said, “How much traffic do you have in Old Sacramento on the street?”

And I said, “I don’t know.” And he said, “Have you ever figured it out?”
I said, “Well, yeah we probably have about 550,000 cars parked on the streets during the year.” Because I had figured it out one time for another reason. So he said, “Well I think what you ought to do, is go away from here and figure out a way to get a buck out each one of those cars to cover your deficit.” So they passed a budget with that as a … you know, “get your … stuff together and go do it.” So, I got together with my boss and said, okay, “What do you want me to do?” and she said, “I don’t know, what do you want to do?” I said, “let’s get a bunch of people together and talk about this because it’s definitely a two-edged sword. So we went through a nine-month period, with about fourteen to seventeen people attending meetings – often times meetings every other week to try and figure out what was the best way of having an on-street parking program.
And we looked at pay and displays; we looked at blocking off the whole area, having the whole area a parking lot. We looked at all sorts of things, we called in all sorts of people, we had people on the committee making phone calls to Park City Utah, to Denver, to New Orleans, to every burg known. And overwhelmingly, the goals of having an on street paid parking program were met best by parking meters. It was the ease with which the visitor could use them. Pay and display was not a fact of life yet, it is more now, but still, for every pay and display deal you have to have at least nine signs and people didn’t want that either. So, we decided, the committee decided to recommend parking meters and the way I’ve

always described them is that they are the least undesirable of all of the methods. Now people that are naïve, or that are cheaters will say – and some of them are both – will say that we really should have free parking in
Old Sacramento. And I will say, “For who?” And they’ll say, for customers. I say, “No way, because if you have free parking, you’re going to park there and the other business people are going to park there – there’s not going to be any parking for the customers.” I said, “We’ve been through that.” We had free, un-enforced parking on Sundays and every once in a while I’d go down to Old Sacramento on Sunday mornings
– you know, 10:30, 11:00. The street would be full of cars. The stores aren’t even open yet. I said, what in the hell is going on? It was the employees from Macy’s and the shopping center, were parking free down there. So, you make those facts known to people and all of a sudden they go, “Hey, it’s not all that bad.”
PRINCE: Sure.
ASTONE: Now the complaints are about the issuance of citations. And how every once in awhile someone will come up with an anecdote about the way in which one of those was issued. But that’s essentially why we had parking meters. Now, I think eventually the parking meters will give way to pay and display.
PRINCE:
Now, what’s pay and display? Is it when you buy a ticket when you come into the park?

ASTONE: No, that’s when you park where you want to park then there’s a sign that says, “Hey buckoo, before you go away, go to that place over there, buy a parking tag for whatever period of time you think you’re going to park there. Put it on your dashboard so that when the parking meter person comes around, they’ll see that you’ve bought it – yeah, like right across the street from City Hall.
PRINCE: Sure.
ASTONE:
I think it’s a cumbersome process. I don’t think it’s a good process. I think there will be more confusion, more citations given for that. Just imagine the attitude of the person that drives up there for the first time.
They’re visiting, and they’re driving up in a rental car or whatever the dynamics are, and they’re parking their car, first of all they’re excited to beat all hell that they found a parking place, then they get out and they’re not looking around at meters. You know, they’re looking around, “Look at that …”
PRINCE: Sure. Are there a lot of citations written up there, do you know?
ASTONE: I think there’s a huge amount of citations written up there. I have no idea
– I wish we were getting that money, and we’re not.
PRINCE: I wonder how that would compare to other parts of Sacramento because you have to pay anywhere in Sacramento – that you go to.
ASTONE:
I think it’s much higher simply because of the character of the area
PRINCE: Well, I didn’t really notice them, personally, until I read an article about them, and I thought, oh yeah, the parking meters are there so I wanted to

