Not everyone in Oceanside wants to forget Cesar Chavez, the late civil rights leader who fell from grace after revelations of his past criminal behavior.
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“This is an overreaction to what happened with the Cesar Chavez situation,” said Wilson Godinet, a member of the Oceanside Parks and Recreation Commission.
The commission voted 6-2 last week, with Godinet and Commissioner Genevieve Wunder opposed, to recommend the Oceanside City Council approve changes to its policy for naming public facilities. The new policy would focus on choosing names suggested by things such as local geography, flora and fauna instead of people.
“Some people think he’s (Chavez is) controversial, but to the Hispanic people he’s not,” Wunder said.
“I don’t think that is justice for the community,” she said. “There is a better, more effective way of addressing this.”
Oceanside has several facilities named for noted local figures — including former Councilwoman Melba Bishop, former Mayor Jim Wood, and professional football player Junior Seau — and those should never be changed, she said.
Commissioners who voted in support of the new policy had little to say about it. The proposal goes to the City Council for a decision later this year.
The City Council asked staffers April 8 to review the selection procedures after a New York Times investigation revealed Chavez, a co-founder of the United Farmworkers movement, had groomed and sexually abused girls and women for decades.
Soon afterward, his name was removed from parks, schools, streets and other facilities across the country. In Oceanside that included a small, neighborhood park and a public middle school.
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Also at the April 8 meeting, the City Council considered a request by an Oceanside family to rename the 67-year-old Brooks Street Swim Center for a longtime city employee who started his career there as a lifeguard.
While the council members acknowledged the man’s dedication, they said it would be wrong to rename the swim center after so many years. People have fond memories of the Brooks Street pool and would not want its name changed, they said.
“It was clear we needed to look at the process for designating park names,” said Manuel Gonzalez, the city’s director of parks and recreation, at Tuesday’s commission meeting.
“The (Parks and Recreation) department recommends that the city move away from naming parks for individuals,” Gonzalez said. “It is difficult and highly subjective to determine who deserves this type of recognition.”
Geographic location should be the first priority for naming facilities, he said. For instance, the Country Club Senior Center is on Country Club Lane, and the Brooks Street Swim Center is on Brooks Street.
The park formerly named for Chavez is on Division Street in Oceanside’s predominantly Hispanic Crown Heights neighborhood. The council asked staffers to work with neighborhood residents to choose an appropriate new name.
The Oceanside Unified School District recently renamed the former Cesar Chavez Middle School as Senda Middle School. “Senda” is a Spanish word for “path” or “journey.”
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