Evan Meyer welcomes David White to this edition of Meyerside Chats. Are you interested in any of the civic topics below? Please tune in to Meyerside Chats on the Santa Monica Daily Press.
David White is the current City Manager for the City of Santa Monica. White joined in October 2021 after serving as deputy city manager in Berkeley, where he championed reimagining public safety, including a new model of civilian oversight of Berkeley’s Police Department. Before his time in Berkeley, White was the city manager of Fairfield, CA.
Meyerside Chats seeks to eliminate the “us and them” narrative and toxic polarization by praising those who lead by example, virtuous community leadership, and authentic conversation. The intent is to showcase the humanity in those that take on the often thankless jobs of public service through civil discourse and honoring differing points of view.
Recorded by santamonicamusic.com
Summary
- Some personal fun, well-groomed beard maintenance, and past DJ work
- The importance of music in our lives
- Creating an ever-improving city culture
- How city staff can bring their best selves to work (e.g., David’s music in the office and falcon watching at City Hall)
- Infusing “who you are” into the workspace thru building safety, vulnerability, and purpose
- COVID Innovations, changes, and cuts we should keep
- Bureaucracy and how to create a “getting to yes” culture & mentality | 22:00
- Working through polarity at the city, council, and community levels
- Balancing “loud voices” that dominate conversations around issues with the ideal of true democracy.
- The importance and impressive nature of leadership involves the community, neighborhood, and business levels.
- Local government -> where action CAN lead to direct change
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Listen to the podcast here
Meyerside Chats David White
I’ve been waiting for this interview because it felt interesting to be looking at something that looks like me and I thought that would be fun so here we are. How do you maintain such a healthy beard?
I have lots of practice. During the pandemic when I could no longer find my way to anyone that could support me and my beard-growing endeavors, I took it upon myself to learn how to keep myself in good shape and good housekeeping order.
It’s a good job. It’s lustrous and voluminous.
You missed it in the height of the COVID days. It was a lot longer and healthier. We’ll get back there during the winter.
I can’t seem to get to quite that long but the hair’s good. The scalp seems to work out. I use a good razor in the shower. It works well. Is that the move?
Every day. At 7:00, I sit in the barber’s chair and take care of myself.
Before we started, you mentioned that used to be a DJ. Where do you use to spin?
This takes me back to my college days when I was at UCLA. I did a little stint at the radio station. You’re back into the early ’90s. A lot of loud heavy metal classic ’70s like Led Zeppelin and The Doors. Also, a lot of Mötley Crüe. Always top of mind anything that had a loud, strong electric guitar was blaring from my midnight to 3:00 AM shift. I was the newbie so I had the graveyard shift, which worked well going into a coffee shop at 5:00 AM to open. I was well-prepared to keep myself oiled and fueled. I enjoyed it. It was a lot of fun.
Do you play an instrument?
I don’t. I tried multiple times when I was younger. I tried to learn the drums. I was an epic failure and a little bit later, I tried to learn how to play the guitar but given my work life and how hard I worked, it was difficult even trying to keep myself staying awake on the couch trying to play. After quite a few weeks of my wife finding me slunched over my guitar, she said, “Nice try.” We decided to move on but it’s always been a goal of mine, a fascination. I love music. Part of why I relish coming down to Santa Monica was being home with KCRW. I’m just a big fan of new music, international music and all kinds of music.
Me too. I find it to be the pulse of existence. I find it amazing that you can have the formula to create emotion using sound once you understand music theory. It’s remarkable that certain frequencies will make you feel a certain way. I’ve always found that spiritually interesting in a sense even. How do you do that connection there?
It’s the rhythm. I love the way music can get you energetic and going. If your mood is somber, there are songs for that too. There’s always something to listen to. I always have something playing somewhere on my headphones, in my office or wherever.
