Horvath focused on connections

Christian Horvath. File photo

Four years ago, then-candidate Christian Horvath suggested meeting at a coffee shop. This year, District 2 councilman Horvath chose In-N-Out Burger. “I haven’t eaten all day,” he said, looking down at his Double-Double and fries (both Animal Style) and vanilla shake. The irony that he dug in while wearing a Beach Cities Health District shirt was not lost on him. “Clearly, this is a Blue Zones approved meal,” Horvath said.

The last four years since Horvath’s election have seen him endeavoring to build partnerships, as he did with the Health District’s Streets For All campaign, which encourages safer and more alert walking, cycling and driving in Beach Cities streets.

“One of my goals is to see if we can get the region connected,” Horvath said. In this instance, he means with a municipal broadband network — internet, he believes, is on par with electricity as a necessity in modern society — but many of his policy goals start from a ground-level view and expand to one that’s 30,000 feet up.

That’s why, he said, he doesn’t dwell on overdevelopment as a concept.

“To me, it means you’re building like crazy, and I don’t see that happening. Clearly, there are teardowns and rebuilds…but our job is to look at everything from a very big picture standpoint,” Horvath said. “If I support environmental issues, there’s a way to integrate that into everything,” he said, describing solar, green rooftops, and other sustainable design features.

But his support on development projects — such as the Galleria revitalization or the CenterCal Waterfront project, which is no longer up for consideration, but tied into a $15 million lawsuit based in part in his approval — has led him to butt heads with Mayor Bill Brand and his aligned supporters and officials, including Candace Nafissi, Horvath’s 2019 opponent. That led me to ask about a comment from a 2017 interview, in which Brand asked, if Horvath is so progressive, “why allow huge over-development projects and act like you’re a conservationist?”

“He’s so passionate about this perspective on things that I think it’s hard for him to wrap his head around how other people might look at it,” Horvath said. “You’re either with him or against him — there’s no wiggle room for that kind of middle ground.”

His concern is that a City Council of a completely like-minded slate would end up more autocratic than democratic.

“If you have people that are of like-mind coming into every meeting, that only benefits that specific way of thinking,” Horvath said, uncomfortable with the idea of “any special interest group” having significant influence over decisions.

“We’re a council of six different points of view who are, on a Tuesday night, working to transparently come to some form of consensus,” Horvath said. “I love working with Laura [Emdee] and John [Gran] but we don’t see eye-to-eye on a lot of things.”

Should he win reelection, Horvath plans to continue pushing on regional and local issues, including a possible extended ban on single-use plastics, and a smoking ban. He also notes that he would be in line to be chair of the South Bay Cities Council of Governments.

“Compromise is not a dirty word — let’s find a way to make things happen.”

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