Year in review 2022: Manahattan Beach had a year of conflicts: elections, firefighters, books, and a big apartment building
by Mark McDermott
In the months before the November election in Manhattan Beach, the word that came up most frequently in forums and campaign literature was “divisiveness.” The word referred to a cultural divide that has emerged in Manhattan Beach, one that mirrors a national chasm in which opposing parties don’t just disagree over political issues, but appear to no longer share a common set of underlying beliefs. Opponents have become villains in each other’s eyes. In Manhattan Beach, this vehemence of opposition touched nearly everything in 2022.
Hadley’s Crusade
Most people present at the January 12 Board of Education meeting in Manhattan Beach knew when Suzanne Hadley approached the podium her remarks were likely to be provocative.
Hadley was elected to the Manhattan Beach City Council in 2019 in no small part because of her blunt, somewhat folksy, and extremely articulate manner of speaking. Her husband, David, was a locally well-regarded, one-term Republican Assemblyman in the California legislature, from 2014 to 2016. But she had never served as an elected official or entered the political arena in any other way. Hadley, though she possesses an MBA, was a stay-at-home mother for two decades. She proudly campaigned on these qualifications in her first council campaign.
“I go back to being the mother of four kids,” Hadley said during her campaign. “I believe in doing the basics well. I will stay in my lane at City Council.”
Hadley had appeared at the school board a month earlier to object to the Alex Awards link (adult books awarded by the American Library Association as possibly having merit for younger readers) on the Mira Cost High School library website, and specifically, one of the books recommended on that link, Lawn Boy, by Jonathan Evison, a critically acclaimed coming-of-age story that has been compared to Catcher in the Rye, but includes a sexual episode and a lot of profane language. This time, Hadley took aim at a graphic novel/memoir called Gender Queer, by Maia Kobabe, which tells the story of the author’s journey as a young adult coming to an understanding of being non-binary (not identifying as male or female). Neither book was on the shelves or curriculum at MCHS library or classes.
“Gender Queer illustrates and discusses masturbation, dildos, vibrators, sex surgery and fantasies that turn on students,” Hadley said.
Then, despite school board president Sally Peel’s objections and pounding of her gavel, Hadley read directly from Gender Queer.
“We’ve been dating for a month. We’ve made out. We’ve had sex. We’ve moved on to sexting at work. I got a new [sex toy] today. I can’t wait to put it on you. It will fit my favorite [sex toy] perfectly. You are going to look so hot. I can’t wait to have your [profanity] in my mouth and I’m going to give you the [sex act] of your life.’”
“Mrs. Hadley, this is inappropriate,” Peel said.
Both Gender Queer and Lawn Boy were at the center of protests at school boards throughout the country, although Hadley’s protest was different in that the books were not available to local kids. In effect, she was protesting a web link that led to another web link. Her protest probably brought more attention to the books than the links, and more readers, among MBUSD students, as well as parents. The books were not available in local schools, but were easily obtainable on Amazon.
MCHS senior Garrett Nose said he and his friends had immediately gone looking for the book at school but couldn’t find it. Nose also said he was taken aback by Hadley’s comments at the school board meeting.
“I understand and deeply respect everybody’s opinions, and everybody’s belief in freedom of speech,” Nose said, speaking at a subsequent City Council meeting. “But I also believe that we must hold our public servants to a much higher standard than we sometimes hold ourselves. They’re supposed to exemplify and represent us as a city.”
The furor over Hadley’s appearance at the school board would last all year, manifesting in public comments in subsequent public meetings and accusations during election season that she was advocating book banning.
But Hadley’s was not a lone voice. She represented a constituency within the city, one first coalesced around school lockdowns early in the pandemic and then over allegations that Critical Race Theory was being taught in local schools.
“I am amazed, and quite frankly shocked at a small minority of residents who are more disturbed at her presentation…than the fact that these destructive sexual materials are available to our kids, and even promoted,” resident Fred Taylor told the City Council. “Prudent oversight of our kids is not censorship. It’s wise parenting.”
