Talking Pasadena’s Big Picture With Council Member-Elect Felicia Williams

“I’m really, really fortunate that I get nine months to think about this,’’ Felicia Williams was saying over the phone the other day, on the eve of her victory in the District 2 City Council race becoming official –ensuring she will not face a runoff in November before taking office in January.
“Most people get a month.’’

Actually, from a nearly hour-long, wide-ranging conversation with Williams, you get the distinct sense she doesn’t need all that time … that she could step into the job tomorrow and be fully up to speed, if not out ahead, on just about any city issue you can think of –

From the immediate economic crisis facing Pasadena from the coronavirus crisis to the long-term economic repair that will need to follow.

From the recent, controversial departure of Fire Chief Bertral Washington to structural issues she sees in the police and fire departments.

From affordable housing, to homelessness, to fiscal stability, to diversity in the city workforce and the city more generally.

Oh, and trees and potholes, too … this graduate of Stanford (B.A., urban studies/public policy), UCLA (M.A., urban planning) and Michigan (MBA, finance) can talk macro AND micro.

Williams lists jigsaw puzzles among her hobbies – she recently ordered eight of them to help her get her through the coronavirus lockdown — and you also get the sense she envisions all those odd-cut issues as somehow coming together as pieces of a bigger, challenging whole.

“I’m compiling … I have tons and tons of data from the district about concerns that people have — I put it all in an Excel spreadsheet,’’ said Williams, a Planning Commission member who left the financial industry and now runs her own consulting firm that advises cities and counties on large projects.

Williams’ segue to the City Council becomes real now that her victory is finally official, with the county clerk certifying the March 3 election results following major snafus with the county’s new high-tech voting system.

Williams got 2,910 votes (52.85 percent), beating out Tricia Keane (1,491), Bo Patatian (670) and Kevin Litwin (435).

Come January, she will be a newcomer to the City Council, succeeding Margaret McAustin, who did not seek re-election. Incumbents Tyron Hampton (District 1), Gene Masuda (District 4) and Steve Madison (District 6) all held on to their seats, getting more than the 50 percent needed to avoid a runoff. (Hampton ran unopposed.)

And so Pasadena Now reached out to Williams for a preview of what will be on her radar once she takes office in January. Here are a few take-aways:

COVID-19 … AND BEYOND

“I think the next couple of weeks will be pivotal, because we’re seeing more testing, and as those numbers (play) out, we can kind of get a better idea of the infection rate,’’ Williams said. “My understanding is, the difference between a recession and a depression is like three or four weeks versus more than a month (of shutdowns).

“There are some businesses that, if they’re closed for more than three weeks, that’s it. They can’t reopen. So, we’re kind’ve at that critical time. … And that’s also going to define what we need to do with our economy later.’’

One short-term approach, she said, would be reaching out to landlords regarding the possibility of rent deferrals while the crisis rages and people remain out of work or shut down.

“One thing I saw was from The Irvine Company (a real-estate development firm in Irvine), where (for) all of their non-essential businesses, they are deferring rent for three months and allowing for them to pay it back over 12 months with no interest,’’ Williams said.

The city has passed an eviction moratorium for residential and commercial renters unable to pay, but that measure mandates full payback within six months after the crisis officially ends – a point that some renters have condemned, and which the council may yet revisit.

“A lot of the landlords here are local, they live here, they get it,’’ Williams said. “So, I think there should be some discussions with them on what they can do and see how amenable they are to some sort of similar (longer-term rent deferral) structure for those businesses that need it.’’

She also thinks the city can help connect struggling local businesses with relief efforts such as the meal program that was recently started.
“The idea that I had was, if we are preparing meals for seniors, are there florists, where we can pay for them to include flowers in the meal package, because the emotional impact on seniors, especially being by themselves, is going to be very, very devastating,’’ she said.

“Are there ways that we could partner with the small businesses, so that the city purchases, probably at a discounted rate, things from them to keep them going that are then included into our meal and other support services?’’

It can go wider than that, too, she said.

“There are bookstores, there are so many different things, we have a great diversity of businesses here,’’ Williams said. “Is there a way to, instead of me ordering from an online company, could I order (from) Maria’s Italian Kitchen and at the same time get some of the businesses around there like the Harmon beauty supply – can I get supplies from them put into that package?

“We’re not competitors now, we have to find a way to collaborate. So, I would look for way to try to include the local businesses.’’

CHIEF WASHINGTON, DIVERSITY … AND WIDER FIRE AND POLICE DEPT. ISSUES

“With the fire chief, I agree that the process was not handled well,’’ Williams said of the recent exit of Bertral Washington – one of the city’s highest-ranking African-American officials who, on Feb. 10, was officially “reassigned” to the city manager’s office before announcing his retirement earlier this month.

