Palisades Gathering of Six Local Elected Officials Draws Crowd

A vow to “work together” emerged as the overarching theme of the messages delivered by six elected officials who spoke at the Pacific Palisades Democratic Club’s Annual Meeting on Sunday, Jan. 25.

Congressman Ted Lieu, L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, State Senator Ben Allen, State Assemblymember Richard Bloom L.A. City Councilmember Mike Bonin and City Controller Ron Galperin each took the stage at the Pacific Palisades Woman’s Club Clubhouse to address more than 150 Palisadians in attendance.

PPDC president Melissa Grant said, “It’s really special to have them all in one place at the same time.”

The lively discussion included a Q&A session with each official and covered a hearty range of topics, including solutions for homelessness, enforcing development conditions, traffic mitigation, education affordability, the minimum wage hike, business taxes, the Archer School for Girls expansion project and election reform.

Lieu greeted the crowd by saying, “This place makes me happy. It was one of the first places I went to debate and the Club endorsed me. Thank you.”

The Congressman, who was elected to Henry Waxman’s seat in the 33rd District, said that in politics, it’s easy to cater to the rich and powerful, but he would rather focus his efforts on helping those who can’t afford to pay lobbyists, such as the homeless and foster kids.

“Ending veteran homelessness is one of my top priorities,” said Lieu, who served in the U.S. Air Force.

Kuehl, who was sworn in Dec. 1, 2014 as Zev Yaroslavsky’s replacement, is one of only five Supervisors running a County that is so large if it were a state, it would be the eighth largest in the nation.

Among her efforts at the County level are an initiative to combine health services, mental health services and the Department of Public Health into an integrated system to make access to care easier.

“’Silo’ was a word I heard a thousand times when I was running for office,” Kuehl said. “We want to break down those silos.”

Senator Allen, whose mother was in the audience, said he had fond memories of his last visit to the Palisades when he received the endorsement of the PPDC.

The former board president of the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District is maintaining a focus on education by working to ensure affordability at the state’s universities.

Allen also tackled the subject of poor voter turnout, saying that in the last election there was only a 31 percent turnout in L.A. County.

“That’s terrible,” Allen said, adding that better promotion of vote by mail would help.

He also advocated for the consolidation of elections so City and State elections would line up.

“The City of Santa Monica did that and it helped,” Allen said.

Allen met with applause when he answered an audience member’s question about the right to die by saying he supports legislation that allows terminally ill people to make their own end-of-life choices.

Among the panel of relatively newly elected officials, Assemblymember Bloom stood out as the ‘elder statesman,’ having taken office in November 2012.

The budget committee member gave a run-down of State finances, saying Governor Jerry Brown has “eliminated the wall of debt that was holding California back.”

He added, “There’s a $1 billion surplus in this year’s budget.”

Among the benefactors of that surplus will be the movie industry, which will see the film tax credit increase to $420 million from about $100 million last year, he said.

Councilmember Bonin continued on the financial theme by talking about the citywide minimum wage, which Mayor Eric Garcetti proposed to raise to $13.75 by 2017.

Bonin said he wants it to go up to $15.25 by 2019.

“People are saying the rise in minimum wage is a job killer, that it’s bad for business,” Bonin said.

A survey of 250 businesses by Bonin’s office, however, showed that over 55 percent support the minimum wage hike.

The Councilmember also talked about a hot-button topic in the Palisades: homelessness.

“Homelessness is growing in the City of L.A., and I can see it growing in Pacific Palisades,” he said.

Bonin reminded Palisadians about the biannual Greater L.A. Homeless Count taking place this week and said he was excited that the Palisades would be taking part for the first time ever.

“We’ve got to be doing more on homelessness, not just calling the cops when you see someone sleeping on the sidewalk,” he said.

Bonin advocated for a shift in thinking, changing the focus from ‘homelessness’ to ‘housing.’

“We have enough federal vouchers to house veterans, but we don’t have enough vouchers for the mentally ill or chronic homeless,” he said.

Bonin also took issue with the city’s development system, calling it “fundamentally broken.”

“The Pacific Palisades Community Council people bust their butts to put conditions on developments so they work for the neighborhood, but the City doesn’t enforce them,” he said.

Bonin suggested emulating the County’s policy of making developers pay upfront for inspections.

An unannounced visit by City Controller Ron Galperin provided a peek into the City’s financial picture. Galperin said he has created a website (controllerdata.lacity.org) where residents can view a virtual checkbook that reveals details on every City purchase.

After wrapping up the two-hour session, PPDC president Grant told the Post, “We really got a sense of how there’s a cohesiveness between the City, County and Federal officials and how they are going to coordinate in a way we haven’t seen before and how that will benefit us in Pacific Palisades.”