Yes on A leaders Angie Smith and Wysh Weinstein were crestfallen when results on June 7 showed the measure losing in a landslide. Photo by Jefferson Graham
Measure A
A group called MB Parents for Schools formed in the first part of 2022, and quickly launched an initiative to put a parcel tax on the June 7 ballot. They were successful, obtaining over 4,000 signatures in a little over a week in February to put Measure A before voters. The ballot measure proposed a $1,095 per parcel tax on local property owners, which would have raised $12 million a year for local schools and at least $144 million over the next 12 years.
The goal was to solve the chronic underfunding MBUSD receives from the State of California. The MB Parents’ idea was to ensure stability for an entire generation of local students.
“Manhattan Beach is one of the lowest funded districts in the entire state,” said parent Michael Sinclair, one of the group’s leaders. “Sacramento has critically underfunded our district for decades, and it has had a compounding effect on our local schools. Measure A is about local control — taking back local control of our schools and keeping our tax dollars here in our local classrooms and out of the hands of Sacramento.”
“We have been down all of the other paths to try to get adequate funding and they have all led us right back to where we started,” said Wysh Weinstein, another of the group’s leaders. “This is a real opportunity to shift direction, and as a community really stand up and make a proactive choice to support our schools.”
The measure was more than four times the amount of the previous parcel tax passed in 2019. Perhaps more unusual was the means with which it was crafted to gain approval. The parents utilized recent changes in state law that found a citizen-led initiative required just a simple majority, rather than the two-thirds approval previous tax measures had required.
Opposition arose swiftly and effectively, led by Councilperson Joe Franklin.
“We all love our schools,” he said. ”But times are uncertain, the tax is too much, it’s too rushed, and it rises with inflation. Folks can be pro-school but against this tax.”
“Why are you rushing to put this in on June 7, when it is traditionally lower voter turnout?” Franklin said. “You want a robust discussion about this. You want people to have time to take a look at it. You want people to hear both sides.”
Measure A lost by a landslide, with almost 69 percent of voters against it. Franklin was conciliatory in victory.
“While I am pleased that Measure A is defeated, I am acutely aware that the challenge of funding our Manhattan Beach schools still remains,” Franklin said. “I want to be involved in creating a sustainable solution.”
But the manner in which Measure A was pursued struck a nerve in some community members, later playing a key part in the formation of a slate of school board candidates who sought to form a new board majority.
“Measure A was a complete disaster on a whole bunch of different fronts,” said Johnny Uriostegui, one of the “Trifecta” slate of candidates. “And instead of Jen [Fenton, a school board trustee and candidate] and Wysh [Weinstein, also a candidate] stepping up and saying we made mistakes — they really haven’t fixed anything, or said anything, or done anything. I gave them ample time before I decided to run.”
Bruce’s Beach
History was made in Manhattan Beach at a ceremony on July 21, when Bruce’s Beach became Bruce’s beach again.
Ninety-three years ago, Willa and Charles Bruce lost the land upon which that July gathering occurred. In 1912, against significant odds, the couple founded a resort that gave Black people a rare place to congregate at the beach. They met resistance immediately, particularly from George Peck, one of the fledgling city’s founders, who during the first weekend Bruce’s Lodge was open had the beach in front of it fenced off. The Bruces and their guests were undaunted. They walked a half mile around the fence to reach the ocean.
“Whenever we have tried to buy land for a beach resort, we have been refused,” Willa Bruce told the L.A. Times. “But I own this land, and I am going to keep it.”
By 1929, that dream appeared lost, when the City claimed the land through the racially motivated use of eminent domain, as well as the land from five other African American families who’d begun to form a community on adjacent properties, and from several white, absentee landowners. The Bruces were compensated for the land that they had never intended to sell, or leave. Both would be dead within five years.
But activist Kavon Ward and her Justice for Bruce’s Beach movement, beginning with protests on Juneteenth 2020, brought attention to this nearly forgotten chapter in history, and Supervisor Janice Hahn picked up the torch and ran with it. Her legislative push eventually resulted in unanimous votes from the Supervisors, the state assembly and senate, and a visit to the property from Governor Gavin Newsom to sign legislation into law, all in an effort to return the land to the descendants of Willa and Charles Bruce.
The deed was transferred back to the Bruce family at the July ceremony. It was the first time in U.S. history that land taken from an African American family was returned.
