Three elections in five months should be enough to sort out the business of a city of 65,000 people. The elections should give us about two years of election-free recovery time, that is unless some group of citizens decides our elected officials aren’t paying enough attention to their interests and they write another ballot initiative.
The one remaining election will consist of a mail-in choice between two candidates for city treasurer. How many people know what the treasurer does to earn a tidy sum, well over $100,000 of our hard earned tax money every year? It’s probably worth taking a few minutes to search the city’s municipal code for section 11.1 http://qcode.us/codes/redondobeach/ to find out.
What you’ll discover is that the city treasurer doesn’t really do much. He or she oversees money coming in and money going out. It seems we have a treasurer so we have someone to blame if our money is mismanaged by other city employees. Nevertheless, we need a city treasurer and we will all get to mail in our ballots for one of two candidates in July.
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You don’t hear that much about Measure A now that Redondo Beach voters have exercised their power of self-governance by rejecting that ridiculous piece of legislation. We need to remember there was an organization called No Power Plant. No Power Plant was Measure A and Measure A was No Power Plant.
A number of candidates attempted to leverage their association with or sympathy for No Power Plant/Measure A to get elected. The citizens of Redondo Beach rejected all but one of them the same way they rejected Measure A.
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City treasurer candidate Dawn Esser is the last remaining person seeking elected office in the city who has attempted to use her association with No Power Plant/Measure A for political advantage. I join many of my fellow citizens in hoping she will experience the same fate other aspiring politicians who attached themselves to the divisive, misguided ideas that brought us No Power Plant/Measure A have had to suffer, defeat.
My real interest in this election isn’t to see one candidate lose but to see a more qualified, extremely bright candidate get elected. Steve Diels won’t need to study the city budget or how the city works to figure out how to perform the duties of treasurer. For the past eight years he has had direct personal, responsibility for that budget as a member of our city council.
Everyone who serves on the council brings his or her own talents and abilities to that work. In eight years of working with the council as a commissioner, I often found myself considering what the council was doing on some issue or item on its agenda. Before I jumped to any conclusions about the wisdom or absence of wisdom of any council action, I always found myself asking one question. What did Steve Diels have to say about the matter?
That doesn’t mean I agreed with him. I probably disagreed more often than not but I knew his opinions would always be thoughtful and represent his genuine interest in doing what’s best for the city. I believe the city is better for having had Steve as a council member. The city has an opportunity to continue benefitting from Steve’s knowledge and experience by electing him our next city treasurer. Check out his qualifications at http://stevediels.com/ .
