Part Two: City Council Candidates Answer the Courier’s Questions

John Mirisch

Courier: The challenges currently facing the City of Beverly Hills have generated much discussion. The community is looking for solutions. Please identify the three issues you find most vexing and explicate the solutions you would propose for each.

Mirisch: The three biggest challenges facing Beverly Hills at the present are: 1) Enhanced public safety; 2) Threats from Sacramento, including the preemption of local decision-making; 3) Improved fiscal responsibility.

1) Public safety and security is at the top of the list. We deserve a city where we are safe. BHPD has always been the best and we continue to maintain our less than three-minute response time. But because we can’t build a wall around Beverly Hills, we have been hit by the increase in crime that has come from events in the world around us.

Beverly Hills is still a lot safer than many surrounding areas, but we can do better. While there are no silver bullets, the entire Council has prioritized public safety and is taking extraordinary measures to ensure the safety of our community. These include:

• Increased police presence through foot patrols, bike patrols and a K-9 presence;

• Hiring more sworn BHPD officers;

• Enhancing the use of private security as a deterrent and force multiplier;

• Continued use of our City’s ambassador program to provide assistance to homeless people;

• BHPD Substations at the Metro stations;

• Actively supporting the recall of DA George Gasco?n;

• Extensive proactive use of technology to help solve and deter crime, such as drones, CCTV’s throughout the city, artificial intelligence and additional Automatic License Plate Readers.

Additionally, I support expanding citizen involvement beyond “Neighborhood Watch” and “Just in Case” to offer more opportunities for residents to volunteer in a variety of ways, including citizens’ patrol programs, CCTV Monitoring to enhance Real Time Watch, and an expansion of existing reserve programs.

I‘ve also proposed adding two additional mobile command centers, which could be strategically deployed as needed to protect areas of the City subject to specific threats.

2) Sacramento politicians are constantly proposing and passing bills that limit our ability to make decisions about our own Community. The worst of these bills are about land use, and aim to eliminate single-family neighborhoods, which some Sacramento politicians decry as “racist,” “immoral” and “evil.”

Please read more about how I will continue fighting back against these attacks in my answer to the next question.

3) Sadly, we continue to treat our residents like ATM’s (water rates are just one example). We must do a better job of providing value to residents-for expending our taxpayer dollars. I will continue to be the voice of fiscal responsibility on our City Council.

Courier: Beverly Hills is under a mandate to zone for more than 3,000 new units over the next eight years. To date, the city’s response to this Housing Element requirement has not been approved. What does your idea of compliance look like? In your response, please touch upon the role that the city’s Mixed-Use ordinance could/should play in meeting the Housing Element mandate.

Mirisch: The state’s RHNA (Regional Housing Needs Allocation) numbers are both unrealistic and punitive. A recent audit by the State Auditor completely discredited the California Department of Housing and Community Development’s numbers, which are intended to force destructive density and to ensure developer profits. One of the foremost proponents of these policies, state senator Scott Wiener from San Francisco, blatantly admitted: “I don’t care how much money developers make.”

For the past three years, I have served on the Southern California Association of Government’s housing committee. Throughout the RHNA process I have raised objections to Sacramento’s ill-conceived anti-community policies.

Our city and some other communities throughout the state are being scapegoated for the state’s housing affordability challenges, which stem from a variety of factors not at all of our making, including the State’s own failed policies. As mentioned, ideologues in Sacramento are pushing the false narrative that single-family neighborhoods are inherently “racist,” “immoral” and “evil.”

As a result of unachievable RHNA “targets,” the proposed Housing Elements of a vast majority of California cities including BH have not yet been approved. No rational person expects that any substantial number of cities will come anywhere close to achieving new construction of the targets. If these new construction targets were achieved, California would have an even bigger glut of unoccupied residences (there are currently already around 1.2 million vacant units in the state). As a co-founder of the California Alliance of Local Electeds, (https://www.caleelecteds.org/), I continue to expend my efforts working with other California elected officials to try to protect our communities against these attacks from Sacramento politicians doing the bidding of the Urban Growth Machine.

I alone on the Council opposed the mixed-use ordinance. It limited discretionary review of some projects and was likely to add height and density to the most dense part of town. Realistically, it would do little to meet the affordable housing mandate. I support policies that would encourage residents to add Accessory Dwelling Units. Further, I continue to advocate for needed senior supportive affordable housing so that our seniors can age in place.

