2024 Year in Review: A community in agreement and a changing of the guard 

by Mark McDermott 

On the surface, 2024 was a relatively quiet year in Manhattan Beach. Even town politics were unusually pacific. This was particularly surprising because the lack of drama came in an otherwise loud election year. 

A few years ago, divisiveness was the word local leaders were using to decry what appeared to be the fraying of the community’s discourse. Candidates at the time ran for local office expressing a need to end this divisiveness. Perhaps this year was the outcome. Six candidates ran for three seats on the City Council, and rather than attack each other at forums, they repeatedly expressed how much they liked each other. Two spots were also open on the Manhattan Beach Unified School District Board of Education. Surprisingly, given the hard-fought nature of the last school board election, only one new candidate ran, an incumbent did not run, hence the election was uncontested and didn’t even reach the ballot. 

The community came together even in matters of money. The City of Manhattan Beach twice asked residents for fee increases —  early in the year a mail-in election for a Stormwater fee increase, then a half cent sales tax hike in November —  and neither faced organized opposition. Both were successfully passed. Meanwhile, MBUSD also passed a parcel tax in March and a $200 million school bond in November. 

The City also saw a changing of the guard, as veteran councilmembers Steve Napolitano and Richard Montgomery termed out, and City Manager Bruce Moe retired. And the school district proudly watched as three more Mustang alumni became Olympians. 

MBUSD Superintendent John Bowes, Mayor Joe Franklin, Yes on MB co-chair Nathalie Rosen, Tarek Shaer, Steve Napolitano, and Yes on MB co-chair Tyler Morant at an election night gathering watching Measure MB voting results. Photo by Kevin Cody

Funding for MBUSD 

Two years ago a proposed parcel tax met with outright derision in Manhattan Beach. And so when another parcel tax campaign was launched early this year, it faced headwinds.  Measure A, which proposed a $1,195 tax, went to the ballot in 2023 and lost dramatically, with 69 percent of voters rejecting it.  And while that ballot measure would have raised $12 million annually for 12 years and thus covered the projected $12 million deficit MBUSD faces over the next two years, its size and duration made it a lightning rod and created deep divisions within the community. Measure MB, a relatively modest increase that just continued the existing parcel tax at $225 per year raising $2.5 million for local schools, did almost the exact opposite. It brought the community together, it passed by nearly the same margin by which the previous measure was rejected, earning close to 68 percent approval. 

Tyler Morant, the co-chair of the Yes on MB committee, said that achieving this challenging level of approval for a tax was the result of a truly community-wide mission. 

“Passing Measure MB by a supermajority vote was only possible because of the efforts of so many people.  The community support was just incredible,” Morant said.

Even with its passage, MBUSD remained one of the most chronically underfunded districts in the state, largely due to a state funding formula intended to help more disadvantaged areas that unintentionally punishes Manhattan Beach. The school board issued 38 pink slips last spring, including 33 to teachers. Measure MB allowed the board to rescind 20 of those layoffs. The district was greatly aided by the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation, which contributed a record $7.4 million to local schools. This was 20 percent more than last year’s MBEF contributions, and represented a whopping 17 percent of the district’s budget. 

“It all comes down to local support, and we’ve known this for 40 plus years… The same thing with Measure MB —  it all comes down to local support with the vote,” MBEF executive  director Hilary Mahan said. “The fact that local funding is almost 20 percent of our district budget is pretty remarkable. I’d like to see it even higher. In those districts where local support is even higher, through many parcel tax campaigns, the per pupil funding is significantly higher. You simply have to rely on your local community to uphold the quality of education we hope for.” 

Later in the year, MBUSD addressed its infrastructure needs, pursuing the $200 million Measure RLS campaign school bond. If it appeared a tough sell on the heels of the parcel tax campaign, the Yes on RLS had a winning argument to make —  due to old school bonds coming off the books, the school bond didn’t require a tax increase, and due to a state school bond, the passage of RLS would come with an estimated $75 million in additional, mostly matching funds. 

“When you can get $200 million without raising taxes and it turns into $275 million, it’s a pretty good situation,” said Larry Zimbalist, the chair of the Yes on RLS committee. 

Voters overwhelmingly agreed, and Measure RLS won with 66.68 percent of the vote, well above the 55 percent required for passage. 

Richard Montgomery and Steve Napolitano exited the City Hall stage together, serving ten terms combined. Photo by Kenny Ingle

End of an era 

The last city council meeting of the year featured the farewells of two councilmen who each in his own way made history in Manhattan Beach. 