“I’ve been asked, ‘Is this reparations?’ And I say, ‘Hell no,’” said State Senator Steven Bradford, who wrote the legislation that enabled the land transfer. “This is returning property that was rightfully owned by a family.”
“The ancestors are here,” Ward said. “I had a vision, a vision, which has been fully realized today, a vision that was once taken from a people would be returned, a vision that something that had never been done before in history happens for the first time.”
“They’re here,” said Chief Duane Yellow Feather Shepard, a relative of, and spokesperson for the Bruces. “They are here. And they are smiling.”
Hahn directly addressed the Bruce family.
“We can’t change the past and we will never be able to make up for the injustice that was done to your great great grandparents and great grandparents, Willa and Charles, nearly a century ago,” she said. “But this is a start.”
Members of the Trifecta school board candidate slate, Mike Welsh, Johnny Uriostegui, and Christy Barnes, leave a candidate forum in September. Candidates Jen Fenton and Tina Shivpuri are in the background. Photo by Kevin Cody
Abell’s Farewell
One of the most storied careers in the history of the Manhattan Beach Police Department came to a close in August. Chief Derrick Abell served 31 years with MBPD, and four years ago became the first African American to take the helm of the department. Then, two years ago, he temporarily also led the Manhattan Beach Fire Department.
He led MBPD, and in a sense the entire city, through the tumult of the Black Lives Matter movement, and the backlash against police officers that was sometimes associated with it. This was partly because of who Abell was — an immensely likable, soaringly articulate, and gracefully kind police officer. But he also, almost single-handedly, diffused any possibility of violence arising from a 1,000-strong BLM protest at the MB Pier in 2020, and did so in a typical Abell-like way. He walked downtown the day before and saw a young man he once coached in football at MCHS — Abell’s volunteer part-time job for decades — approached him, and soon learned he was one of the protest’s leaders. The group of activists met at Abell’s office that afternoon and the chief helped them organize a peaceful protest.
Mayor Steve Napolitano said Abell’s dedication across three decades had left Manhattan Beach a safer place.
“It’s not just a job,” Napolitano said. “You didn’t just show up. You didn’t just collect a paycheck. You put your heart into this community. No one has a police chief who then goes and coaches high school [football] to a championship if he’s not dedicated to the very fiber and being of Manhattan Beach…You bleed Manhattan Beach.”
In the final of what surely are among the best speeches given by a Manhattan Beach leader, Abell struck yet another resonant note.
“Of all the things going on right now, and all the divisive things that we hear in society, the one thing that holds us together is relationships, and love,” he said. “That will never be surpassed by hatred.”
Armed robbery at Pasha
Eleven masked men, some armed, entered a jewelry store on June 24 at arguably the busiest possible time in downtown Manhattan Beach, early on a balmy Friday evening. They proceeded to conduct a “smash and grab” robbery, breaking cases throughout the premises and then running across the street to leave in three vehicles waiting in an adjacent alley.
The robbery took place at Pasha Fine Jewelry, on the 200 block of Manhattan Beach Boulevard. No shots were fired, but the armed robbery was a shot to the community’s sense of security.
Both Mayor Steve Napolitano and interim Chief of Police Christian Eichenlaub issued statements aimed at calming public fears. They vowed that the suspects would be found and arrested. “This was not just a crime against a person or a business. This was a crime against our entire community,” Napolitano said.
“Fortunately, no one was harmed during this incident,” Eichenlaub said. “However, the potential for what easily could have occurred if this situation escalated further weighs heavily on the community.”
The crime reverberated throughout the year, feeding into concerns that LA County District Attorney George Gascon’s sentencing policies were filtering down to the local level, with more criminals free and less consequence for crimes.
At the last council meeting of the year, resident Mike Michalski said he’d added up the Neighborhood Watch crime statistics released weekly by MBPD, and identified a 14 percent increase in property crime.
“But what was most startling to me was just last week…we had two auto thefts, and at least two more since then, five residential burglaries….and 20 vehicle burglaries, four of which were preventable,” he said. “So a lot of residents are going to experience a pretty lousy Christmas because it almost seems as though we’re just throwing up our hands.”
Police chief Rachel Johnson said that MBPD is addressing the trend in several ways — particularly by increasing patrols, and more long-term by increasing police staffing from 65 to 70 sworn officers. The council approved the increase this year.