There’s art and music. Those are the two, audio and visual processing creative ventures. A lot of times, I’m thinking about the organizations that I run and how to bring these kinds of creative things into the organization. There’s more than just music or art. It’s thinking about building city culture and people bringing their best selves into an organization, the things that make them interesting and make them feel like they can be themselves and thrive.
That’s always something that I found particularly important in organization building. I’m wondering how at the city level, there are certain things that either you see as possible or can be done or have been done in the past but more future projecting that could be done around this type of personal creative development within a workspace to help people thrive.
There are a few things. We spend a lot of time at work. In a lot of ways, our work becomes our second family. We put a lot of blood, sweat and tears. I feel it’s very important to be authentic in who you are on the job. I do that by being myself. I play music in my office. Sometimes it’s the music that I love that no one else loves and hopefully, it finds a connection to someone passing by my office. It’s showing that by example, being who I am, being the person who I am when I go home and being fun and silly when I can when the time is right.
Another great example was I don’t know if you’re into animals at all but there are a couple of falcons that live on top of the Campanile in Berkeley and have webcams on them. My wife will laugh that I’m even talking about it here in this setting but I adore watching these little falcons grow from being hatched as eggs and growing up. I put that up on the screen when we have meetings. It’s a wonderful opportunity to do something fun and different as a little therapy. For me, that’s what is important. I see that a lot in our organization, which is exciting for me.
When I joined Santa Monica, I was inspired by the work of the organization around diversity, equity and inclusion. Big words that mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people but one of the areas that I’ve been inspired by where the employees have taken the organization is strong affinity groups, folks who are centered around the African-American community, the Latino-Latina community, Asian-American and Pacific Islander communities.
On Pride Month, you see all these wonderful things that employees are leading on their own to bring recognition, support and awareness to employees and the community. To me, that is a fabulous expression of who people are as individuals and who their community and culture are. I support, cherish and relish that work. During Pride Month in Santa Monica, I’m overwhelmed by all the tremendous events. We’ve seen this time and again. The Asian-American and Pacific Islander Month celebration brought wonderful events to the city. It capped off with a fabulous food truck celebration in front of city hall where we got to celebrate different cultures through dance and the arts. It was a wonderful opportunity. There are lots of that.
In September, we celebrate Hispanic Heritage Month. I enjoy seeing the employees that have embraced this work. They’re doing it on their time and sacrificing extra hours but to me, it means a lot because it’s time for how folks create that belonging to the organization where they can infuse who they are right into their work. That’s what I try to do as well.
I imagine doing that activity. That feeling that you get there is a form of vulnerability to be able to share things that you may not immediately share with a stranger but you’re being open about yourself and that creates the space for other people to do the same and a feeling of safety. When I think about that, it’s a wonderful way to do that.
It’s fabulous and I agree with you. There is vulnerability. There is courage for folks to bring a lot of this forward because we have to be honest that we live in a world that is filled with bias and racism. I imagine folks worry about how some of these events or conversations will be met but they’re hugely important to build a better world and community, move forward and learn about each other and what’s important to each other. I’m hugely behind it. I’m grateful for what they do and I support what they do. I enjoy participating in the events.
I suppose it creates a feeling of purpose behind that where they know that they can go to work every day and feel that what they’re doing is important work and valuable to them intrinsically, also extrinsically and there’s real meaning there. That creates good employees.
I hope so. Everyone comes into government and public service for different reasons. For me, it’s always been about the desire and passion to help people, build a better community and have a better quality of life. Certainly, it’s important to create that meaning and purpose around your daily work because the work can be a grind, particularly going through COVID where it’s been hard. Government workers have had to sacrifice their health and safety to ensure that services are provided 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I certainly think the more that folks can identify and create meaning and purpose beyond the day-to-day help keep everyone motivated.
That applies to everybody in the world. You could argue that’s one of the most important aspects of doing what you do. It’s one of Viktor Frankl’s Man’s Search for Meaning. I quote that often because it always comes up about purpose. He says, “Suffering ceases to become suffering when there’s a meaning behind it.” You have a real sense of meaning. It’s how he made it through the Holocaust and being in concentration camps. I always put that out there as something that inspires me.
