Amy Howorth feels that seven years of experience as a Manhattan Beach Unified School Board member has prepared her to take on the challenge of leading the community as a City Council member.
Howorth is among four candidates running for one of two seats in the city’s March 8 City Council election.
“For the past seven years, I’ve worked hard to transform the school district and see it through a very transitional, tough time,” Howorth said in an interview this week. “In doing that, I’ve discovered issues beyond the schools that also interest me.”
Originally from Ohio, Howorth, 46, has lived in Manhattan Beach almost 14 years, with her husband Mark. The couple has two sons, age 15 and 14. Howorth is a full-time school board member and mom.
As a board member, Howorth said that her experience making tough budget decisions and staff layoffs has prepared her to deal with similar situations in the city. She also served on the city’s first Environmental Task Force. Prior to being elected to the MBUSD Board of Trustees, Howorth held several positions on the Robinson Elementary School Parent-Teacher Association.
“I believe the next several years at the city level, we could be seeing the same type of situations as we have in the schools,” said Howorth in reference to the state raiding local funds.
Howorth said the city’s top issues are the management of its $50 million budget and the upgrade of city facilities, especially Joslyn Community Center and Begg Pool.
She also said that before the county moves forward with the construction of a new county library in Manhattan Beach, the city needs to pinpoint the new library’s operational costs, which may or may not be fully covered by county funds.
To boost revenue from sales taxes — one of the city’s two largest revenue sources – Howorth wants to take measures attract businesses downtown and along the Sepulveda corridor, where she encourages the formation of a new Business Improvement District.
She pointed to the city’s upcoming labor contract negotiations as an opportunity for long-term cost savings, and supports looking into raising retirement ages and lowering the percentage of payouts for new public employees through a two-tiered pension system.
“If we don’t rein pensions in now, we will have to make more difficult decisions down the road,” she said. “All of these things have to be on the table.”
Howorth said that, if elected to council, she will remain unbiased in decisions regarding the school district. She supports a proposal by the city to lease district property at its maintenance yard. Howorth wants to explore “more reasonable” agreements can be constructed between the city and the schools, regarding property leases and in-kind maintenance the city already provides for school athletic fields.
Howorth does not encourage the furthering of utility undergrounding throughout the city.
“One of the problems I have with the process is that in order to form a district, the city has to front design and engineering costs which can run hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she said. “If a district does not ultimately pass undergrounding, the city is out that money. In this current economic climate, I think is taking too much of a risk with taxpayers money.”
Howorth blamed City Councils – past and present — for the divisiveness among neighbors that undergrounding has caused over many years.
“If the council wanted it, it should have voted it – or some iteration of it — and found a way to pay for it.”
Howorth did, however, applaud the city’s efforts to explore and bring on green policies, but stressed the importance of keeping fiscal realities in mind.
Howorth said she brought ideas from the Environmental Task Force to the school district, which led to changes expected to result in $100,000 in savings to the district’s energy bill.
“That’s something we can all get behind- green policies that create green for our budget,” Howorth said. ER