ask you about it. Well, let’s see, I didn’t hear about your least successful plan, if you even had one.
ASTONE:
Oh! Least successful … yeah, the historic audio tours, oh that was so frustrating, so frustrating.
PRINCE: Was that something that was …
[End of Tape 2, Side A]
[Begin Tape 2, Side B]
ASTONE:
… historic audio tours.
PRINCE: Okay.
ASTONE: We hired – again, the collective we – hired them to put together a a program whereby there would be listening stations. And you’d go to those listening stations and you’d pay two quarters or one token, and you’d listen to a four – five minute custom talk by a Mark Twain impersonator telling you about that historic site. We had nine sites. So, the city owns the script, we don’t own the recording. The people from back in
Connecticut funded the installation of the listening stations and this and that, brought the tokens and we began to sell the tokens. And they bombed. No one bought the tokens. We were getting very few quarters in them … it was probably an idea whose time had not yet come. And the audio tour was fabulous. It was so informative. You’d stand on a corner, and it would say, “Look to your left, see that building? That was the building owned by the Leland Stanford family and they operated their

wholesale grocery store business out of there, and look across the street – there’s the yada, yada, ya …” and this and that, you know? It just bombed. Finally with the requirement of government that we either have something that works, or we get rid of it – we got rid of it. And we cancelled the whole thing out. We could have salvaged the thing with about ten thousand dollars and converted it over to cell phones and things like that, but we didn’t have the right people and the right place at the right time, and I was so fed up with the whole thing.
PRINCE:
Just didn’t work?
ASTONE: No. Now this was within the last couple of years.
PRINCE: Oh?
ASTONE: And it was fabulous, it was absolutely fabulous.
PRINCE: So now, were the tokens sold right at the, was there like a ?
ASTONE: We had a visitor center. We had stores that sold them. And you would get …. You’d get a bonus if you bought nine of them … I forget the numbers, but it was something this simple. You got the packet of nine tokens for four dollars, so you got one free one.
PRINCE: Okay. And there were nine listening stations.
ASTONE: There were nine listening stations, yeah.
PRINCE:
So you said the city owns the script? So the script’s still in the city’s hands, then basically?
ASTONE: Yeah, they got it down there, somewhere.
PRINCE: Is anybody thinking that maybe they could try it a different way?

ASTONE: Nobody even knows – I will take this to my grave, probably.
PRINCE: Nobody knows that it’s there?
ASTONE: Jim read the script, edited the script. He wasn’t a big advocate of it. No one was, but the public was getting screwed because we had no tours!
PRINCE:
Well, that’s what I wonder. When I go through there I think that – I mean it’s wonderful, in terms of all these buildings that were built, but there’s really nothing that says anything about it. You don’t really know anything about it.
ASTONE: This opens up what would I do differently? I would have put a lot more emphasis on living history. I’m talking ten years ago. A lot more history on – in fact what I would have done when I came back in ’93, 94, actually.
I would have had as my highest priority, living history.
PRINCE: Living history.
ASTONE: Yeah. And forget some of these other things that have been dead ends – the garbage, and try to keep the place clean to everyone’s satisfaction and those things.
PRINCE: So, the living history … there is a living history program there, is that something that you would like to see expanded?
ASTONE:
Oh very much so. That’s the highest priority.
PRINCE:
And that’s the Pony Express days or is that the Gold Rush Days, or is it something different?
ASTONE: It’s the reenactments of all sorts of things like that.
PRINCE: Are those well attended?

ASTONE: It was shocking today how many people were out there for the reenactment of the arrival of the Pony Express from St Joe, Missouri, and we don’t do a thing because there is the National Pony Express
Association that does all the work. I mean, it’s not even part of our living history program. But there are so many things our living history program needs to do.
PRINCE: Now I hear talk about the underground tours. What do you think of that?
Do you think that’s going to happen?
ASTONE: Oh I think it has happened. And it will happen, it should happen. But some of the people can’t get out of their own way on insurance and some of these other things, and some of the silliest reasons why things don’t happen.
PRINCE: Obstacles.
ASTONE: Yeah.
PRINCE: Yeah. Well, I think that would great. I know they’ve got something in
Seattle, and a couple of other places – in New York, and some other cities, are doing these tours – I know there’s a huge public interest in something like that.
ASTONE: Yep.
PRINCE: So what about any kind of signage or interpretive displays on any of these places to show – what happened here?
ASTONE: Oh, absolutely. The ones we put in are just …
PRINCE: Gone?

