James R. Mills, a retired San Diego state legislator who never met a streetcar he wouldn’t ride or a historic building he wouldn’t save, died March 27 at age 93.


The San Diego native and longtime Coronado resident succumbed to kidney cancer at a hospice facility in Bonita, according to family.


In his 22 years as circumstances assembly member and state senator, Mills authored legislation that created the neighborhood trolley system and Old Town State Playground.


The Mills Work, named after him, has been credited with saving a large number of historic residential and commercial buildings from destruction in California by reducing property taxes for owners who preserve them.


He secured financing to help restore the Old World Theater after it burned down in 1978 and he steered appropriations for structure of the collection at NORTH PARK Point out and Third University (now Thurgood Marshall University) at UC NORTH PARK. He supported local parks and bikeways.


And he achieved it, in a commanding baritone tone, without making his political and legislative competitors into enemies.


“That is a term that maybe has truly gone out of vogue, but he was a gentleman,” said Steve Peacefulness, a former state legislator, “and he was a fairly consistent practitioner of experiencing active disagreements without having to be actively disagreeable. It wasn’t about you. It had been in what you were doing.”


Created June 6, 1927, Mills was raised in a family group devastated by the fantastic Depression. They lost their residence and car when he was five.


What happened next turned him into a lifelong Democrat: His father, a painting company, found sort out President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Offer programs.


“We could actually keep a roofing over our mind throughout a critical period,” Mills later told the Union-Tribune.


After attending local schools, he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees ever sold from NORTH PARK Point out. He served in the Military through the Korean War, trained background in middle institution, and ran the Junipero Serra Museum in Presidio Playground.


In 1960, whenever a local assembly member resigned the 79th Area seat to become Municipal Courtroom judge, Mills’ then-wife, Joanna, prompted him to perform in the special election. He gained.


He served in the set up for 6 years and then ran for state senate, winning a seat that he held until 1982. He was elected senate pro tempore from 1971 to 1980, the body’s top leadership position.


“Jim was very liberal for his time, one of most liberal members of either house, but he was a temperamental moderate,” Peace said. “That’s why he got elected pro tem. He was a facilitator of differences.”


Mills came to regret one of the changes he facilitated. In 1966, he introduced a constitutional amendment, later approved by state voters, that made the legislature a full-time operation.


Before then, lawmakers held a full legislative session every other year, with limited gatherings to pass a budget and deal with other pressing items in between.


The idea was that the shift would lead to a more professional operation able to respond more quickly to the needs of a fast-growing state. But after it was implemented, Mills felt that it robbed legislators of the time off necessary to reflect on what they were doing, and what they had done.


“I hope God will forgive me” for introducing the amendment, he wrote in a 1987 book about state politics called “A Disorderly House.”


That was one of a half-dozen books Mills wrote. Others include histories of San Diego and its landmarks, and two books about Pontius Pilate. One of them, a historical book, muses about the compromises the Roman governor of Judea faced in condemning Jesus to loss of life.


“Every politician that I've known, at one point or another, has given way to political pressures and done something that he / she really didn’t believe was right,” Mills told the Union-Tribune after “Memoirs of Pontius Pilate” was published in 2000.


Mills traced his interest in public areas travel to his own use from it growing up in NORTH PARK. He didn’t own an automobile until he arrived home from the Military.


His 1975 legislation creating the trolley became a model for other light-rail systems around the united states, but it drew some opposition from municipality officials who thought it had been forced with them.


It had been, Mills told Transit California in 2015. If he’d waited for local officials and the general public to approve, it could do not have been built. “I thought that if the folks of NORTH PARK could view it, they would enjoy it and want more,” he said. “It’s broadened since, when i knew it could.”


The trolley now covers about 54 mls, with a fresh line to College or university City likely to open this fall.


After he still left the legislature, Mills chaired the Metropolitan Transit Development Plank in NORTH PARK for nine years. Its headquarters is known as after him. He also served stints on Amtrak’s plank and the California BROADBAND Rail Authority.


“Dad believed that government existed to serve the people, and he fought for fairness, education, environmental protections, the coastline, the environment and people services,” his little princess Beatrice Germain said. “He was a genuine old-school intensifying, and we all have been pleased with what he added.”


Survivors include his daughters, Beatrice Germain (partner Paul) of Corvallis, Oregon, and Eleanor Howard (Brian) of Greencastle, Indiana; his boy, Monthly bill Mills (Tracy) of Castro Valley; and nine grandchildren.


Services are pending. Instead of bouquets, his family asked visitors to go for a ride over a trolley, coach or bike.