Volunteerism is rooted deeply in Doug Rodriguez, even if it’s just helping someone move.
He was walking his neighborhood when he saw a pair of women with a van and a cabinet. He offered his help, and helped stack some of their furniture into the van — making sure to set its glass doors so they wouldn’t swing open or break.
“I like to think that someone would do the same if they saw my wife or daughter out there,” Rodriguez said.
Rodriguez is running for District 2 City Council for the same reason he volunteers: Because he sees it as the right thing to do for his community. It’s a logical step for him after serving on the city’s Public Safety and Planning Commissions, and he’s running because he didn’t see anyone else standing up who matches his values.
“I don’t want to see our city make poor decisions that will leave it in dire financial straits for my children,” Rodriguez said. “We live in a great city, and we need to keep it fiscally sound so that we can continue to afford the great police and fire services we’re used to.”
Rodriguez feels that his strength, which is regularly on display during Planning Commission meetings, is his attention to minute detail. That detail, he said, is lacking with Measure C, which he opposes.
“They say they want it to be sensible development…Measure C is so restrictive, not much of anything will be able to be built there, including additional bathrooms on Seaside Lagoon” Rodriguez said. “A developer will not be able to recoup their investment.”
A third-generation resident, Rodriguez hopes Redondo Beach maintains a semblance of the beach town he grew up loving. But he’s aware that the city of his youth is changing. It’s not going back to the days of nickel scoops of ice cream at the drugstore, and not every homebuyer is going to want to keep a beach cottage when they could build a more modern home.
“It’s nice to see the historical homes, and on [the] Planning [Commission] we work to maintain them by granting variances when they want to build a structure that may be lacking turn-around space,” rather than requiring major changes to an existing building, Rodriguez said.
“I tell people that it’s easy to vote no all the time. I don’t have to read a stack of papers if I’m just going to vote no. It’s easy to vote yes all the time, too,” Rodriguez said. “What’s hard is to read, listen to testimony and to city staff, make a decision based on facts and meet somewhere in the middle.”
The middle is what he and other members of the Planning Commission searched for with the Legado Redondo mixed-use project. After many meetings, the project was reduced from a 180 housing unit, 36,000 commercial square foot version to one that was 128 units and 23,800 square feet. City Council ultimately reduced Legado to 115 units, resulting in a currently-ongoing lawsuit.
Rodriguez hopes to spare the city further lawsuit expenses, paraphrasing former Councilman Matt Kilroy.
“The audience talked about their quality of life, but what about the quality of life for the developer? He bought the property knowing he could put so many units on it, and paid for it based on that number…we just can’t scratch a unit off of there without putting the city at risk for a lawsuit without infringing on his rights,” Rodriguez said.
“I don’t want the extra traffic, and I don’t want overdevelopment, I want sensible development,” Rodriguez said.