Steve Napolitano was a 24 year old college student who was still living with his parents when he first ran for council in 1990. His goal was simply to protect his beloved hometown. He would lose that election, narrowly, but after winning two years later Napolitano would never again lose a council election. He served from ‘92 to 2005 and then from 2017 until December 17. Every time he ran, Napolitano received more votes than anyone else on the ballot, and each time, he received more votes than he had the previous time. Napolitano served as mayor a record six times  and in a sense became the perpetual mayor of Manhattan Beach. Nobody’s voice has been listened to more closely on more issues for the better part of three decades, and nobody’s lead has been followed as much as Napolitano’s. He put in his 10,000 hours, and then some, as a public servant and local leader, and achieved a mastery unmatched in recent South Bay political history. 

Mayor Amy Howorth said she has never known an elected official better suited for the job. 

“It is a true calling for him to be a public servant, really, more so than anyone else I’ve met,” Howorth said. “He looks at it as a privilege that he gets to impact this community that he loves so much.” 

Napolitano, famously acerbic on the dais, gave an emotional goodbye at his final meeting. 

“It’s been the honor of my life to serve my community, my hometown, the only place I’ve ever called home and ever will,” he said, pausing to gain composure. “I couldn’t be happier to have my 89 year old mom here. My dad passed away a few years ago. They were the ones who taught me to always do my best and make a difference. I’ve been trying to do that ever since. I hope I did okay, Mom.” 

Montgomery came to the council because Napolitano encouraged him to take his seat when he first left the dais in 2005 and would go on to serve as mayor four times, a feat achieved by only five people in the city’s history. As he marveled at his colleague’s record, Napolitano suggested Montgomery might one day return to council. 

“Six times as mayor, I don’t think anyone will ever catch up,” Montgomery said. 

“I know someone who might try,” Napolitano said. 

“Not me. I’m happy to stay right at four. Four is great.” 

What was significant about Montgomery’s tenures as mayor was less the number of times he did and more the nature of those times. He was mayor right as the Great Recession hit in 2008 and then when the pandemic arrived in 2020. 

Napolitano praised his steady leadership. 

“Crisis seems to follow Richard, and that’s a good thing,” Napolitano said. “He was mayor during the Great Recession and also during Covid, and while our mayoral position has no more power than a councilmember, it’s understood that it’s the mayor’s role to speak for council and show the strength, compassion and leadership when needed. Richard did that and then some.” 

“I was so proud that you were our mayor and you were leading us through that [time],” Howorth said. “I felt safe….and I know every community member in that very turbulent, scary time felt the same.” 

Steve Napolitano campaigned for City Council in the early 90s, when he still lived with his parents. He would go on to serve as mayor a record six times. Historical photos all courtesy of Steve Napolitano

House in order 

Montgomery and Napolitano departed with a gift for future councils, helping set the City’s finances more firmly in order. Earlier this year, the council successfully passed a mail-in ballot measure that fully funded the Stormwater drain enterprise fund, which was designed to be self-sustaining but had come to bleed millions from the City’s General Fund because it had not been adjusted since its inception in 1996. Last month, a ballot measure drafted by the council successfully passed that adds a half-cent to the local sales tax, generating $5.3 million a year towards the City’s infrastructure needs. 

Napolitano said the storm drain measure stabilized the part of the City’s budget that pays employees and provides services. The stormwater fund’s subsidy from the General Fund was projected to balloon to $11 million in coming years.  The sales tax is intended to address infrastructure needs. 

“That was for operational issues,” Napolitano said of the stormwater fee increase. “[The sales tax increase] is for everything else that everybody wants —  the pool, the streets, the outdoor dining, the wider sidewalks, Lot 3 for more parking, whatever it is.” 

Mustang Olympians 

The path from Mira Costa High School to the Olympics has become surprisingly well-trodden. Three former Mira Costa athletes competed at this year’s Paris Olympics: triathlete Taylor Spivey, decathlete Dan Golubovic, and water polo player Jordan Raney. And while it is unusual that a single Olympics includes three athletes from the same high school – only one other high school has two athletes represented – Mira Costa’s presence at the Olympic Games has become somewhat usual. Since 1964, when indoor volleyball players Mike Bright and Sharon Peterson became the first Mustang Olympians, former MCHS athletes have competed in all but three Summer Olympics in which Team USA has participated (the United States boycotted the 1980 Olympics in Moscow). 

Mira Costa has produced 16 Olympians in 50 years. 

“These are incredible people who lived right down the street from you,” said Chuck Currier, a former MCHS teach, coach, and co-founder of its Alumni Hall of Fame. “They ate at the Kettle. They went to Mickey’s Delicatessen in Hermosa. They were surfing next to you. They were skateboarding with you growing up. You know, it’s not some distant star. They lived next door. We sat in the same rooms, shared many of the same teachers. There is that connection you don’t get very often, just a very warm feeling. ‘We know these people. These are our people.’”  