ASTONE:
No, they’re there – they’re the tip of the iceberg. The buildings need to have plaques on them – the sites need to be identified – what happened here and this and that. People love that.
PRINCE:
They do. I agree. It makes it very interesting …
ASTONE: Were you the one I took over to the depot?
PRINCE: Yeah.
ASTONE: Why not do something with that? Why not have a reproduction of that mural? A good quality photographic reproduction of that mural installed down there on Front street? Wouldn’t that be simple? Jesus Christ, how revolutionary is that? No one is thinking along those lines. You know, the living history people are trying to do certain things and they’re doing a lot more than they’ve ever done, but all this discussion is within the context of what would I do differently.
PRINCE:
Well, and I think that’s a real good point you bring up. Not only would it be simpler than a lot of other plans, possibly, but it’s a visual and it’s about that exact site right there – what happened, you know, the silver…
ASTONE: Spike.
PRINCE:
Spike. [laughter]. So what do you think Ed, do you think we’re set for today? Do you think you might want to come back?
ASTONE:
It’s up to you. I’m on a roll.
PRINCE: Okay, okay. Well I did have a couple of other questions I wanted to ask you.
ASTONE:
I’m here.

PRINCE: Okay. I wanted to ask you about when you left the Sacramento
Redevelopment Agency. You’d been there for what – since what, 1964, and you left in 1977. Can you tell me a little about that, what the circumstances were?
ASTONE: About leaving?
PRINCE: Uh hum.
ASTONE: Yeah, oh yeah. There was a thought by some key people that the
Redevelopment Agency had done all it needed to do in promoting and coddling Old Sacramento – the things that I was doing. The things that needed to be done could be easily done by functional people – you got an architect, you got an engineer you got a parking person, those kinds of things. There was no thought and no interest in a district manager to do a lot of the things that needed doing, and this was a rampant political thought. They wanted – the city – at the urging of some people whose motives have never been fully understood by me felt that it was time for me to move on. So, rather than just give me my walking papers they said,
“We got a good job for you. You’re going to be in charge of section Eight housing,” which was a subsidized housing program. And I go, “What?”
PRINCE:
This is at the Redevelopment Agency, they’re telling you now you’re not going to do this …
ASTONE:
I’m not going to be involved in Old Sacramento. And so, I said, “That’s absurd. I’m not even sure I even believe in low-cost housing and subsidized housing, let alone want to be a party to it.” And they said – this

was one person – “Well, I’m not sure we have any options.” I said, “Let me think about it and if I come back and tell you that I’m not interested, how much time do I have?” He said, “If you come back in here tomorrow with your resignation, you can have six months.” I thought, oh, that’s pretty good, I said to myself, it was more than I thought. So I went home and told my wife. She said, “What are you going to do?” I said, “I don’t know, I’ve got six months to find a job.” So I went in the next morning, gave my resignation and all that stuff. Well, as word got out, there was big hue and cry – who’s going to be doing this? Who’s going to be doing that? I said, hey, you go talk to those people, in the big building. They’re the ones that are pulling the strings. You know, they don’t think what I do is worthwhile or necessary so, that’s the way it is and that’s the way it’s going to be. My duties are going to be given to this person and this person and this person. So, all of a sudden now I start getting phone calls from outside of Sacramento. “ Geez, now that you’re available, we can’t hire you for a job, but we’d like to have you come down and do some consulting work for us, with us, and on this and that. So, I said I would do that until I got tired of it or until it didn’t make sense. Well, I did it for almost seventeen years, and then I got real tired of it. And then when
Mayor Serna had just become mayor and he said, “I need you back in Old
Sac.” I says, “You can’t afford me, I’m making too much money.” And he said, “Ahh, it’s time you gave something back to your community.” So
I went home and talked with my wife. I said, “Mayor Joe wants me to go

back to Old Sac and have a full time job working in Old Sac, working for
Sam and this and that.” She said, “I like it.” I said, “You do?” She says,
“It will extend your life by ten years.” Because the travel of a consultant and jumping on and off airplanes and rushing here and … it’s horrible.
PRINCE: Were you traveling all around the state or the nation?
ASTONE: The state, primarily.
PRINCE: What kind of consulting were you doing?
ASTONE: For ten years I consulted on the Gas Lamp Quarter in San Diego. In the early days I was listed as their financial consultant and later on as a planning consultant, helped them do an ordinance, getting rid of porno operations. Did a lot of work with the property owners and rehabbing their properties and getting rid of a mission – you know, a gospel, mission-type feeding place in the middle of the district, and stuff like that.
PRINCE:
I see. So still with the urban developments …
ASTONE: And then I started doing a lot of small town economic development plans.
The state had a – the state economic development, what the hell it was – had a grant program where they would give these little towns thirty thousand dollar grants to have a commercial revitalization plan done and I must have done thirty of those things throughout the state.
PRINCE: Was that the Main Street USA, or something different?
ASTONE:
No, this was, this was prior to Main Street but it … I was doing Main
Street before Main Street was “Main Street,” because I recognized the need to do a financial plan, to do a physical plan, to do a promotion plan, a