“We are taking this seriously,” she said.
Firefighters contract
The City Council imposed a new contract on the Manhattan Beach Firefighters Association in a unanimous vote on September 20, ending a three-year conflict with the firefighters, but doing so in a manner that was decidedly non-conciliatory.
The Council’s action came a little more than a week after the issuance of a fact-finding report, requested by the City, and conducted by a neutral third-party mediator. The report suggested a compromise that would have granted the City six of its 10 proposed contract concessions. The Council, instead, imposed all 10 concessions, including major changes, such as civilianizing fire prevention, downgrading paramedic compensation, and reducing pay for all new hires, creating a two-tier salary structure.
Mayor Steve Napolitano did not try to sugarcoat the Council’s action.
“There’s no happiness here tonight on either side,” Napolitano said. “This is a sad moment.”
The action culminated a year of dispute in which the council drew a hard line in the sand, largely aimed at reducing overtime hours in which some firefighters made over $400,000 and several over $300,000. The firefighters ran a public campaign advocating for a compromise, one that resulted in a July meeting in which dozens of residents filled Council chambers wearing fire-red T-shirts in support of MBFD.
Jenna Shenbaum, the daughter of MBFD captain Dave Shenbaum, told the council that when friends say they want to be a firefighter, she shows them a photo of her dad in his turnouts, taking a nap in the dirt near a wildfire in Northern California, where he was gone three weeks and came home and went right to work.
“Instead of being able to come home and hug his family, he had to go right back to the station because again, they were so understaffed that there were no other firefighters able to work,” she said. “No one sees the effects it has on our families and our relationships with our fathers.”
Firefighters pointed to the lingering vacancies the City had failed to fill, as well as the gaming of the system by three battalion chiefs — hired by a controversial former fire chief — who’d cut their own deal with the City.
“After the city gave our former battalion chiefs the sweetheart deal, those battalion chiefs took their retroactive pay raise and failed this community,” MBFD Captain O’Brien, a 35-year veteran, told the Council. “Each of them went on disability for up to one and a half years during a pandemic. We were left having to cover their work and keep this department running, leading to extraordinary overtime. What’s worse, is now we’re being villainized for filling the vacancies, for a problem we did not create, and you have refused to fix.”
Napolitano said the issue was saddening to him personally but that the council had a fiscal responsibility to uphold.
“This is a very emotional issue for everyone,” Napolitano said. “Everyone has a firefighter story. Everyone has a call that they made, and a response met in minutes. We are in constant debt to these folks. I certainly was during the last months of my father’s life, where they probably saw him more than I did….I don’t think it’s a dichotomy to say that you support the department, and support our firefighters, but also understand that we have a job to do on council.”
Project Verandas
Mayor Steve Napolitano summed up a lot of residents’ feelings on August 16 when he directly addressed developer Frank Buckley, whose proposed 79-unit apartment complex, Project Verandas, was under City Council consideration.
“Why,” Napolitano asked, “are you doing this to my city?”
Buckley’s answer was not complicated. He was building Project Verandas because the City’s General Plan and Housing Element called for such housing and the state’s density bonus laws incentivize exactly such projects. Project Verandas includes six low-income units, which qualifies it for streamlined approval and more height.
“Because you can, does that mean you should?” Napolitano asked.
“Not in every location,” Buckley said. “I think in this location, it’s very appropriate.”
The 96,217 sq. ft., four-story project is proposed on Rosecrans Avenue at the former Verandas site, an event facility; and the current Tradewinds commercial building. Development at the site has been in the works for years. Buckley has been involved since 2016, while other developers have also fallen in and out of escrow, with earlier iterations seeking a hotel development. Because of the presence of the Chevron refinery on a hill just above the site (not attractive for a boutique hotel that would charge $500 to $700 a night), and the site’s unusual configuration, Buckley said no other uses proved economically viable, while this use met a community need for housing.
