CITY COUNCIL: Richard Montgomery was the “crisis mayor”
by Mark McDermott
Over the course of three and a half decades, Richard Montgomery has become so ubiquitous within Manhattan Beach that he has become one of its fundamental elements — sand, sky, wave, pier, and Montgomery, also known as “the crisis mayor.” He will go down in local history as one of only five citizens who served as mayor four times, and as the only mayor who led both during both a global pandemic and a historic recession.
At the end of the 80s, Montgomery played a key role in creating the annual holiday fireworks show. Later, he served as president of the Hometown Fair committee. Eventually, Montgomery served on the Planning Commission, the City’s most influential citizen-led body other than the City Council.
And so it wasn’t surprising in 2005 when Councilperson Steve Napolitano, stepping away from council to become a deputy for the LA County Board of Supervisors, suggested to Montgomery that he run for council.
“You should run for my seat,” Napolitano told Montgomery.
“You guys talk too much,” Montgomery replied.
“Well, you can complain about it,” Napolitano said. “Or you can get involved and do something about it.”
Montgomery ran and won. So began a tenure on council that just ended on December 18.
“Steve said, take my seat,” Montgomery said. “And when they swore me in, I actually took Steve’s physical seat. It was still warm from him.”
And though nobody would ever accuse him of being the silent type, Montgomery is not prone to overlong soliloquies. He picks his spots. And just as one over-talkative councilmember impacts each meeting’s length — one local councilperson was once recorded as speaking 108 minutes, in an average meeting — a more circumspect speaker has an almost subliminal impact.
“I joined and we stopped talking as much,” Montgomery recalled. “Some of my colleagues still talked, but the majority of them stopped talking so much.
We realized we had to put rules in place to stop talking until one o’clock in the morning.”
“Steve was right. You can’t complain about it and fix it from the outside. You have to fix it from the inside. And that’s the reason I got involved.”
Richard Montgomery, flanked by Steve Napolitano, at their final meeting on December 18. The two served a combined 38 years, the last 8 together.
Montgomery’s legacy, however, isn’t about less verbosity. During his first term, he was mayor at the onset of the Great Recession, and proved a steadying hand. The City also passed its pioneering plastic bag ban during that mayoral term. And Montgomery was part of that council’s emphatic support of the Manhattan Beach Unified School District, giving the district $2 million to help weather the economic storm.
“Everybody forgets we are partners with the school district,” he said. “We’re not adversaries. We don’t compete against each other. We work together, and they needed help.”
That phrase, “Everybody forgets,” is something Montgomery often prefaces his remarks with during this latest chapter of his unplanned political career, because both he and Napolitano became essential bearers of the City of Manhattan Beach’s institutional knowledge.
“You know, we were not these 80 or 90 year old guys out there saying, ‘Well, back in my day we carried ice blocks up the street,’” Montgomery said. “We are not that old, but we’ve just been around long enough to know where things were and how things got to where they are today.”
Montgomery served two terms through 2013, then returned, alongside Napolitano, in 2017, partly because it appeared to him that the then-current council had forgotten key elements of what made the City function well.
“We came back to pull the City out of a ditch,” Montgomery said. “It had run off course. They hired the wrong person to be city manager. They hired an assistant city manager, and gave a $2 million loan to her. They brought all their leadership team from Northern California. There was no Southern California vision. They didn’t know what we were like. They closed City Hall on Fridays. They made so many bad moves.”
Montgomery and Napolitano returned under a simple banner: “Get stuff done.” They got rid of the city management team, permanently shedding the assistant city manager position and terminating the city manager. They brought in a known commodity as city manager, longtime finance director Bruce Moe, who was like an old brown shoe — familiar, reliable, steady, and very cost-conscious — in total contrast to outgoing city manager Mark Danaj (who was later convicted of fraud in another city). They reopened City Hall on Fridays, and began addressing a long list of things to do that had been delayed again and again.
“The first thing we did was turn things back to normal,” Montgomery said. “And we saw the difference instantly.”
“I couldn’t have been happier to come back to council with Richard Montgomery,” said Napolitano. “While our style and approach to issues can differ, they also compliment each other in a very effective way. And being the first former councilmembers to be elected again, both of us had the experience to know what’s real and what isn’t, what makes sense and what doesn’t, and what it takes to get stuff done. That’s what both of us wanted to do, get stuff done, and we got a lot done because we knew how to cut through the BS.”
Though the City was never in financially dire straits, Montgomery and Napolitano set the house more firmly in order. Earlier this year, the council successfully passed a mail-in ballot measure that fully funded the Stormwater 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 $2 million a year towards the City’s infrastructure needs. And while Montgomery served as mayor last year, two previously longstanding infrastructure needs were successfully brought to completion, Peck Reservoir and a new Fire Station #2. Additionally, fulfilling their vow to protect public safety, this council added ten positions to the Manhattan Beach Police Department. All said, the two terms in which Napolitano and Montgomery together were a quietly momentous time.
But perhaps none of the aforementioned accomplishments were as dramatic or had deeper long-lasting effects than the global pandemic the City contended with. Montgomery, the “crisis mayor,” was quite naturally at the helm when the pandemic arrived.
