A five-hour meeting ended harmoniously as the five members of the Redondo Beach City voted unanimously and without acrimony Tuesday night to pass the city’s 2015-2016 Fiscal Year Budget.
The key was successful lobbying. Each councilmember closed budget discussions satisfied by ensuring that their own districts were taken care of by night’s end. Even Mayor Steve Aspel’s push to have the sidewalks of the Esplanade washed found funding in a budget that ended the night in balance, with a small amount of money left over.
Initially, two budget motions were proposed, as Councilmen Bill Brand, District 2, and Christian Horvath, District 3, made competing offers to the council, with support coming to Brand from Laura Emdee, District 5. District 1 representative Jeff Ginsburg joined Horvath’s motion.
The competing motions led to a 30 minute recess within the meeting, enabling staff to work out kinks. At the conclusion of the recess, staff created a compromise package, using ideas from each motion. Using that, Brand created a final substitute motion, taking staff recommendations and lumping them atop his original proposal.
The topic of improving and remodeling the lobby of the City Clerk’s office became one of the night’s few bones of contention. Passport services have become a key function of City Clerk Eleanor Manzano’s office and have become a source of revenue for the city. However, an outdated, ill-configured office often ends up throwing a wrench in the works, leading to lines out the door, filled with citizens from Redondo and beyond. An $80,000 proposal to reconfigure the office, allowing for in-house passport photography and a streamlined lobby, was on the floor for most of the night, until Emdee took exception.
“Don’t like idea of expanding business services to take pictures. Why compete against Rite Aid?” she asked. “It’s not that much of an inconvenience to get pictures taken somewhere else.”
Later in the meeting, Ginsburg made a pitch for the remodel, saying “I don’t know if you’ve seen how it is, but passport services is overwhelming. It’s not set up well for all the demand that’s there.
“We’re already making $60,000 a year [off of passport services],” Ginsburg added. “This would bring it to $90,000 a year in income, and make it more convenient for Redondo Beach residents…Right now, it’s not user-friendly at all. It’s the right way for us to spend funds and it’s going to pay for itself in a year, year and a half.”
That idea, however, stalled out.
The Redondo Beach Police Department ended the evening as one of the biggest winners. Interim Police Chief John Neu made setting up future success for RBPD his key goal when he was brought aboard and, with a successful push to increase the department’s hiring flexibility, he appears to have done so.
He entered the night seeking funding for the department to “overhire,” which would allow RBPD to locate, test and complete background on new recruits before there is a position open for them on the force. The concept allows the department to be ahead of the curve, getting new hires into the field as soon as a position is available for them.
According to Neu, major crime within the city has increased by 44 percent from April 2014 to April 2015. “The way we combat this is to strengthen ways to patrol our streets,” Neu said. “Having tech that works, staffing, and building patrol forces to where we can adequately patrol the streets of Redondo Beach and meet the needs of the citizens we work for.”
Neu’s request for the ability to pay for overhiring two candidates, at an estimated total cost of $200,000, was doubled by the council, allowing for the department to hire four candidates at $400,000. Another council action further enabled the hiring of an additional officer, as well, which would give RBPD 94 officers.
The most surprising moment of the night came when former District 4 City Council candidate Julian Stern pled for Artesia Boulevard to get some much-needed attention from the Council — and won.
Stern, who had been watching the meeting from his home in North Redondo, made the drive to the Council Chambers when he heard of Mayor Aspel’s push for $65,000 in cleaning to go to The Esplanade in South Redondo.
“I’ve been asking for more than a year, since I was running for office — when are we going to get a powerwash on Artesia? I can’t stand seeing $65,000 going to killing microbes on Esplanade — why do we need microbes gone? Are people going to be licking the sidewalks?” Stern said. “Put it toward revitalization of Artesia.”
Sammarco immediately backed Stern, asking for $65,000 to go toward cleaning Artesia’s sidewalks. Brand and Emdee, who made the motion and the second for the current package of Council budget decisions, agreed to the idea, finding a home for it in the budget alongside the Esplanade cleaning effort.
All council members satisfied, the budget passed unanimously, with money set aside for future discussions in August.