marketing plan, all those kinds of things. So I did it for five of the little commercial areas in Santa Cruz County and oh God, Winters, and
Woodland, and it just goes on and on.
PRINCE: So where was your home base when you were doing all this?
ASTONE: We had an office on J Street.
PRINCE: So you were still in Sacramento?
ASTONE: Oh yeah. We stayed here.
PRINCE: So tell me again about Joe Serna. What was your relationship with him?
Did you know him for a long time?
ASTONE: Well, I knew him when he was on the council and then when I was doing consulting work, I submitted a proposal to do what they called
Commercial Strip Revitalization Coordination on Franklin Boulevard, and that was in his district. And he had a huge chip on his shoulder because the
Sacramento Tree Foundation had designated Franklin Boulevard as one of
Sacramento’s ugliest streets. This was like ’92.
PRINCE: Okay.
ASTONE: So, he was hell-bent to change that image. So I was assigned that contract and I worked – it was a twenty-five thousand dollar contract a year and I did many of these, I had two, three, four of these going at once and then I had a couple of thirty-thousand dollar economic development grants going for these little towns, and luckily no one ever accumulated at the same time I was supposed to be spending on all these different things. And it was working hard, it was working, and we made money and you spend a

lot of money, and this and that and had a lot of fun, met a lot of great people, not the least of which was Joe – Mayor Joe – it was Councilman
Joe. So, he was really committed to this thing. He called me “Big Ed.”
He goes, “Big Ed, we’re going to do this, we’re going to make this thing really fly.” And we did. We did. I’m going, “Joe, we don’t have any money.” He said, “Leave it up to me, what do you need?” I said, “We’ve got 4,400 linear feet of commercial street frontage where we do not have curbs, gutters and sidewalks, and we need storm drainage, we need all of that stuff.” He goes, “How much do you think that is?” It was about twenty years ago, I’m going, “I got an estimate from somebody, 2.4 million.” He says, “Okay.”
PRINCE: For just that part of the infrastructure – it needed to be redone?
ASTONE: Just that one part. Then the next thing was – we’ve got power poles all over the place, and there was legislation on the books that allowed for an underground utility district to get SMUD to use some of their set-aside money, that they were being forced to set aside for this purpose, to put a system underground. So I worked with SMUD, we did that. One day the city engineer calls me up and he goes, “ You know how you’re always asking me for money for curbs, gutters, and sidewalks?” Yeah. “We think we’ve freed up about 2.4 million for the east side of Franklin Boulevard and we want to get together with you.” I said, “Okay we’ll get together.”
So we did that. We had created a business improvement district and one of the physical or visual problems down there was the fact that we had

signs that were identifying businesses that hadn’t been there in ten years.
We had posts all over the place, we had sign brackets all over the place.
So this was one of my better moves. I found a guy – he was a little jobber, and he had a small crane truck and was more than happy to work with me on removal of these things. It was fifty bucks here, a hundred and fifty bucks there – a big one was two hundred bucks. And then he would get the scrap iron, take it and sell it for scrap. And somewhere I was doing a tally and I think we had taken down something like seventy items of signs and this and that. The minute you take something down is the minute you forget it was ever there, and we’ve got pictures, I’ve got a couple pictures that are just priceless. Well, when you’re having this kind of success and making Joe look good, he loves you, you know? We would do an annual meeting – this was so much fun. Was I telling you about this the other day?
PRINCE: No, you told me a little bit about Joe [Serna], but I wanted to hear more about your relationship with him.
ASTONE: Okay, we had the need to pull the business community together, so how do you do that? Well, you know, you have an organization you invite a lot of people to a lot of meetings, and then you – Oh I know, let’s have an annual meeting. Well, what’s an annual meeting? It’s really a party. Let’s have an annual party, but we’ll call it an annual meeting. Well, where can we have this? I don’t know, let me look around – there was a school, but you can’t drink. Oh, I know, back over here right off Franklin Boulevard