This year, Spivey became the sixth Mustang to win an Olympic medal. Though she had a disappointing finish in the individual Decathlon, Spivey came home with a silver as a member of the Team USA Triathlon Mixed Relay team. 

“It feels so incredible,” Spivey told the Team USA website. “All of us didn’t have the best individual race….But we could put it together today, and we made it count. To walk away with the silver medal is really special.”

Aquatic Center

The City of Manhattan Beach may have found an answer to the expensive quandary of its disintegrating public pool. 

The City Council in August entered an agreement with Bay Club, the high-end health club operator, to explore construction of a two-pool complex on City property adjacent to the Manhattan Beach Country Club, which the Bay Club operates. 

If the details can be worked out, Bay Club would bear all the construction and operating costs for the pools, enter into a ground lease with the City, and give Manhattan Beach residents priority access to the complex. 

Earlier in the year the council commissioned designs for two options: the renovation of the 60-year-old Begg Pool, or the building of a complex that would include both a 25-yard recreational pool and a 35-meter competition pool. The renovation would cost an estimated $28 million and the complex $40 million. 

But in May, shortly before the unveiling of those designs, Bay Club reached out to the City with a third option. Though it’s not a done deal, it seems likely to go forward. 

“This is just the first step, folks,” Montgomery said. “We are not talking grand design here. It’s just to get us off the launch pad, and let’s not look at a gift horse in the mouth.” 

City Manager Bruce Moe retired after 35 years as a City of Manhattan Beach employee. Photo courtesy City of MB

Changing of the guard 

In addition to Montgomery and Napolitano’s departures, the City lost another pillar of institutional know-how with the retirement of City Manager Bruce Moe in August. 

Moe was a surprise choice when he was appointed as city manager early in 2018. He was a 29-year veteran of City Hall who was held in particularly high regard for the instrumental role he played in helping the City achieve a AAA bond rating, the gold standard for municipal finance, and a key factor that enabled the construction of a new public safety headquarters in 2003 and most of the major infrastructure since. But Moe didn’t seem to be the type to become a city manager. He wasn’t the climbing type, but more the “I am just grateful to be here” kind of employee. The City, however, had gone through four city managers in less than a decade, and after a nationwide search decided they had “a gem right under our noses,” as Napolitano put it at the time. Under Moe, employee morale picked back up, and he fulfilled the marching orders Napolitano and Montgomery had issued upon return to city government: “It’s time to get things done.” From large projects, such as the building of a new Fire Station #2, to the less heralded, such as street paving throughout the city, things got done. When the pandemic hit and how to run a city had to be reinvented on the fly, Moe, with his steady demeanor and intricate knowledge of the city and its employees, became one of its unsung heroes, working endless hours to keep his 350 employees connected and somehow helping the City to emerge on the other side of the crisis in strong enough financial health to hire seven new police officers. 

“After a few terms on council, I’ve made hundreds if not thousands of decisions, some of them big, some small. But the best decision that I’ve made in my time up here on Council is appointing Bruce, with my colleagues, as city manager of the city of Manhattan Beach,” Napolitano said at a ceremony in July recognizing Moe. “His dedication, his calm under fire, and his belief in local government and what it can do for people, the difference it can make in their lives — he has shown all of this every day that he has shown up for work in our city and our community. And we are the better for it.” 

Husband and wife Kim Ngo and Son Dang, the owners and proprietors of Beach Chinese for the last 35 years. Photo by Jefferson Graham

Beach Chinese 

It was a little restaurant that had a big place in many residents’ hearts (and bellies), and so when Beach Chinese closed its doors after 35 years in business, Manhattan Beach lost something more than a food to go option. It lost a bit of the community’s fabric. 

The owners, however, had achieved an American Dream. Kim Ngo and her husband Son Dang were Vietnamese immigrants who arrived in the US with little more than the clothes on their backs four decades ago. Through their restaurant on Rosecrans Avenue, they raised two children of their own and helped feed thousands of others. 

Nina Tarnay, a longtime customer who would be elected to City Council later in the year, said her own kids were almost in mourning over the end of Beach Chinese. 

“Think about all the meals that they have cooked, all the families they have nourished around town, so quietly and without fanfare,” Tarnay said. “For the rest of us, until you lose it, you don’t realize, ‘Oh shoot, this is like a big part of our family.’” 

Ngo had mixed emotions about the end of this era. “I am happy and sad, together,” she said. ER