Project Verandas was ministerially approved by Community Development director Carrie Tai, appealed to the Planning Commission, who approved it, and then appealed to the City Council. The council deliberated for two months, and conducted hearings in which dozens of residents expressed vehement opposition, even calling into question Napolitano’s ethics when his silence on the matter was equated for support. But in a dramatic turn of events on October 23, Napolitano first blasted his critics, and then sided with what they wanted — which was to oppose the project, despite the certainty of multiple lawsuits against the City and action by the state against the City. Napolitano’s rejection was part of a 3-2 vote, along with councilpersons Joe Franklin and Suzanne Hadley.
“I will only be forced to build this project by a judge,” Hadley said. “I was elected to fight for my residents.”
Opponents argued the project would ruin the character of the neighborhood and, some said, the entire city. A group called Chill the Build raised environmental concerns. Napolitano’s rejection hinged on the latter. He referenced the rationale between a new state law that, though not yet in effect, requires housing to be more than 3,200 ft. from refineries.
“I highly doubt the current housing that exists so near to Chevron would be built there today given the specific adverse impacts of the known pollution generated there,” he said. “And for that reason, additional housing near Chevron should be avoided, as the risks cannot be mitigated. Something will go there sometime. There will be traffic. There will be other impacts. But it shouldn’t be housing.”
Councilmember Richard Montgomery said that while he preferred a hotel at the location he believed rejecting the project would cost the City its $20 million in emergency reserves in legal fees and would potentially cede local control over all permitting to the state.
“I cannot in good conscience agree, after going through the recession in ‘08 and ‘09, to spend all that money on a case we cannot win,” Montgomery said. “And the second risk that nobody’s talking about it [is that] when we lose this case….The Attorney General can take over all [zoning approval] and stop permits in our city. So you are a homeowner with renovation plans? Wake up.”
By year’s end, a $57 million lawsuit had been filed by the developer, three more lawsuits by housing advocate groups were pending, and the state housing agency sent the City a letter warning that its action was in violation of state law and would be referred to the Attorney General. The council, now with two new members following the November election, considered the matter in closed session December 20 and voted 4-1, with Napolitano opposing, to give the City Attorney direction — but declined to say what that direction was. Given campaign statements by the two new councilmembers, Amy Howorth and David Lesser, it is possible that Project Verandas will be reheard by the council in the new year.
Election
The City was consumed throughout the fall by arguably its most momentous election season in recent history.
Both an MBUSD school board majority and an effective majority of the City Council were at stake in the November 8 election. A slate calling itself the Trifecta sought to win a controlling majority of the school board seats, and promised major changes in the way the district is run should they win.
“If you are really happy with how the district and the school board is right now, we are probably not your candidates,” Trifecta candidate Christy Barnes said. “If you don’t want change, we are not your candidates.”
They were opposed by three candidates who, though not a slate, represented a continuation for MBUSD, including incumbent Jen Fenton, longtime PTA leader Wysh Weinstein, and PTA volunteer and activist-mathematician Tina Shivpuri, a driving force behind the “No Place for Hate” inclusion policies adopted throughout the district.
Councilperson Suzanne Hadley was running for reelection, and supporting another candidate, Rita Crabtree-Kampe. She also strongly supported the Trifecta. Hadley, who worked closely in tandem with Councilperson Joe Franklin on many issues, raised more money than any candidate in local history. It thus appeared that both the council and school board could have like-minded majorities — a homegrown conservative movement of a sort, although the words conservative and liberal often lose meaning when applied to matters of local governance.
In the end, voters emphatically supported what one candidate referred to as “a return to normal.” Former councilmembers Amy Howorth and David Lesser, who served together from 2011 to 2019, won election by broad margins, defeating Hadley and the four other candidates; while Fenton, Shivpuri, and Weinstein prevailed easily over the Trifecta.
The hope, Howorth said, was that Manhattan Beach could finally move past the bitter divisiveness that has marked local politics for the past few years.
The fact that Mayor Steve Napolitano and Councilperson Richard Montgomery supported Howorth and Lesser, despite being on the opposite side of political aisles, Howorth said, was indicative of how local politics can be more about serving the greater community good rather than fighting over ideologies.
“We don’t always agree, but we know where each other is coming from,” she said. “And we are going to try to make the best decisions possible for the most people for Manhattan Beach.”
“I think what is really good about this morning is I woke up and I said, ‘Yes, this is who we are. This is Manhattan Beach.’” ER