is the Fort Sutter Racing Pigeon Clubhouse. And we go in there and it’s a beautiful place! Carpeted, and they have a little kitchen and the guy would just give me the key. So, we would have these meetings, we’d have these parties, and we did it for about six years in a row. We rotated restaurants – one year it was El Noviero Mexican Restaurant, the next year it was House of Siam, Thai food. The next year it was Moran’s Sausage – all the Bavarian kinds of thing, the next year it was whatever it was and then we’d come back to El Noviero again. And I would buy half gallons of liquor and we’d have it in there and every one would serve themselves, you know. It was the most bizarre party. Okay, who would come to these?
PRINCE: Yeah, who would come?
ASTONE: The business people, Mayor Rudin came. Mayor Rudin fell in a ditch because she was walking along and they didn’t have storm drains – they just had open ditches – and she walked along and got too close and fell in
– she wasn’t hurt – I said, “See? We need infrastructure down here”
[Laughter]. Some of the guys – like Bob Matsui came as a Congressman because this was part of his heritage, he grew up down there. Cops – we had a the different police there.
PRINCE: So, were these actual meeting – slash – parties for just the Franklin
Boulevard District?
ASTONE:
Just this Franklin Boulevard Commercial Strip. And we’d give out an award or a certificate of appreciation to somebody. And when it came

time to politic for where the police station was going to go – we had it wired – and it went right there on Franklin Boulevard.
PRINCE: Wow.
ASTONE:
See, Joe would call me up, and he always called me personally, he didn’t have someone else call me. He’d go, “Big Ed, this is Joe, yeah.” I’d go,
“Oh Christ, what do you want now?” [laughter] Then he’d go, “I need an acre of land along Franklin Boulevard for the La Familia Counseling
Center.” Oh wow, crap. “Okay, when are we going to talk about this?”
“This afternoon, 3:00, in my office.” “Okay.” So I’d get out the maps.
Oh, here’s a piece of property right here, you know, I’ve never known who owns that, look at it, it’s right there, it’s perfect. So I make some phone calls. By the time we met, I had the deal done. Joe loved that kind of stuff.
PRINCE:
Yeah …
ASTONE: Not that I was that smart. It was just that I was there. I was totally ingrained in the area. See, this is the problem I have with the city hierarchy and the way in which they divvy up responsibility. They feel that it’s really important to have functional consolidation, functional coordination, functional responsibilities. And I say, it doesn’t cut it for a lot of places. You need geographical responsibilities, and geographical accountability, and geographical coordination. A case in point being the same carpenters that work on the zoo, that work on Crocker, that work on other city assets are the ones we have to wait for to come down and work

on Old Sacramento. Instead of Old Sacramento having its own handyman, and this and that. And that has always driven me crazy and I think it’s clearly an ineffective (?) system.
PRINCE:
And that’s called “functional?”
ASTONE: Well, that just the way I describe it. You know, you have the plumber, the same function, and he’s responsible for the whole city – now, he’s not just one person, there’s a,
PRINCE:
A facilities department …
ASTONE:
A facilities department, and under the facilities department there’s a plumbing unit, there’s an electrical unit, there’s a carpenter unit, there’s whatever else they have, and I’m saying, give me a handyman that can do plumbing, that can do electrical, that can do carpentry and we’ll be so much better off, we’ll be more responsive, the product will be so much better.
PRINCE:
Plus that person would know the area, and they’d know the buildings, they wouldn’t have to learn them all over again …
ASTONE: That was just one little gripe that I had.
PRINCE: So then Joe becomes mayor and wants you to come back.
ASTONE: Yes.
PRINCE: So, what happens next?
ASTONE: He calls me – this is a little anecdote – he calls me and he goes … he’s just been elected mayor, this is – if he was elected on Tuesday, this is
Thursday.

