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Outgoing councilman speaks out
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Outgoing District 4 Councilman Bob Pinzler |
Outspoken Councilman Bob Pinzler served residents of District 4 for two terms on the Redondo Beach City Council. Now termed-out of office, he looks to the challenges Redondo faces in the coming years.
ER: Word on the street is that you’re going to be writing a column in the Easy Reader. Excited?
Pinzler: Actually I am. It’s something I’ve thought about for a long time. I believe most of the people who live in Redondo don’t understand the impact that city government has on their lives. I think its kind of bizarre that the lowest voter turnout is in the election that should matter the most to people.
ER: Why was the turnout so low?
Pinzler: I think when people are satisfied there’s less of a push to change things. And people don’t understand local government the way they understand the federal or state governments so most people tend to ignore it. Personally I believe we shouldn’t have polling booths for local elections. People should get their ballots in the mail and vote like they’re absentee.
ER: What vision do you have for your column?
Pinzler: I’d like to be able to do it on a reasonably regular interval and try to explain local government and how it works. I’ll go into how what’s going on may affect the South Bay and our relationships with the state and county. Things people don’t think will impact their life, but affects them every day.
ER: What unfinished business are you leaving behind you?
Pinzler: Most of the details we’ve probably dealt with. The most serious thing that the city needs to come to terms with is its charter. It’s hopelessly out of date and contradictory. It might have reflected the needs of the city in 1949 but has no relationship with the world of 2001. It’s really extraordinary that people have been able to make it work for so long. The fact that it has is a testament to the really good people that are in those positions. The saddest part about rethinking how we structure the city is that so few people really understand how local government works and therefore don’t see how dysfunctional it really is.
ER: Name the top three changes you’d like to see made in Redondo Beach city government.
Pinzler: The number one thing that needs to be done is to appoint our city attorney, rather than elect them.
Second is restructuring the financial management office of the city into a controller’s office. And the third is to truly give the city manager control of the financial functions of the city.
ER: How would appointing the city attorney help the city?
Pinzler: The city attorney is the city council’s attorney. One of his major jobs is to advise the council. And when the position is political and the person in that office believes they have a political agenda, it creates a disconnect between the council and the city attorney’s office. When that disconnect becomes distrust, that’s when it becomes dysfunctional. Out of 476 cities in California, only 11 in the state have elected city attorneys and there’s a good reason for it. When you have an attorney you want that person to be your attorney with your interests at heart, not their own political agenda.
ER: How has having an elected city attorney impacted the city during your term of office?
Pinzler: I think that it’s caused strife in the relationship between the city council and the city attorney and caused the city to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in cases that were brought and fostered by the city attorney that the city council in all honesty didn’t want to get into. And it created a level of animosity and distrust that hurt the inner workings of the city.
ER: What advantage would having the city manager in sole control of the city’s finances have?
Pinzler: The controller issue is more of a structural one. What the city needs is a professional financial manager, overseeing collections, financial management and expenditures. It would streamline the process in the treasurer’s and financial departments and bring them under a true professiona1. After all, the only requirements to be the city treasurer of Redondo Beach is that you’re a registered voter. That is not what I consider professional in this day and age of financial problems. When you’re dealing with the kind of money we are today, you want professionals. When you’re dealing with someone who’s elected, you don’t have the ability to hire or fire them, and unless someone comes along and ousts them you’re stuck with them.
ER: How would putting the control of the city’s finances in the hands of the city manager help Redondo?
Pinzler: It would solidify the role of the city manager. Right now, there’s a lot of discrepancy in the charter, and precisely what the city manager does and is responsible for needs to be cleaned up. The way the charter is set up now, it’s confusing for anyone looking at the job, and the good ones say ‘Why would I want to get myself in this wacky situation?’ And in the future, it may limit the choice of the kind of city manager that we get.
ER: Do you think the redevelopment of Artesia Boulevard will follow the model of Rosecrans Boulevard? Will the kinds of businesses it can draw be impacted by the development in the Heart of the City?
Pinzler: Neither. I don’t see it as being another Rosecrans. It’s zoned differently, and closer physically in relation to the neighborhoods around it. I don’t see it as getting short shrift because of the Heart of the City. For Artesia, the source of the money we’ll need to improve it is already laid out. Now what we have to determine is what the vision is, and we can pretty much do what anybody wants to do.
The Heart of the City doesn’t yet have all of its resources together. But it’s a very worthwhile project that’s going to have a tremendous long term impact on the finances of the city and the way we feel about our city. I think we really lost a level of our identity when we tossed away our downtown for what people must have thought were good reasons but turned out not to make any sense.
ER: How are you going to be involved in the future?
Pinzler: I’ll be involved as a very concerned citizen. I have my own views about how Artesia can be turned into a thoroughfare that people want to walk on. How to attract the kind of businesses that will draw the high-income people that live near there that don’t use it now. We can do everything from beautification to modifying where you park, the width of sidewalks, what goes on the sidewalks, turn lanes, signage… we can turn it into a tremendously attractive street.
ER: What’s next for Bob Pinzler?
Pinzler: Well not having to spend the probably 80 hours a week on council stuff, I’ll be able to concentrate on making a living. Politically, it’s all a matter of timing. We have an assembly member that I have a great deal with respect for who’s in office until 2004. A state senator in office until 2006 and a county supervisor who is well entrenched, so I’m not really sure what’s next right now but I’ll continue to be involved in local government. My business is as an e-government consultant helping cities and companies set up online e-government services. So I’ll stay very much involved in government.ER