Richard Montomery with LA Supervisor Janice Hahn, with whom he forged a strong working relationship on several issues.
Though nobody could possibly have been fully prepared for life under pandemic lockdown, it’s likely that few local leaders were better prepared than Montgomery. He had served as mayor during a time of duress previously and was a tireless networker who served on the Independent Cities Association (eventually as its president), and the South Bay Coalition of Government. He also had working relationships with both Supervisor Janice Hahn and Governor Gavin Newsom. At a time when regional cooperation was a matter of life and death, Montgomery knew all the players.
“That was the most trying time I had in my 16 years, being mayor during Covid,” he said. “I got sworn in a week before Covid started. Then the wheels fell off.”
“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.”
Manhattan Beach pushed the boundaries in protecting its restaurants and other small businesses, declaring sidewalks “parkettes” to bootstrap an emergency outdoor dining program before such a thing was codified by the LA County Department of Health. Not a single restaurant was lost due to the pandemic. He clashed with Newsom and public health leaders over the closing of the beaches but also led a council that navigated the pandemic as well as any city in the nation.
“When COVID hit, no one knew what to do. There was no guidebook, no playbook to follow,” Montgomery said. “We were just winging it, like everybody else, the fight between the states and DC about what to do, the rules, pushing back on Newsom on his ill fated close-the-beaches decision. To this day, I still tell him that was a terrible decision.”
Serving as mayor and on the City Council became an entirely different animal at that time. The council met at least three times a week, sometimes more, which had never happened previously in the City’s history. It was a time without precedent in many ways.
“When someone says the mayor is just a figurehead position, I go, ‘Really? Tell that to people during Covid,” Montgomery said. “We had to meet at leasRichard Montomery with LA Supervisor Janice Hahn, with whom he forged a strong working relationship on several issues three days a week. It was more than a figurehead — the City needed leadership, it needed somebody to be a strong leader. They said you were a bully when you were mayor,’ and I go, ‘Well, okay, maybe I was. But the City needed a leader out there.’”
Montgomery is proud of the fact that Manhattan Beach had among the lowest numbers of infection and deaths per capita in LA County during the pandemic.
“So we must have done something right,” he said.
Napolitano said Montgomery took the brunt of public criticism as mayor during Covid, and did so consciously, as a means of helping the council focus on the myriad matters at hand.
“Dealing with the pandemic was an incredible challenge for all on council at that time, and his willingness to be out front on it allowed the rest of council and staff to focus on the details of saving our businesses and keeping us safe while dealing with layer upon layer of ever changing rules and public concerns,” Napolitano said.
But when Montgomery looks back at the long list of issues and accomplishments during his 16 years in office, something that occurred the last time Montomery was mayor — 2023, thankfully, a rare Montomery mayoral rotation without a global crisis — is especially near and dear to his heart. In January of that year, he attended the U.S. Conference of Mayors in Washington D.C., and as is his wont, the ever-affable Montgomery was making new friends and acquaintances when he struck up a conversation with Paulette Moore, the mayor of Pickens, Mississippi, a town of 1,200 people where the average income is $23,000. In talking to her, Montgomery discovered that the seven officers of the Pickens Police Department all shared one patrol car. He came back to Manhattan Beach, did a little investigation, and did what he does best — he made the connection. In July of that year, Moore came to Manhattan Beach, where in an official ceremony MBPD and city leaders gave her three police SUVs, a Crown Victoria, and a Ford Sedan for a dollar each. The vehicles were slated to be retired from police use and sold, but the Council, at Montgomery’s suggestion, instead sold them for $1 each to Pickens PD. Skechers and Chevron pitched in the $17,500 needed to transport the vehicles to Mississippi, and suddenly every Pickens police officer had a vehicle.
“We made it happen,” Montgomery said. “It made national news, because no other city in California had done that before. We traded cars with other cities in California before but we had never, ever given away police vehicles. We gave an old fire engine to Loreto, Mexico, but we never did police. So that was unusual for us. And what an impact it had.”
The fact that this mattered to Montgomery, and his ability to put the entire, multi-agency, public-private act of good will together, gets at the heart of what is often the case among those who dedicate significant portions of their lives to public service. In a time when the word “politician” has taken on a negative connotation, local leaders like Montgomery are a reminder of what his word can mean — people who simply are trying to help not only their own communities, but to effectively do good in the world.
At Montgomery’s final council meeting, Mayor Amy Howorth recalled when Montgomery led a local relief effort to bring supplies to his native state of Texas after a hurricane ravaged several small towns. Montgomery didn’t just use his many contacts to gather goods, but was one of the drivers who took the supplies to Texas.
“We talk about Richard being a connector,” Howorth said, turning to her former colleague. “It’s because you actually build relationships, like no one I’ve ever seen. You remember everyone’s name, where they’ve worked, where they are from — especially if they are from Texas. And it’s a gift. I’ve said this before: your heart is so big. Yes, this is politics, and he’s been political here. But it is because it is community service.”
“This is a guy who doesn’t just talk the talk. He walks the walk,” she said. “He drives the truck.” ER