by Kevin Cody
One of the most intractable problems in city government, and not only in Hermosa, is agonizingly long city council meetings.
Council candidate after council candidate has promised to end meetings by 10 p.m. only to fail.
Hermosa Beach City Council candidate Michael Keegan, a 38-year resident, and founder of Manhattan Bread and Bagel, promises, if elected, to break the curse of the bottomless meeting.
Put the “closed sessions” that start council meetings at the end of council meetings, he proposes. And put the public hearings at the top of the agenda. Keegan reasons the council will move through the public hearings with less bloviating knowing they can’t adjourn until after they discuss pending litigation and personal matters in closed session.
“Prioritize the residents, not the council,” Keegan said.
Keegan said he is running for council because the city needs a “course correction,” despite his efforts at course correction costing him reelection in 2009, after having served two terms on council.
During that quest for a third term, small planes towing banners that read “No! To Taxman Keegan” began flying up and down the beach. Bacon’s Air Force was paid for by Ralph’s Shopping Center owner Roger Bacon (now the Trader Joe’s Shopping Center).
Keegan incurred Bacon’s wrath when he convinced CalTrans to untangle a Pacific Coast Highway bottleneck in front of Bacon’s shopping center. Bacon liked the bottleneck because it diverted frustrated commuters into his shopping center. Keegan further antagonized Bacon by orchestrating his removal from the judges panel for the Surfer Walk of Fame, which Bacon had founded. The other judges had threatened to quit if Bacon wasn’t removed because he insisted on nominating nominees with questionable qualifications.
“As mayor at the time,” Keegan said, “I rewrote the criteria for judges, following the model of baseball and other sports. Only those who had won the award could sit on the selection board. Roger was pissed, to say the least, because he couldn’t vote.”
The “course corrections” Keegan currently proposes are similarly disruptive.
He would require department heads, including the city manager, to work at city hall, and not remotely.
He would decrease the city staff budget, which he said has increased by 35 percent over the past five years.
He would dismiss the $80,000-a-year city public information consultant.
He would remodel the city hall, rather than build a new one, which the current council is contemplating.
“The city can’t build a bathroom on time and within budget, but it wants to take on a project 50 times as large,” he said
He alleges the new, single stall bathroom with two sinks at Sea View park cost approximately $750,000. The costs, he said, included a single LED light powered by a 5-panel, solar array he estimates to have cost $100,000.
He would increase capital improvement spending.
“It was $6 million when I was on council, and is $6 million now, which is $3 million adjusted for inflation,” he said.
Keegan said he opposes Measure HB, the .75% sales tax increase on the November ballot. But in his contrarian fashion, he would put it back on the November 2026 ballot.
“I oppose it now because when the same measure lost in 2022, the council did nothing to assess why it lost. And the council did nothing this year to say how they will spend it. Assuming it loses this November, I’ll specify how it will be spent in 2026.”
Keegan was a founder of Beach Cities Swimming, a 400 member, competitive swim team that trains at Redondo High. But he opposes partnering with Redondo to build a public pool at the former Aviation High School site.
“If Redondo builds the pool it will be required by law to allow Hermosa residents to use it. Why should Hermosa residents pay for it if they don’t have to,’ he said.
“The cat’s out of the bag,” Keegan said of Short Term Vacation Rentals.
He believes Hermosa’s Short Term Vacation Rental ban will be overturned by the courts.
Manhattan Beach’s similar ban was overturned, and now the city is earning $1 million annually from Short Term Vacation Rental transient occupancy taxes (bed taxes).
“Let’s follow Manhattan’s lead, and collect the money,” he said.
“I am the tool for change. You can’t change anything if you don’t have the background and experience to implement change. I am that cudgel,” he said. ER
