Council and treasurer posts, taxes on Hermosa Beach ballot
Hermosa’s ballot on Tuesday features two challengers squaring off against two incumbents for two open City Council seats, a rare election challenge to the city’s 18-year treasurer, and a surreal battle between competing proposals that would raise business license taxes for some nightspots.
Council incumbents Peter Tucker, 64 and Michael DiVirgilio, 40, will face newcomers Hany Fangary, 44, and Stephen Powers, 62.
Fangary has gathered a campaign war chest of $15,400, Powers has raised $11,100, DiVirgilio $9,700 and Tucker $3,700, according to the most recent financial statements on file at City Hall.
Tucker has stressed his role in the remake of upper Pier Avenue, Hermosa’s early adoption of a two-tier pension system, and an extensive history of local volunteerism that won him the Hermosa Beach Chamber of Commerce’s 2010 Man of the Year award.
DiVirgilio said he has helped systematize the repair of city streets, reinstitute meetings of the City-School Compact between City Hall and the city school board, and helped spearhead Project Forward to heal a rift between school officials and residents miffed over a controversial gymnasium at Hermosa Valley School.
Powers, a retired business executive, has stressed his contention that the city has done too little to fight crime, focusing his comments especially on the nightlife-heavy downtown. He said over three years, the city’s firefighting budget has been cut $450,000 and the police budget has been increased $500,000. The net increase, he said, has done little “to protect us.”
Fangary, an environmental engineer and lawyer, said his background would give him a leg up as the council deals with the potentially bankrupting breach-of-contract lawsuit by Macpherson Oil Company, and a looming reconstruction of the 52-acre AES power plant just over the city line in Redondo Beach, which he said the current council has mostly ignored. Fangary and other residents also are suing the city to seek tighter regulation of tattoo parlors.
Longtime treasurer John Workman will face challenger David Cohn, managing director of Diamond Capital Partners.
Cohn was blowing away all other candidates with a $25,400 campaign fund, all but $400 which he loaned his own campaign.
Hermosa regulations limit donations to candidates to $250 from an individual or $500 from a couple. There is no limit for a candidate’s self-funding.
Workman raised $10,000, all of it in a loan from himself.
In a campaign that grew more heated as it went along, Cohn contended that Workman presides over a city portfolio with very little diversification and does not make the city enough money, and Workman countered that he invests the city’s money with safety uppermost, and gets the highest yield that is safe from Hermosa’s small portfolio.
The battle between competing tax proposals started out with great force and then fizzled when activist Jim Lissner repudiated the ballot initiative he authored.
Lissner’s Measure Q, which would impose soaring tax increases for many alcohol-serving nightspots, took an unlikely hit when Lissner appeared before the City Council to oppose it. He said he came to believe that the initiative could expose the city to litigation that he does not want to see.
The initiative competes with Measure N, backed by the City Council, which would raise about $200,000 by increasing business license taxes on some busy nightspots – but much less than would Lissner’s proposal – and imposing the taxes for the first time on some previously untaxed businesses. Measure N also would lower taxes for many small businesses, and give a tax break to new businesses in their first year.
Hermosa Beach has not increased any of its business license taxes in 23 years.
Also on the ballot, City Clerk Elaine Doerfling is running for reelection unopposed. ER