Hersman, Manhattan Beach council candidate, tires of city ‘pushing things down the road’
Manhattan Beach City Council candidate Nancy Hersman. Courtesy photo
Nancy Hersman first encountered the proposed Manhattan Beach skate park as a member of the city’s Parks and Recreation Commission. When she joined the Planning Commission in 2014, its location was still being debated. Now, as a candidate for City Council, she marvels at the fact that that the project is nearing completion after a roughly seven-year odyssey.
It’s not that the project was especially large or important to Hersman. Rather, her complaints about the process behind it reveal her priorities and hint at the governing style she would pursue if elected. Hersman, one of eight candidates seeking three spots on the City Council in the upcoming March election, has articulated a vision of a council that is focused on the bigger picture and less swayed by currents. And in order to see the future, Hersman reasons, your field of vision can’t be crowded with half-completed projects.
“My kids weren’t skaters, but I knew that it was something kids in this community had wanted
I want to see things get done. I don’t like pushing things down the road, and I feel like a lot of that is being done these days,” Hersman said.
Hersman, a recently retired attorney, moved to Manhattan Beach in 1998. She and her family relocated from Westchester to take advantage of Manhattan Beach’s schools, and her involvement in local government began in the education sector.
Among other projects, she led a program that provided information about Mira Costa High School to middle school parents considering sending their kids to private school. The program’s purpose, she said, was to dispel misinformation about the school, and reinforce the “small town, community connection” that comes with a local public high school.
Hersman was elected to the board of the Manhattan Beach Unified School District in 2005. She described her term as challenging, pointing out that it was sandwiched between criticism over excesses of a previous bond measure and financial challenges posed by the recession. Nonetheless, it provided a lesson in fiscal discipline that could be useful to the City Council.
“We had to cut $5 million out of the budget. We did it, but it was tough,” Hersman said. “When you have elementary school kids coming in with money they made from a lemonade stand saying ‘I want to save my teacher…’ It was really tough.”
After a term on the school board, Hersman turned her attention to city politics. She served on the Parks and Rec Commission before moving to the Planning Commission, where she now serves.
Hersman said that her experience on the Planning Commission will be especially valuable to the council, which often deals with land use issues and frequently reviews the commission’s decisions. She noted that only two members of the current council, David Lesser and Wayne Powell, have Planning Commission experience, and that Powell is leaving in March due to term limits.
But her experience on commissions has also been frustrating. As an example, she critiqued, the way the planning process for the city’s Downtown Specific Plan was handled, lamenting both the limits placed on commission review and the cost associated with preparing the plan.
They are an example, she said, of the city mismanaging its most valuable resource — committed, educated residents.
“Commissions are not used as effectively as they could be. There is a disconnect between them and the council. They often feel like, unless council tells them to do something, their hands are tied,” Hersman said.
Fellow Planning Commissioner Penny Bordokas said that Hersman’s skills and temperament make her well suited to suss out resident priorities and avoid this pitfall. (“Our residents would rather see that $1.3 spent on pool rather than a plan,” she said.)
“She wants to wrap up before we start the next thing. The current council too often listens to the audience in that moment instead of looking at bigger picture of what we are trying to accomplish,” Bordokas said.
Hersman also pointed to the proposal for a Gelson’s supermarket on Sepulveda Boulevard near 8th Street. The commission was scheduled to hold its first hearing on the subject after press time Wednesday evening. Hersman and many community activists say that it was wrong for city staff to not provide an earlier forum for a project that generated such intense public interest.
“With Gelson’s, it’s been out there for two years. It’s so frustrating that it hasn’t come to planning yet,” Hersman said. “It’s in the news, we’re getting letters pro and con. After two years these people are ready to explode. Wouldn’t it have been nice to have at least had an informational meeting?”