by Laura Garber
Mayor Rob Saemann held his inaugural town hall event on Monday, October 6, drawing an at-capacity crowd to the newly reopened Clark Building. Attendees shared upcoming events and discussed important issues with the Mayor, who was joined by interim City Manager Steve Napolitano.
Comment cards were passed out and read by the Mayor in a Q&A format.
Topics ranged from gardening events and the Woman’s Club annual pancake breakfast to passionate exchanges regarding short-term vacation rentals and e-bikes.
Residents expressed concern with juveniles forming “gangs” on e-bikes, creating a dangerous environment on The Strand and harassing the neighborhoods.
Mayor Saemann proposed that community issues, such as the e-bikes, could be more effectively addressed through collective action. He suggested that a large turnout at council meetings could be an efficient way to encourage change.
“If you come as a group and you say, ‘We’re willing to work, let’s form a committee,’ I think you reach a better consensus and you get more productiveness on a regular problem,” Saemann said.
He suggested reimplementing a previous tactic of deploying police on bicycles patrolling The Strand.
“I remember 10 or 20 years ago, we used to have regular patrols on bikes, at least two policemen,” he said. “I would like to recommend now and say, why can’t we put two police officers on The Strand again?”
Hermosa Beach resident John Burry suggested the new chief of the Hermosa Beach Police Department, Chief Landon Phillips, hold a meeting in a more formal setting like the Mayor’s town hall.
“I think what you’re hearing is a sense of frustration. It’s a thorny issue, there’s real crime and not enough resources, but there is a sense of frustration,” Burry said.
Steve Napolitano could be seen on his phone during parts of the meeting. Towards the end of the event, Napolitano announced he messaged the Chief to host a safety forum on the e-bike issue.
“We have the technological ability to just do something like that,” the Mayor announced. “A meeting will be set, will be announced and it’ll be on the website. We’ll let you know as soon as possible when that’s going to be.”
One of the comment cards asked Mayor Saemann why he was against short-term rentals in Hermosa Beach.
“I purposely wanted to live in a residential area,” Saemann responded. He acknowledged short-term rental guests can be respectful of the neighborhood. “But most of the time it’s a bachelor party or wedding party. I learned how to play beer pong lying in bed in my own house at about three in the morning,” Saemann joked.
Resident, Laura Pena, questioned the short-term rental program’s ability to bring in more funding for the City.
“There’s a number of sites that are eligible to be short-term rentals, and they’re not,” Pena said.
She asked the Mayor to look into the two-year pilot program to understand why legal short term rentals were not being signed up.
“The city is looking for revenue, considering we have the World Cup and the Olympics and people who want to stay in the area, it might be worth the City looking into that,” she said.
“That’s a good point,” Mayor Saemann said.
Burry thanked the Mayor for hosting the forum.
“I know I’ve been critical of the Clark Building project, but if I could say one thing about this building, if you spend a little bit more money to fix the acoustics in here, I wouldn’t criticize you for doing so,” Burry laughed.
Theater director Spencer Collins IV was visiting the Hermosa forum in preparation for his upcoming show, “Broken Curses” at the Hermosa Community Center.
“As a person who has been to many city meetings, you guys need to count your blessings for having a mayor who puts something like this together,” Collins said. “Because in other cities, it’s not happening.” ER
The answer to dangerous e-bikes on the Strand is simple. Ban all e-bikes with tires over 2 inches wide. Easy to enforce as the Police currently say they cannot enforce no electric bikes on the Strand, as they cannot determine if they motorized. Stupid as everyone person in Hermosa can. This would make it even for them easy to give tickets if they wished too. But contray to their normal practices it would need the Police to step out of their expensive a/c rides and walk on to the Strand. Simple solution.
The bikes aren’t the problem.. 2″,3″4″….its the rider…