Torrance City Council – A Town Hall Style Conversation About Local Politics

During the last mayoral campaign four years ago Toyota announced that it was breaking up with Torrance and moving its sprawling headquarters to Texas. It was only recently, however, that the last employees vacated the site leaving Torrance to soldier on without its largest employer. Toyota’s departure was apparently not fast enough for Mayor Furey.

At the mayoral forum held last night at the North High library, Furey was asked to provide his short and long term vision for Torrance. In response, Furey said that we have to bring businesses to the City. In reference to Toyota leaving he dismissively quipped, “Bye, bye Toyota, you finally left.” Furey then said he recently traveled to Israel to meet with a number of high tech industries that are interested in locating to California in an attempt to sell them on the Toyota campus.

Tom Brewer’s vision included updating the General Plan and looking at the budget. He said that revenues were flat and that the City needed to figure out what they were going to do with mounting expenses like pension obligations.

Political newcomer Ron Riggs articulated his vision for Torrance in the wake of Toyota’s departure by stating:

“As the owner of two millennials, one 26 and one 27, I see the future for the South Bay here. My kids aren’t able to move out right now because they are having issues with affordable housing, but also we’re having issues with employment here … I’d like to bring Silicon beach this way and work on Software.com’s and I would really like to have more senior housing.” 

Brewer and Furey also took turns sparring at one another during the forum. At mayoral forums in the last campaign four years ago, Furey and Brewer were mostly friendly and complimentary of one another. Not so this time around as there appears to be no love lost between the candidates.

In his opening statement, Brewer remarked upon an issue that has dogged Furey during his whole term in office by saying:

“You might hear tonight that campaign contributions won’t affect a Council vote, but we saw how $40,000 in illegal campaign contributions got McCormick ambulance their contract and the mayor a $35,000 fine from the FPPC … This is an example of what I feel is poor judgement and/or influences harmful to our City. Under my leadership, Torrance will not be for sale to special interests.”

Brewer returned to that same theme in his closing statement when he said, “I am running for Mayor because so many in our community are unhappy with our current leadership. If no change is made, I am concerned that campaign contributions will influence more decisions by the City Council. I am not the only one that is unhappy with the leadership in our City. I have the endorsements of half of the Council … They want new leadership as well … Let’s restore integrity and respect to Torrance.”

Furey used his closing arguments to accuse Brewer of slinging mud. In reference to his rival, he said:

“As you can see one candidate has started a mudslinging campaign this election; as he did last time. I don’t believe that to be the Torrance way. Torrance is better than that. Folks, I have never voted for a contract or an issue based on a campaign contribution. Campaign contributions are an evil necessity of running for office … when he goes low, I’ll just go higher.”

Torrance is proposing changes to its current Master Fee schedule that will increase many of the current user and regulatory fees. The changes are the result of a City-Wide User Fee Study that was commissioned by the Council in late 2016 at a cost of $45K. The study included a review of the 500+ existing user and regulatory fees. As a result of that review the City is proposing increases to a majority of the existing fees as well as proposing 13 new types of fees. If implemented, the new fee schedule is expected to generate approximately $570K in additional revenue.

The vast majority of the these fees already increase on an annual basis based on the Consumer Price Index for Urban Wage Earners and Clerical Workers (CPI-W). Per the staff report, the cost of providing the services has outpaced the CPI growth thereby necessitating the proposed increases.

Most of the proposed fee increases are relatively modest. Some, however, are more significant. A few examples of the increases are included below:

• Fee for a Conditional Use Permit (new >8 unit/>15 Com Ind SF) will increase from $3,418 to 13,684;
• Fee for an Environmental Assessment will increase from $3,535 to $10,193;
• A person retrieving a dog/cat from impound may now be subject to a new $114 per hour special handling fee (plus an existing per incident fee);
• Fee to appeal a matter to the City Council will increase from $288 to $750;

In recent years, the City Council has approved increases to water rates, refuse collection services, and sewer collection services as well as implemented a new green building fee. The City has also enacted the Optimized Street Sweeping Program which is viewed by some as a stealth revenue generating scheme.

