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Redondo Beach: Unusual Leadership Dodges Red Ink

While much of California is struggling financially, the city of Redondo Beach has managed to stay out of the red.
The City of Redondo Beach
While much of California is struggling financially, the city of Redondo Beach has managed to stay out of the red.

Part 4 of a 6-part series

The wall in the hallway outside the Redondo Beach Mayor's Office kind of says it all: There is row after row of smiling faces. Almost all male. All pale. Some blond, some gray. All very indicative of what many Americans still think of when you say "California beach city," until the last photo in the last row.

The current mayor is male, but he's Asian, and looks significantly younger than many of his predecessors. That alone would make 48-year-old Mike Gin a break with his predecessors. But he's also gay. And Republican. And extremely popular with his citizenry.

Gin and his husband, Christopher Kreidel, are often seen around town on weekends running errands and kibitzing with residents. (After 14 years together, they got married in 2008 during the brief time same-sex marriages were legal in the state.)

Gin skews more to the political center, a modern version of the Rockefeller Republican that was more common in the '60s and '70s. He says he has always been socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

"I believe there is a role for government," he says, "but we need to make sure our taxpayers' funds are being spent in a wise manner. And we need to keep things in check, fiscally."

Collaborating On Cutbacks

Keeping things "in check" fiscally means doing what his late parents, William and Albertine, raised him to do: not spend more than you make, and stick to your budget. Being a civic cheapskate has been a large part of the reason Gin has been able to pilot Redondo Beach through the choppy red ink that has deluged much of the rest of the state.

"We've been doing very well," Gin says.

Although, he says, with some asperity, the mayors who have managed to stay afloat have been penalized for prudent fiscal management.

"And believe me when I tell you that I'm not happy that the state's budget is being balanced on the backs of cities that have worked hard [to balance their budgets]," he says.

Gin firmly believes the reason Redondo Beach hasn't suffered the bone-deep cuts many other California cities have is an unseen element: "Trust. The trust among our employees."

Gin's open, collaborative nature has allowed negotiations that would otherwise have been painfully contentious to reach a successful conclusion. When he discovered, despite his ferocious fiscal prudence, that there was going to be a 6 percent budget gap last year, he wanted to reconcile the books without the mass layoffs that had ravaged so many other cities. So he called several department heads and the leaders of various city employee associations and unions.

"We told our city staff and management that we wanted to ensure that we don't have any layoffs, if possible, and that we basically wanted to maintain our high levels of service," Gin says.

He wanted to keep the public safety, the clean streets, the generous distributions of parks and other amenities that made Redondo Beach an attractive place for potential home buyers and for the tourists who came to enjoy the beach city.

So Gin took a leap of faith with his employees.

Republican Mayor Mike Gin terms out as mayor of Redondo Beach, Calif., in 2013.
/ The City of Redondo Beach
/
The City of Redondo Beach
Republican Mayor Mike Gin terms out as mayor of Redondo Beach, Calif., in 2013.

"We asked them to come up with ideas and come up with ways to address our budget deficit — and they did," he says.

Each department or union decided what cuts worked best for them. Some wanted to curb overtime. Others placed a moratorium on vacation time cash-outs. Others asked for employee hours to be shorter. And in the end, it all came together: no deficit .

In the end everyone lost a little something, and almost everyone was OK with it because they'd had input in the process. It's a Gin hallmark.

"People may not always agree with you," Gin says, "but as long as they feel a sense of ownership or partnership in the process, there will always be that respect that's there."

And it runs both ways.

Making' The City A Community'

"It's going to be hard for you to find somebody to say something bad about our mayor," says businessman Mike Morales, "because he actually listens to the community, and he cares."

Morales is behind the counter at Harmony Works, a boutique that sells lots of hand-made jewelry, artwork and home accessories, like the bright wool pillow with "No Whining" boldly stitched onto it.

He's also president of the business development district in Riviera Village, a group of shops and restaurants and niche businesses at the southern end of downtown. Morales says Gin's spirit of cooperation "makes a ton of difference, especially from a business point of view. When you have somebody who is willing to sit down and plan things and work things out for the betterment of everybody, it makes the city a community, and not just a city."

Morales' assessment is exactly how Gin hopes his citizens are feeling about how he's running the city. Gin will be term-limited out in 2013, and when he thinks about his legacy, he doesn't name a building or a program. He wants something more ephemeral, and to him, more important.

"I hope that after I'm gone, that these partnerships that we've developed will be a part of our community," he says, "and, hopefully, that will always be a wonderful blueprint for our community."

Copyright 2020 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Karen Grigsby Bates is the Senior Correspondent for Code Switch, a podcast that reports on race and ethnicity. A veteran NPR reporter, Bates covered race for the network for several years before becoming a founding member of the Code Switch team. She is especially interested in stories about the hidden history of race in America—and in the intersection of race and culture. She oversees much of Code Switch's coverage of books by and about people of color, as well as issues of race in the publishing industry. Bates is the co-author of a best-selling etiquette book (Basic Black: Home Training for Modern Times) and two mystery novels; she is also a contributor to several anthologies of essays. She lives in Los Angeles and reports from NPR West.