After two years at RBUSD’s relatively friendly school board, Emdee takes her act to Redondo’s contentious council
While dust is starting to kick up on campaign trails around Redondo Beach, Laura Emdee has found herself the lone horse in the running for the City Council’s soon-to-be-vacated Fifth District seat. Elected to the Redondo Beach School Board in 2011, Emdee will be moving from a tight-knit group at RBUSD to a city council whose meetings could be kindly described as “contentious.” Her plan to help broker deals among an occasionally-fractured council? “Finding the middle.”
So, what caused you to run for the open city council seat?
[Councilman Matt] Kilroy’s leaving, and he was one of our biggest advocates. He understood the school district and city relationships, and that made me start to think that I should transition over to keep that continuity. I don’t want to leave school board, I like school board. The whole reason I joined school board is to be an advocate for kids. Now, I have to expand my nest of who I’m taking care of.Why did you run for school board in the first place?
The school district, partly from circumstances they couldn’t control, and from state budgets, had its reserve around 3 percent. If you go below that number, the school board loses all authority and goes into receivership. The state comes over and takes over the district…we were looking pretty grim financially. I went in with different premises to improve the relationship with the city, increase that reserve, and strengthen the budget. That’s where my strength lies. We’re now at a really nice reserve, with the idea that, so long as we keep it maintained, we’ll never have to ask the citizens for a bond ever again.
How did you increase the reserve?
We got lucky. One, the economy turned around. Prop 30, which added taxes to fund education, was put on the ballot in 2012. [The school district] was on the brink of disaster, and we introduced Measure Q to the citizens. The idea there was that, if we put in solar panels, we would save $500,000 a year in electric costs. That would be enough to put a band-aid on our finances until the economy turned around. Then both Prop 30 and Measure Q passed. Prop 30 helped shore everything up; with the savings we’re getting from Q and the money from 30 we were able to bank everything. I didn’t build the reserve on the backs of employees, who have been suffering the entire time, so how we divided it up was that any ongoing money went to the budget, while one-time money went to the reserve. It’s like being an employee with a bonus: You don’t use that bonus for rent, you use that for buying a car.
What’s your pre-politics background?
I was in marketing, at an event company. We did pretty well for a small company; we did around $1 mil in the late 90s. A business owner, marketing, event planning. I’m detail oriented that way. I’m good at sitting back and looking at the bigger picture.
You had that until recently?
I sold parts of that off when I went into school board – I just sold off the rest of the company – and I was planning on staying on school board for 8 years, then retiring. Then this happened.
Do you have any allies on the council now? How do you think you’ll get along?
Well…I tend to try to find the middle. I’m not emotionally involved in a lot of the issues that are there, so I tend to try and broker deals that get us into the middle. Whether or not the groups that are there now can do that, because they’ve been so contentious, I don’t know. But I’m willing to talk to anybody. What’re the issues at hand? Where do we agree? Let’s start there, and work outward from that. I think I’ll be fine; I get along with everybody…but we’ll see, won’t we?
You need to build trust with people to be chummy. Our five on school board don’t always agree on things. But there it’s not the personalities, it’s about issues. That’s what I’m going to miss the most; no one is there to throw anyone under the bus, and that’s what I’d like to bring to city employees. We’ll get our packets on Friday, so if I have a question, I’m going to ask them on Monday [before the meeting on Tuesday]. I might ask them in public, if it’s a little more in depth, so everyone can know about it. I don’t think it’s right to blindside people.
Obviously, the most contentious issue is shoreline redevelopment. Where do you stand there?
Well, I don’t think AES is evil; what they’re trying to do is get the most money for their property. Wouldn’t you? Based on what they’ve got in there, they’ve heard complaints and ideas, they’ve got a park, they’ve got open space and open walkways, but there are ambiguities in there that I need to do more research on – is there enough parking? Has traffic mitigation been thought through? Measure DD causing zoning changes to go through the vote of the people has stopped a lot of development in my opinion. It adds $200,000 to the cost of any development, and the documentation that has to go to every voter is a hugely thick packet.
How long have you lived in Redondo?
I’ve been here since 1990. I grew up in the Harbor City/Lomita area; my husband went to graduate school in New Jersey, and when we came back, we settled in Redondo. I’ve decided that there’s no reason to live east of the 405.
What’s your plan for the next four months?
Basically, I’m going to learn as much as I can because that learning curve can be steep. I still want to knock on doors for voters in my district, and find out what their wish list is. I want to talk to people within the city, the people who are actually working on the budget, who are in the planning department. Are they overwhelmed in there? Are they not staffed properly? I want to know what challenges they’re facing.
What got you onto PTA to begin with?
Growing up, my kids were in a parent-participation preschool. I was on the board there, and I was at a heavy level of involvement. I walked into Madison Elementary, ready to help, and was faced with culture shock; the only way to help was PTA – I think I started as hospitality chair. Mind you, I had just earned my MBA, I was running a company, I was doing these huge projects, and my job was to bring cookies!
I was actually kind of a black sheep there, but at the end of the year, they looked at me and nominated me as president – because no one else was left. So here I was, starting over as PTA president, and I was the only person in the organization. I collected volunteer forms and called around, starting at “A” – by the time I got to “P” I had filled the board. I figured out what someone’s goal was, what their skills were, and asked if people could help. By my second year as PTA president, we had meetings that had 400 people there.
What’s your proudest accomplishment from your time on the school board?
Well, the budget, of course. But the fact that we were able to give everybody raises, get solar panels in there, encourage recycling…I pushed for opening a thoroughfare by the high school, because that’s what the neighbors were complaining about needing. There were a lot of reasons as to why they said they couldn’t do it, and some of them valid, but…it’s open. You have to listen to your neighbors. There’s gonna be times where you have to look at people and say “I can’t do that,” but I’m going to try.
