Greg Smith, who wants to be the next City Manager, has his first answer simmering in the oven, if/when he reaches the interview committee:
“If you are looking for someone who knows the position, who knows Culver City, who knows the history, and who knows how everything works there now, especially in these tight financial times, then I am your man.”
A lifetime police officer who retired a little more than a year ago, Mr. Smith will tell you he possesses the best set of credentials in the large field.
What other candidate, he asks, among his 41 rivals for retiring City Manager Jerry Fulwood’s job, “has been around Culver City for the last 32 years, knows the players, is familiar with the records and knows the outcomes?”
Mr. Smith and School Board member Steve Gourley are the only contenders from Culver City, which may be significant because a strong accent has been placed on a quick familiarity with the community.
Including his thick thatch of dark hair and unmistakably sturdy moustache, Mr. Smith fits the narrowest and also the most traditional contours of a police officer. In his early 50s, a married father of five, he could pass for years younger.
Acquiring Lifelong Values
Growing up in a religious home where there was a proud emphasis on the pillars of the family’s lives — patriotism, religious commitment and respect for tradition — he never wanted to be anything but a police officer.
Not a cop —the term is too flippant.
He calls himself, and others, “police officers,” a purposely respectful stance that fits in comfortably with his traditional outlook on life.
He is a clear-eyed fighter for what he believes is the right way, which led him into periodic clashes with Culver City’s legendary police chief, Ted Cooke.
Mr. Smith and Mr. Cooke arrived on Duquesne Avenue about the same time, the middle 1970s, but their professional approaches to policing differed roughly the way the sun is distinguished from the moon.
Demoted once late in his career, Mr. Smith successfully fought to have the decision overturned, a scenario that could serve as a metaphor for his policing career, battling to his last breath to achieve what he believes is moral and right.
His thoroughly ingrained moral beliefs are so inextricably seeded in his DNA that Mr. Smith can seem supremely confident and deferentially modest in the same moment.
Even though he never has been a city manager or an administrator, here is why he believes he should be chosen:
Knowing Culver City Is the Key
“I am the most qualified for this position,” he says, “for reasons that I have given, and they are all about Culver City. I have not seen the list of applicants. But I don’t know who else has been in the city for 32 years, working, continuously, with the city government and with different city councils.”
For the last three years before his retirement, Mr. Smith was the Budget and Finance Lieutenant. “This meant I handled all financial aspects of the Police Dept.,” he said. “I did the complete Police Dept. budget.”
He held the same title a decade earlier, 1992-’94, during another economic squeeze. “That was my introduction to finances and to the city’s budget process,” Mr. Smith says. “People may not realize the Police Dept. represents one-third of the city’s budget.”
And therein lies another story. Mr. Smith does not have any professional training in accounting but, say sources, he seems to have mastered many of its complexities.
How did he do it?
“My childhood dream,” he says, “was to be a police officer. When I came to Culver City (at the start of his career), I was grateful they had given me an opportunity.
Learning, Job by Job
“It didn’t matter what position Chief Cooke put me into. I vowed to do that position the best I could, meaning that I wanted to learn everything that there was to know about it.
“I love doing police work, and I love being an investigator. But, in Culver City, it didn’t always work out that way.
“I taught DARE (the drug prevention program). I never wanted to teach school. But I learned about it. Twice, I taught every single grade.
“When I was put into Budget and Finance, I went to every class that was offered to learn as much as I could.”
A steady critic of Mr. Fulwood, not least because of his perceived absenteeism from city events, Mr. Smith said that even though he lacks city manager experience, “what this position really needs is something more important, Culver City experience. I have more of that than anyone else.”
