"Managing Expectations:" Susan McCarthy Talks About Running the City

By Jorge Casuso

A new Civic Center plan, maintaining the city's fabric and, perhaps, finding solutions to the city's parking and traffic woes.

Those are the top priorities Santa Monica's new City Manager, Susan McCarthy, enumerated during a meeting of the Leaders Club Monday night.

Then, there is a more low key task on McCarthy's agenda - to make the sometimes daunting visit to City Hall more welcoming for residents. That, McCarthy said, is one of the small changes she hopes to initiate on the job held for 15 years by John Jalili, who retired last month.

"I hope you don't expect high drama," McCarthy told more than 50 members of the club, including four former mayors, who gathered at the Victorian. "John did a remarkable balancing job. There was steadiness day to day. But I'm not John, and there are things I'll be looking to change in small ways."

The use of computers to inform citizens is a major asset, but perhaps more important, McCarthy said, is the personal interaction between residents and staff.

"We can do a better job directing traffic and making people feel welcome when they come to City Hall," said McCarthy, who has been with the city since 1975. "Certainly, there's going to be a real focus in reaching out and getting people to participate."

McCarthy also joked that one of her tasks is to make sure Finance Director Mike Dennis doesn't retire for a while. Dennis, she said, "has steered the city toward the financial growth we're experiencing. The city has been very well managed financially."

One of the "big challenges" facing the city, McCarthy said, is "managing expectations."

"We have an extraordinarily engaged populace and a council that listens," she said. "We have a staff that has a lot of professionalism and talent. This is a community with great energy and extraordinary resources."

A top priority will be coming up with a new Civic Center Plan for the land recently purchased by the city from the RAND Corporation for $53 million, McCarthy said. Whatever is put on the 11.3 acres of land between City Hall and the beach "will be with us for another century."

"People are dying to get at it because people have a lot of ideas" for the site, McCarthy said. "I think there will be a mix (of uses). Some want wall-to-wall green space. But if you don't enliven the space with people there 24-hours, you get dysfunctional space. My guess is that there will be a lot of tug and pull as it works out."

Also a priority, McCarthy said, is the city's role in stemming what many sense is "an inevitable change in demographics."

"There are inevitable changes that are going on, and the city may have a role to counteract that to an extent," McCarthy said.

"Parking and traffic," she added, "is high on the list of dissatisfiers in the community."

Other issues brought up by members of the club were the homeless and the erosion of the Palisades bluffs.

McCarthy praised the city's homeless task force and noted that the City will be embarking on a new three-year cycle that will give agencies a certainty when it comes to funding.

McCarthy added that she didn't buy the notion that Santa Monica's social services network lures the homeless. "We're at the end of the line, we're in a warm climate," she said. "This is a good place to be, not New York or Chicago on a subway grate."

As for the Palisades bluffs, McCarthy said the city is exploring ways to shore them up without making them an eyesore. "We're looking at a number of different prospects," she said. "It's not surprising that none of them is inexpensive."

Asked if she felt the council, which is elected to set policies, was engaged in micro managing, McCarthy answered: "I don't think that on a day-to-day basis there's unwarranted intervention."

It is important for staff, she said, not to have a particular point of view. But she added that council members often pass on concerns expressed by their constituents.

"We get questions from council everyday," McCarthy said. "It's not surprising. To my mind, complaints are important information to have. The more information, the better the planning and solutions.

"It is a misconception," McCarthy said, "to say council dips into the day-to-day management of the city."