PRINCE: Okay.
ASTONE: He says, “Hey, I’m over at city hall, and this cheap city doesn’t even have a good chair for the mayor.” I said, “You mean the one you sit on at the council meetings?” “No, no, in my office.” I said, “Well what happened to the one that Mayor Rudin used?” He says, “Well, she took it with her.”
I said, “Hey, I know where she lives, I can go repossess it.” You know, ha, ha, ha. He says, “Nope, I want you to get the Franklin Boys.” Now that was a key play on words. The Franklin Boys were our core group of business owners and business operators. Franklin Boys was also a
Hispanic gang out there, but he meant our little group of guys. He says, “I want you to raise the money for them to buy the mayor a chair.” I say,
“Okay.” He says, “Work with Shirley Concolino,” who’s the city clerk now, I think, I say, “How much money are we talking here?” He says,
“No big deal it’s just a few hundred bucks.”
I say okay, so I call Shirley and I ask, “How much are we in this chair for?” And she said, “$930.00.” I go, “Holy crapola!” [laughter] No, no, she goes, “$630.00.” And I go “Holy, moly,” and she says, “That’s just the down-payment, that’s the one-third that we need in cash to order the chair, the final amount is a little bit under two thousand.” I said, “Don’t worry about it.” So, I embarked on a campaign to – I wrote twenty-two, actually twenty-one letters. I put in my share – a hundred bucks I think it was, I think I asked everyone for a hundred bucks because we had to raise about two thousand dollars. I got twenty out of twenty-one people, plus

myself, to give me a hundred bucks. The one guy that didn’t – I’ve never forgotten that – I’ve told this story about what a cheap ass he is [laughter] and I have impugned his integrity as much as I possibly can. Okay, so we raised the money, gave the money to Shirley and then I said, “Now, we got a proviso, that when the chair comes we want to have a little donation party in you office and I want to take some pictures.” So we did. And what he did, I think we sat in the chair, and Joe stood next to us and then somebody took our pictures. And then I put these dual 5 x 7s in those little card holders and gave them to everybody – everybody loved them. That’s what you get involved with in these little silly things. So then Joe said,
“Okay, time for you to come back, and fluff up Old Sacramento and get it back on track” – he felt that it was stagnant a little bit.
PRINCE:
Was this in the early ‘90s?
ASTONE: This was – we began to talk in ’93. He was elected in November of ’93.
And then I started back in Old Sacramento April 1 st
’94.
PRINCE:
’94, and what was your title that you were given, was it Town Manager?
ASTONE: Well, that’s what I wanted, yeah. Because I wanted, you see, we’d gone through the centralized management concept with the consultant, and we were fractionalized. We had splinter groups down there that I thought if this thing’s going to work, one of the best ways to do it is to have centralized management.
PRINCE: Was that a city position or?
ASTONE: Well, that’s another story.

PRINCE: Okay.
ASTONE: I was hired at a time when Walt Slipe was leaving and Bill Edgar was coming in as city manager. Both of them had taken a lot of heat for their affirmative action hiring.
PRINCE: So it was Walt Slipe leaving and …
ASTONE: And Bill Edgar was coming in.
PRINCE: Bill Edgar. Okay.
ASTONE: And both of them had taken some heat for having too many white, middlemanagement people, and not promoting, other, other people. Or not having jobs available for other people.
PRINCE: I see.
ASTONE: So, they said, “You can’t be hired as a city employee.” I said, “Okay, what am I going to be? If it’s a contract employee, you’re going to pay a lot more money because I’ve got to buy health, you know, or continue my health and this and that.” They said, “Well, no, we can run you through the
Convention and Visitor Bureau. You’re going to be an employee of the
Convention and Visitor Bureau and they have a very nice retirement package and health coverage package and yada, yada, ya. And you can …
PRINCE:
So that’s not the city?
ASTONE: No, but the city will pay them.
PRINCE: Oh, I see, okay.
ASTONE: So, right from the get-go I’ve been told by Barbara Bonebrake to always act like a city employee. And I go, “Can I be better than that, you know?”

[laughter] So, technically, I’ve never been a city employee in all these years. Because my first go round – the Redevelopment Agency was not part of the city. It was a separate independent agency. Okay?
PRINCE: Yeah.
ASTONE: Then my consulting days were consulting days, then I came back to the
Convention and Visitor Bureau.
[End of Tape 2, Side B]