[Editor’s Note: The inauguration speech Mayor Clarke delivered at Monday night’s City Council meeting.]
As (termed-out) Mehaul (O’Leary) told me the other day, you spend eight years on Council with a head full of valuable knowledge and experience, and suddenly you are on the outside. So, please, both of you stay involved. Share your knowledge with us.
Welcome back, Meghan (Sahli-Wells). You ran a great race. I believe you won in every precinct—a strong testament to your stature and support throughout the city.
Jeff (Cooper), I congratulate you as the city’s vice mayor, and I welcome you as my wingman. Just to let you know how seriously he takes the role of vice mayor being a heartbeat away, he tried to kill me last Thursday at the Police Foundation Golf Tournament. My advice to all of you: Don’t ride in a golf cart with this man.
Welcome to Thomas (Small) and Göran (Eriksson). You each bring some very worthwhile experiences and ideas to the Council. It is important that we continually reinvigorate the city with fresh ideas. We are blessed to have you join us. Note to our Finance Dept: We will have to set aside additional funding to purchase umlauts for Göran’s name. We probably will have to start ordering dinner from Gravlax.
When I was first elected and then re-elected I was the oldest-newest or newest-oldest member of the City Council. Now I am just the oldest.
Thank you to the various elected officials who have joined us: I do this at my own peril in case I leave anyone out but here goes: County Assessor Jeff Prang, L.A. City Councilman Paul Koretz, West Basin Municipal Water District Board member Scott Houston, longtime Democratic friends Teri Burns of the Natomas School District board and Fred Gaines, Councilman for the city of Calabasas. My roommate in the office of Congresswoman Diane Watson; Councilman Mike DiVirgilio of the city of Hermosa Beach; Former mayors Paul Jacobs, Ed Wolkowitz, Jozelle Smith, Steve Rose, David Hauptman, Gary Silbiger, Richard Marcus, Steve Gourley, Scott Malsin;
School Board members Steve Levin, Kathy Paspalis, Anne Burke, Sue Robins and Kelly Kent; Former School Board members Marla Wolkowitz, Barbara Honig, Laura Chardiet, Madeline Ehrlich, Karlo Silbiger, Julie Lugo Cerra, Nancy Goldberg.
I have friends here from all walks of my life — my high school classmate Judge David Abbott, my Coast Guard Academy classmate Paul Jackson and his wife, Peg, my Coast Guard shipmate Tom Polakiewicz and his wife, Susan, my Korn/Ferry colleague Laura Shaw and her husband, Ed, my colleagues from Southern California ADA, the Clean Money Campaign, offices of Rep. Diane Watson and Rep. Brad Sherman and Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, and Southern California Grantmakers and my most recent BFFs, the cast and crew from the Council PTA HSA awards.
Thanks to the residents of Culver City who entrusted me to serve as your Council member four years ago and then again in 2014. As I assume the role of mayor for this next year, I hope to continue to garner your support and good counsel. Let the Council and me know when we get things right and let us know when we need to do better.
A special thanks to my sister, Camille Giglio and her husband, Ron, who join us from Northern California. She gave me this gavel that was my father’s gavel when he was mayor of our hometown of Pleasant Hill in 1979.
Also a special thanks to the love of my life–my god-daughter Nora–for pinning me and her mother Martha Groves for raising such a great kid. Nora just got a job with Enterprise Rent-a-Car. So I know she would want me to encourage you to rent from Enterprise . . . and by all means take the insurance.
Since all of you who know me, know a little something about me but not everything, I want you to mingle afterward and tell stories – whether they are true or not. It will be like an Irish wake except the guest of honor is alive to hear it all.
Now, I think many of you know that we are having a Centennial celebration for Culver City starting in September and lasting for a full year. You also know that I talk incessantly about the Centennial. But I’m not going to do that tonight.
However, I do want to commend the Centennial Celebration Committee board and staff and let everyone know if you wish to support the YMCA by purchasing a Centennial pin, they are available for sale in the lobby.
Instead I want to talk about the six months leading up to the Centennial. We are most blessed in Culver City to have a wonderful staff who make those of us on Council look good and on occasion seem like geniuses. On behalf of my colleagues, I want to extend our thanks to our City Manager John Nachbar and the entire city staff. Thank you, John.
Our staffers are active in professional associations. They attend conferences and are always looking for best practices to bring back to Culver City. However, those ideas and projects are often siloed within a department. There is no sharp focus to shape the direction of the city. That is a role that the City Council should play. And with the concurrence of my colleagues, I would request we hold a Council strategic planning retreat at the earliest possible time. A retreat in which we can each present and thoroughly discuss our vision for the city and establish priorities that can help guide our city departments as they carry out their work plans and prepare their budgets. Great. So start thinking about the city we aspire to be.
I hope to use my time as mayor to pursue public-private partnerships to a much greater extent. Often there is an attitude that only government can do something and therefore government has to pay for it. Conversely, if government can’t afford to pay for it, then we don’t do it. There is a third if not fourth way and that is through collaboration. I recently attended a conference in which state Sen. Bob Hertzberg was a keynoter. He said one of the main roles that local government can play is to be a convener — to bring together groups and individuals from a variety of backgrounds to tackle issues and come up with creative solutions. This is called thinking outside the box. I want us to do more of it.
Most of what we do on Council is ministerial. We pass a budget, authorize RFPs, approve contracts and payments, etc. All of this is important to the running of the city, but there is much more we could, and should, be doing. So part of thinking outside the box will be to schedule Council-convened discussion workshops on topical issues where we get down off the Council dais and hold these meetings in the community. Invite outside groups to get their ideas — after all we are known for our creativity in Culver City — and along with staff, start brainstorming.
How do we deal with parking and traffic and development?
How do we maximize use of the Expo line and alternative forms of transportation?
How do we create more affordable housing?
How do we make Culver City a more sustainable community?
How do we retain and attract good businesses with well-paying jobs, and what types of businesses should those be?
How do we partner with the School District, community college district and our businesses to train our kids — the employees of tomorrow?
These are just a few of the worthwhile discussion topics that necessitate longer than 20 minutes at a Council meeting.
I also want the Council to meet with our various commissions on a regular basis. Thank you to all Commissioners who are here tonight for your service to the city. Please stand and be recognized. They are advisory to us. We should get their advice as well as provide them with more guidance on our priorities.
So while we anticipate and plan for our Centennial (see, I couldn’t let it pass without another plug), let’s apply the same forward thinking and vision that guided Harry Culver in establishing Culver City, to create our own vision for the next 100 years. As the Chinese proverb states, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Let’s move forward together, starting now, on our journey of the next 100 years. Thank you.