The move by City Manager Steve Mermell caught council members by surprise – and drew crowds of protesters, many of them African-American, to three straight council meetings. Specifics as to what caused Washington’s exit have not been made public, with the city citing confidentiality reasons.
“It could have been better communicated to the council as well as the public on what is happening with him,’’ Williams said.

“There’s a transparency issue that needs to be addressed going forward, so I’d like to address that – sort of, how these things get dealt with in the future and what the process should be while protecting people’s confidentiality.’’

Washington’s exit, Williams said, also provides an entry point to two larger issues in the city – “One is diversity, and two is really a structural issue with the fire department,’’ she said.

When opponents to Washington’s ouster came out at recent council meetings, Williams said, “The community (was) just reacting to the fact that Bertral Washington was our senior-most African-American male at the city, and the only African-American male department head.’’

“That does not bode well for the city’s diversity, but also for the community, because, especially our youth, a lot of our black male youth looked up to him,’’ Williams said. “That’s why I think the process should have been done differently, taking that into account — and I don’t even know that was taken into account.

“But the larger concern that I have is what we are seeing at the city. I grew up in Pasadena, and I remember going to City Hall with my dad and seeing black level managers and department heads. What we are seeing (now) is, those senior-ranking African-Americans are all retiring very quickly. And what’s unique about them is they also live in the city. So what we are seeing is a loss of diversity, not only ethnic diversity in the city, we are seeing a loss of employees who (live) in the city.

“And that is a much bigger issue, because it reflects what’s happening in the community – we’re losing our diversity in the workforce, but we’re losing the diversity in the city as well.’’

It’s also an issue in the police department, she said.

“There’s a whole cadre of sort of senior African-American officers from the community, and what they’re being replaced (by) is, non-African-American officers not from the community,’’ Williams said – while also stressing that Police Chief John Perez “is very focused on hiring more local police officers, which I think will help a lot with some the concerns the community has with the police department.”

How can the council fit into this?

“We cannot tell the city manager how to do his job or who to hire or fire, because all of his decisions should not be political,’’ Williams said. “But as a council we can provide direction and vision as to what the citizens want and what the city should look like.

“I think that there is a vision and direction for diversity that the City Council can provide to help address this and the process going forward.’’

As for what she called a “major structural issue with the fire department’’ – “The fire department is no longer a fire department, it’s a paramedics department,’’ she said.

“The calls for service are increasingly paramedic, and yet we don’t have our staffing, and our equipment has not kept up with that. Part of the tension in the fire department is that what we are asking them to do is a very difficult job and we don’t have the staffing and equipment to do it.

“They also don’t have the paramedics to staff those trucks. We’ve got paramedics doing double shifts … it’s a very tenuous situation.’’

There may also need to be a reassessment of where firefighters are deployed, she said.

“Geographically, things have changed,’’ she said. “The highest (volume) fire station for calls is the one in Old Pasadena. Why? Because we have focused development in downtown Pasadena.

“Do we need to look at the fire department differently because of how they are deploying and where they’re deploying?”

HOUSING AND LONG-TERM FISCAL STABILITY

Williams has a plan for her first hundred days in office, with housing and fiscal stability issues high on the priority list – the latter helping the city address the long-term economic fallout of the COVID crisis.

She said she wants to form a housing committee to gather specific data to break down the issue. It would not be a council panel, but rather, she said, “a committee of experts and the public to actually identify what the housing problem is.’’

“We’ve heard people can’t afford to live here who have their students at PUSD, so they’re moving,’’ she said. “But who are they, where do they live, why are they moving, what options can be done to keep them here? Like really getting the data on this stuff so that we can actually make informed decisions.

“Because it seems like we’re kind of shooting in the dark with what we think the problem is, but we don’t really know.’’

Toward fiscal stability, she said, she wants to city hire a grant writer, and to consider a vacant-building tax or assessment that could dis-incentivize owners from keeping their properties empty – a prime example being the former St. Luke Medical Center, shuttered since 2002.

“That is an absolute shame, but that is what the vacant building tax would address – is that some owners find it financially beneficial for tax purposes to leave something vacant,’’ she said.

Such a move could also address vacancy on a smaller scale, including single homes that could be made available to modest- and lower-income residents.

“I walk the entire district and I noticed about 5 percent of homes are vacant,’’ she said. “They’re vacant either because no one’s living there or because they’re Airbnb’d and they’re empty.

“It’s that sort of thing – those are homes that families could move into, that could alleviate the housing crisis, that could bring PUSD families to Pasadena.’’

A tax would have to go through voters, an assessment not. And there would be particulars that would have to be further studied, she said.

“We need to look at who it would apply to, how long does (a building) have to be vacant, there’s a lot of things you have to look at here,’’ she said.

“And how would the money be used? I would like to see it used for homelessness or housing.’’

For Williams, the complex puzzle begins for real in January. Meantime, she is mulling how all the pieces might fit together.