Finally, we should all support the Our Neighborhood Voices Initiative (https://ourneighborhoodvoices.com/), which would amend the state constitution to affirm that urban planning, zoning, and land use are municipal affairs, and that communities throughout the state should have the decision-making authority to decide what works best for them.

We need more Community and less Sacramento.

Courier: We have gone through perhaps the most consequential two years in the history of the city, from civil unrest to a global pandemic. How did the City of Beverly Hills benefit from your presence on the City Council during your last term?

Mirisch: Without a doubt, the past few years have been some of the most tumultuous in the City’s history. We have been faced with a series of unprecedented challenges. In many cases, we had to write the playbook about how to handle situations.

I believe that the Council did an excellent job of navigating those challenges. While I most certainly did not act alone, I worked more than full time in doing my share. For example:

• We prioritized the residents’ health and safety, and tried to control the forces that threatened to tear the City apart.

• We allocated full appropriate resources to our police department to deal effectively with civil unrest and criminal activity.

• Along with other Councilmembers, I personally spent much time in our City’s Emergency Operations Center (EOC) to provide support to all our employees who worked tirelessly to keep us safe.

• In the midst of all of this, we recruited a new Police Chief.

• While fully complying with law, we took decisive action to stop protests from getting out of control and unduly impacting our residential neighborhoods.

• We ensured that our stellar police and fire/paramedic response time continued during the pandemic. Despite serious resistance, we took measures to ensure that our residents would be protected from the virus interacting with first responders.

• We allowed our restaurants to expand outdoor dining when indoor dining was banned by the county health authorities. I was an early proponent of the parklets which have been such a popular feature of our restaurants and which can continue to enhance our business triangle well beyond the pandemic.

• We worked to protect our renters, more than 50% of our residents, to ensure that families would not end up on the streets because of the effects of the pandemic.

I’m proud of our overall efforts and am convinced that my broad experience, including with all City departments, contributed to the City’s creative responses to the challenges we faced and helped us to emerge relatively unscathed. Consequently, we are in a good position to meet the challenges of the post-pandemic world,

Nothing is so good that it can’t get better. I believe that I personally, and as a member of the Council, have learned valuable lessons from these experiences that will inform our policies and actions going forward and allow us to be even better.

Courier: The city prides itself and is very supportive of its police department. Yet, you were in office during a period when the city paid more than $7 million in judgments due to allegations against a former police chief. Moreover, the police department has also been named in a class action that alleges racial discrimination. Explain your understanding of the oversight function that the City Council plays regarding the management of essential services, such as the police department. And do you feel that you have served the city and its taxpayers well in handling the above two matters?

Mirisch: This question goes to the heart of what the role of the City Council should be in connection with operations at City Hall, but also involves a bit of “inside baseball,” so a more detailed explanation follows. But in short: while I don’t think the Council should meddle in the day-to-day operations of the management of City services, I have long advocated for the Council to take a more actively collaborative role and general oversight is a part of our responsibility.

Often in the “City manager” form of government, the Council is only operationally involved in the hiring and retention of the City manager herself/himself (sometimes also the City attorney and City clerk). Some City managers make the sole decisions about hiring the police chief, the fire chief and other department heads. Their Councils are not involved in any management decisions.

After years of advocacy on my part, our Council embraced a more substantial and collaborative role, granting the Council an “advise and consent” role in the attraction and retention of key city staff, meaning department heads and above. This includes the Police Chief.

We still have council members who feel the Council’s advise and consent role in picking our City’s police chief is “micromanaging,” but I feel it is an appropriate function for the Council.

As for the allegations against the former chief, the allegations were carefully investigated and the City’s responses were consistent with the advice we were given. Sometimes practical considerations militate towards settlement, and we took sound advice from experienced counsel. In exercising oversight and in listening to the expertise of our counsel, we have served the City and its taxpayers in accordance with the highest standards.

Furthermore, the Council has made it clear in no uncertain terms that any form of racism or discrimination within the City is absolutely unacceptable and goes directly against Council policy and our values as a City. My strong belief is that the referenced class action lawsuit is unjustified, unsupported and unsupportable. Through training and culture, the BHPD and its officers do not discriminate against anyone as an Institution. Where mistakes are made and/or policy violations occur from individuals, we demand decisive remedies and appropriate disciplinary measures.

Sadly, also partly because of our name, we are not immune from frivolous or baseless lawsuits. From my perspective, some regrettable settlements could have been avoided or mitigated with more, not less Council involvement.