The Council will discuss the matter of the new fee schedule at its meeting this evening.

A letter authored by the Huntington Beach City Attorney sheds light on the legal issues at play in the dilemma currently facing Torrance on whether to move from an at-large election system to a district based model.

The letter, dated 18 May 2017, was sent to Attorney Kevin Shenkman and was written in response to a letter Shenkman had sent to Huntington Beach threatening to sue unless Huntington Beach voluntarily moved to a district based election system. Shenkman sent a similar letter to Torrance and many other California cities.

The letter sent to Torrance prompted City officials to take the initial step of changing the Torrance election system. Many of the Councilmembers at the hearing expressed angst with the decision, however, noting they felt as if they were being extorted or as if a “gun were being put to their head.”

Reports indicate that Shenkman took no further action against Huntington Beach after receiving the letter authored by that City Attorney. Presumably, the same legal arguments used by Huntington Beach to ward off Shenkman would also apply to Torrance. It would appear, however, that none of these arguments were considered by the Torrance City Attorney since no mention of the Huntington Beach case was made in the staff report prepared on this issue.

Key excerpts from the Huntington Beach letter are included below:

“To put it simply, the facts do not support your allegations and the City Attorney disagrees with your conclusions of law.”

“The City of Huntington Beach, has, unlike perhaps other cities, a fairly even racial “mix” across the City, such that no one racial group is disproportionately disadvantaged in the election process … It appears by your standard form letter, you either did not research the demographic and historical voter data for this City, or when you did, you drew the wrong conclusions”

“The City of Palmdale case is not dispositive with regard to Huntington Beach … one of the factors left unaddressed by the Court of Appeal is the applicability of the CVRA to Charter Cities when the City has expressly adopted its voting scheme in its Charter”

“It is the legislative branch of government that makes the law, including determining voting schemes and creating districts … The Courts on the other hand are tasked with interpreting and enforcing laws, not creating new laws (i.e. how Charter Cities conduct elections) by judicial fiat.”

“Notwithstanding the City of Huntington Beach’s other strong arguments, there are a host of issues alluded to by the Court of Appeal in the City of Modesto case with regard to the constitutionality of the CVRA. Among such issues is the reverse discrimination at work if the CVRA is applied to the City of Huntington Beach. This kind of reverse discrimination implicates Equal Protection and Due Process clauses of the U.S. and California Constitutions … Any lawsuit against the City of Huntington Beach will draw a Cross-Complaint by the City against plaintiff with possible anti-SLAPP ramifications”

“If a lawsuit is filed, the City of Huntington Beach plans to immediately seek reimbursement from the State for any and all costs associated with any studies, implementation and legal fees, etc., required by the City. The City will encourage other California cities to seek similar reimbursement from the State as well.”

“If you claim to advance the interests of Latino voters in our community, you need to ask yourself and discuss with your clients, is it better that our Latino community have 13% influence over the election of seven Council Members in an at-large system, or is it better they have up to (at most) 23% influence over a single Council Member (as historically determined) in a district-by-district system”

“Many in our Latino community may decide for themselves that they would rather influence all seven elections of Council Members, rather than have an attorney like yourself effect a change in the systems such that the voices in our Latino community are diminished, restricted, or taken away, and relegated to a mere 23% influence of a single Council Member”

“By the way, 23% does not guarantee the election of any particular candidate from any particular racial group. Clearly your “cause” as it relates to Huntington Beach does not have the best interest of our Latino Community, or any racial group in mind.”

“As the City Attorney of this great City, and in the interest of having all of the people of the City informed, I request that you share this letter in its entirety with your clients. It is important to me that those seeking the best interest of the City, or to improve the City, have all of the information available to them.”