18 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY august 22-28, 2024 www.montereycountynow.com attending board meetings, anxiously waiting for the ordinance to be passed. Meeting after meeting went by with no ordinance, until finally, Trustee B.A. Eardley returned from a trip to Alaska, surprised to see that she was still waiting. “Haven’t they considered your petition yet, Miss Platt? I move that it be made an order of business at the next meeting of the board,” Eardley said. The motion carried, and on Oct. 6, 1902, an ordinance prohibiting chickens and other domestic fowl running free was passed. Platt’s civic career was off. In 1903 Platt was founder of the Women’s Civic Improvement Club, serving as its first president. She also created the Neighbors Club dedicated to civic improvements, and later the WhatWhy Club, focused on discussing municipal issues. She also continued to attend board meetings, and, as reported in a 1946 article in Game and Gossip, a city councilmember was quoted as saying, “There was a packed house every time the council met in those days, everyone would come to hear what Julia Platt would have to say. She never hesitated to disagree and always spoke excitedly what was in her mind, but it certainly made people take interest.” Around town Platt could often be seen in old-fashioned long skirts, wearing a hat (some descriptions said the hats were “mannish,” others called them sun hats), carrying a basket and pushing a wheelbarrow with pruning shears, shovel and other tools to pull weeds and plant flowers to beautify public spaces. She is credited with single-handedly improving Lovers Point from a weedy, littered spot to one filled with plantings and flowers. Platt did something else unusual for the time. As a single woman she adopted a son, named Harold Platt. In 1922, piqued that the city’s board of trustees was considering waiving property taxes on property owned by the Boy Scouts, Platt wrote a scathing four-page pamphlet called “The Holy City.” She first took the adult leaders of the Boy Scouts to task for taking out loans from residents (she accused them of using the boys to “beg” for money) that they did not pay back. Platt also lambasted the city’s trustees for accepting a deed from the Del Monte Co. for the property with racist deed restrictions, even though they were common for the day. Specifically that the property not be used or occupied by “Asiatics or negroes, nor conveyed by deed or otherwise to persons belonging to other than the Caucasian race.” Platt pointed out that Article 14 of the U.S. Constitution prohibited states from making or enforcing any law which impedes the privileges of citizens. She asked if the trustees “wished to teach the Boy Scouts of Pacific Grove that the nation’s highest law is undeserving of respect?” The next point struck right to the heart of the matter. Even if the trustees were ignorant of the fact that the restrictions were not enforceable under the Constitution, “might by its very presence be induced to believe in the authority of the restrictions?” Over time, Platt became convinced that P.G.’s form of government was lacking. She and other residents wanted a council-manager form of government, that combined an elected city council with the appointment of a professional city manager. The town was getting bigger, and there were issues arising that Platt felt were beyond the capabilities of a volunteer board of trustees to manage. Platt is credited with writing the town charter in 1927 as a representative of the Board of Freeholders, a group of town businessmen and others that included W.R. Holman of Holman Department Store. “Miss Platt’s charter,” as one opponent referred to it, included creating a seven-member elected council, which stands to this day. It was unsuccessfully challenged in 2022 with an amendment to change to a five-member council, and is back on the ballot as Measure Z this Nov. 5. The campaign fight over the charter election was fierce, with both sides making their cases known in the local newspapers and on the streets. Holman wrote his own circular making the case for a charter, as chronicled in the book My Life in Pacific Grove, by Holman, then later annotated and edited by Heather Lazare, and published in 2022. Platt employed members of her Neighbors Club to round up votes. A record number of Pagrovians showed up to vote. The charter won, 614-570. A municipal election followed in June to elect a mayor and six councilmembers. As Palumbi and Sotka point out in their book, Platt included in the charter the very wording that helped bring Monterey Bay back from the brink of destruction in later years. In Section 3, titled “Inalienable Rights of City,” she included ownership of “lands under water” as one of those rights. “This declaration puts the protection of the sea firmly in the hands of the town of Pacific Grove, a responsibility that Julia pursued single-mindedly through the last decade of her life,” Palumbi and Sotka wrote. There’s an often-told story that Platt ran for mayor in April 1931 as a result of exasperated city councilmembers saying something to the effect of, “Well if you think you can do a better job, why don’t you run for mayor?” Platt may have had another more compelling reason to run. A news story originally published in the San Jose Mercury Herald and reprinted in the Semi-Often, a P.G. newspaper, reported that Platt thought the success of the council-manager form of government depended on a change in the current administration. She told the reporter that she had recruited several businessmen to run for mayor, but all had declined. She would have to run herself. “‘I’m no politician,’ she declares. ‘And I have no ambition to become famous as Pacific Grove’s woman mayor. I really don’t see what age or sex has to do with it, anyhow,’” the paper reported. During the campaign for mayor she had to dispel a rumor that she was an atheist, which could have impacted her chances of winning in a predominantly Christian town. Platt took out an ad in a local paper declaring that she certainly was not an atheist; she was a Unitarian. Platt won the election, 942 to 440, against the incumbent mayor. Her win made national news; even the Boston Globe devoted an entire column to her win and reported favorably on her first few weeks of administration. Now in a position of power, Platt was able to leverage it on behalf of Monterey Bay. From her home at the corner of Ocean View and Grand that she named Roserox, with a large picture window that overlooked the bay, Platt had a front-row seat to the pollution from fishing and canneries, just on the other side of Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey. Platt could foresee the worst that could happen to the bay should the overfishing and pollution continue. But, says Palumbi, she knew it was too big of a problem to solve herself. There were too many powerful interests that wanted the industry to remain in operation. Instead of throwing up her hands, she asked herself what she could do, he says. Platt had inserted that phrase “lands under water” into the city’s charter, although she knew the state, not cities, owned underwater lands. Now as mayor, her solution was to write a state law that granted P.G. title to the land off its shores, along with some nearby lands. She drafted the scientists at Hopkins as her allies, and convinced the P.G. City Council to petiThis bronze plaque in Lovers Point Park was dedicated to Platt by her son, Harold, in October 1935, four months after her death. “Today we have met to honor one who was outspoken in her beliefs; who was steadfast and unshakable in defending the civic interests; whose absolute integrity was never questioned; a woman of keen intellect, and highly courageous,” the Reverend Lee Sadler, of First Christian Church, said in his remarks for the occasion, as reported in the Pacific Grove Tribune. Daniel Dreifuss
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