Most people know their President. A lot fewer know their state, county, local officials who can have a lot more relevance.
Rancho Palos Verdes and its neighboring towns of Palos Verdes Estates, Rolling Hills and Rolling Hills Estates – are tiny red dots in a blue county and state. But while they are majority Republican, they are still sizable numbers of Democrats. As a result, most City Council members tend to position themselves as non-partisan and obscure their party affiliation. RPV tends to have a ‘revolving door’ – small numbers of community members repeatedly serve as Council members and Mayor until they are ‘termed out’.
The two issues the City Council tends to publicly address are ‘crime’ (always brought from the outside of the community), and safeguarding/enhancing property values via civic maintenance and improvements. As a result, the city keeps meticulous notes of its meetings, resolutions and activities, which are genuinely due some praise.
The Peninsula is also blessed with functional local news: The Palos Verdes Peninsula News and The Daily Breeze.
Trump National and Terranea both settled employee lawsuits. Despite this, the City Council actively courted both organizations. 99% of staff don’t live on the Peninsula and are cursorily seen as outside the purview of PV’s concerns. Protecting staffers from a self-confessed serial sexual molester or a confirmed labor trafficker is dismissed as ‘too expensive’.
Despite Mr. Trump suing both the school district and city, members of the City Council actively courted the Trump Organization from 2009 to 2011.
Also of note: the City dismissed a lobbyist ordnance, which inhibits transparency from wealthy patrons like Mr. Trump.
“The city is doing business with Terranea [Resort] and Trump National [Golf Club], who are powerful entities, yet they have no lobbyist disclosure laws” … “That seems rather odd … The bigger question is, Why wouldn’t the city have a lobbyist ordinance if the city of Malibu does and other cities do?”
When new Council members were elected in 2011 with pockets full of Trump dollars, they quickly renamed a road after Mr. Trump to indicate that the Council was now staffed by loyalists. The Council and the Trump organization settled the $100 million lawsuit against the city (privately) and quickly began promoting the golf course in local city media.
The RPV City Council repeatedly approved Trump National to remain open despite consistent standards and planning violations. Despite this they were sued by the Trump organization and bad-mouthed by Mr. Trump. If they’d held firm (like the school district), maybe Mr. Trump would have backed down or considered selling the golf course and housing development.
So while the City Council has been bought by Mr. Trump, it has never made any secret of this fact. It has openly ‘sought to be bought’. It’s expensive to subvert a nation but penny ante to buy a town.
In April 2019 the Council had dinner with Mr. Trump and expressed their approval for him, his golf course, his policies. Strangely, although they issued a press release about their pride at meeting a ‘sitting president’, it was quickly removed from the RPV city web site. (Second thoughts?)
City statement on President Trump's visit to Rancho Palos Verdes https://t.co/lnBhJAo1oF
— Rancho Palos Verdes (@CityofRPV) April 6, 2019
Beyond the poor choices of Credit Suisse, it’s largely due to the actions (and inactions) of the City Council that the Trump Organization is now so entrenched in RPV. Ultimately the lack of oversight and enforcement on the Trump Organization’s many misdeeds also devolves back to the citizens that elected the councilors too. The City Council aimed to work closely with Trump and to waive rules, regulations and laws. Citizens of RPV accepted this in bits and pieces, over many years. We all share some of the blame.
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