City Manager John Jalili Revisits Past and Peers into Future at Pico Tribute

By Jorge Casuso

It was the first of many tributes to the man who helped transform Santa Monica from what was once jokingly referred to as "Oshkosh by the sea" -- a city for the "newly wed and nearly dead" -- into a bustling world class tourist and entertainment center.

And it was fitting that the accolades for his quarter century of service came, not from one of the giant media corporations he helped bring to the city, but from a small group of Pico business leaders who wanted to thank City Manger John Jalili for helping to revitalize their street.

"No city manager could have gone through the regimes that have governed this city and still have this number of friends," said former Mayor Nat Trives during a tribute luncheon Thursday's at the newly reopened Casa del Mar. "He broke the record."

Jalili, who will retire next month from the post he has held for the past 15 years, quickly turned the spotlight away, something the low-key city manager has always done.

"What really happens in complex cities like this is the teamwork that gets things done and an environment where you can try new things," Jalili said. "There's no way any one person can do it."

To which Trives quickly responded: "Yeah, John, but you were the quarterback," which brought prolonged applause from those gathered around the long board room table.

Thursday's lunch was a chance for Jalili to revisit the past and try to predict the future of one of only four cities in the nation with a triple-A bond rating.

And the city manager used the opportunity to provide a mini history of his last 25 years with the city. He strolled down memory lane along the dilapidated pier he was charged with revitalizing (a local architect named Frank Gehry would be hired to draft the master plan) and recalled Jane Fonda's efforts to stop the building of Santa Monica Place (which Gehry would design).

He talked about the city's efforts to bring quality stores for shoppers tired of having to drive to Beverly Hills and of the rapid rise of the Third Street Promenade. And he briefly alluded to the birth of rent control and the political wars it would trigger.

"In Santa Monica there are camps with real points of view," Jalili said. "One thing I feel strongly about is as professional members of staff we should not be aligned with a political group. We have gone the extra mile to provide the council with objective information."

Remaining objective is something Jalili feels will be crucial when the council votes next spring on a living wage ordinance, which would force large employers along the coast to pay what the city mandates, a national first.

The issue requires objective information from all sides," Jalili said. "We will retain a person or firm to quantify what it means. There is a lot of debate on how to implement it, and there are legal issues."

As for the future, Jalili sees no radical detours from the lucrative path the city has taken.

"I think our city will continue to improve in terms of being a destination for tourists," Jalili said. "Restaurants, entertainment - those trends are inevitable. The fiscal health of the city will be maintained."

But Jalili sees some obstacles ahead. "Maintaining the diversity of the city is clearly a challenge," the city manager said. So are "parking and traffic issues in a fully developed city where everyone is under parked."

He added that "education is what this community is interested in putting resources into," and called last year's library bond ballot victory with more than 80 percent of the vote a mandate that "in most cities is unheard of."

Jalili also spoke about the Santa Monica's dedication to providing more and better parks and the ongoing battle with Shell to clean up the oil company's contamination of the city's water supply. "We want to make sure they move forward and quickly."

And he cautioned against dipping into the city's budget reserves, which are smaller than Culver City's, while at the same time warning about delaying much-needed capital improvements.

"Cities have a tendency to delay and delay and delay, and suddenly they wake up and there are millions (of dollars) needed."

At the end of the meeting, Clyde Smith, a civic leader credited with helping spur the resurgence of Pico Boulevard, presented Jalili with a pencil cup and thanked him for the city's efforts to pump $7.4 million into the long-neglected corridor.

It was Jalili who approached the Chamber of Commerce's Pico Boulevard Committee with funds for the project after Main Street merchants had balked at the plan. Thursday's luncheon was a way for the committee to thank him.

"The Pico streetscape improvement has been a blessing," said Smith, chairman of the Pico Neighborhood Association and member of the chamber committee. "It's a marvelous surprise to see a city move this quickly."

So with all those accomplishments behind him, what will the city manager do in the next millennium?

"What most retired people do," Jalili said, "reading, travelling, hobbies here and there, and when I get bored, I'll look for some part time work."