There were a lot of layoffs and changes through COVID. There were also a lot of good things that came out of COVID. Outdoor seating seems to be almost unanimously a good thing more than any other thing I’ve heard in the city. Most people seem to agree. Europe’s been doing this forever. We are many years late to the game. Outdoor seating in the best climate in the world is good.
What are the things that you think we can keep from the innovations that have come out? Given some of the hard losses to the city, have there been efficiencies that have been created or developed from realizing, “This thing wasn’t needed and we should pivot in this way to make a more efficient or a better operating city?”
As you alluded, COVID hit every community differently and Santa Monica especially hard. It was a combination of multiple factors. The reliance on tourism and the leisure industry. Our heavy reliance on technology and office-based sector. A lot of folks continue to and worked remotely. We lost a lot of foot traffic that way. People stopped spending money for some time. The organization went through some very difficult times that resulted in devastating losses. If I have my facts correct, up to about 420 employees or positions were lost during the pandemic.
The organization had tremendous resource constraints. Capital programming was cut by more than half. The reserves were depleted. All the things we need to rely on to build a great community and ensure that we can continue to provide services were stressed and challenged. People worked under tremendous conditions. Lots of innovation has occurred and continues to occur. We’ll see what sticks and what we continue to hold onto so I’ll be a little bit more specific.
I wasn’t in Santa Monica but I can certainly attest to my experience working in government pre-pandemic. The whole notion of remote work and meeting electronically was more of an afterthought. Maybe from time to time but certainly nothing that was regularly part of our vernacular. We have all certainly come to realize that flexibility in the workplace is going to last for a long time if not forever.
Certainly, we, as an employer and as an organization have to continue to embrace all these things like remote working and flexible work arrangements because people have all kinds of different home situations. Commuting is not any easier and people appreciate that. I see that as something that we have learned to adapt and I see continuing to move forward.
Outdoor dining is huge and the city has embraced it. We have continued to keep it moving forward. It has its set of challenges for the organization like maintaining streets, sidewalks and trees, all new things we have to come to learn to live with and figure out how to do but we have great folks who are struggling with this all the time. We’re looking forward to creating a permanent outdoor program for people, the community and our businesses because it’s such a great way to enjoy the city. Seeing people out and about.
I certainly enjoy riding my bike down Main Street, moving around Montana and seeing folks out there eating. I do it all the time with my wife. It’s great. I see that certainly stands the test of time and whatever configuration we can help to support for sure. The area that’s emerging and I’ve had a lot of talk with our human resources director about this is wellbeing. It’s being able to understand where employees are. What I see coming out of the pandemic is a much more concerted effort and discussion and focus on employee wellbeing.
Thinking about my experience, when the economy shut down in the middle of March 2020, it didn’t trigger from the government side of the house a shutdown. We had to go into full operational mode, support our communities and figure out how we were going to manage our resources through uncertainty. Who knows how to prepare a budget in the middle of a pandemic? There’s no roadmap for what the future is going to hold. How to help our residents and businesses through these difficult times?
What I see, not only in myself personally and what I see in many of the employees that I come into contact with is exhaustion. It’s been several years of being on day and night and the uncertainty of having to come to work and not knowing, are you safe? Are you in a healthy environment? We can provide all the PPE in the world but I remember the early days of the pandemic wearing a mask like, “Am I wearing a mask right? I’m standing in line to go to the grocery store. I’m in city hall doing my business.”
No one knew about this COVID thing. First, we thought we would get it from touching desks and we were dousing ourselves with hand sanitizer. We learned it’s all through aerosol. It sticks in your ventilation system. How does it work? That’s been hard. You have the original wave, the Delta wave and the Omicron wave. We then have Omicron 2.0 and 3.0. People have been vaccinated and boosted. I know people who have been sick 1, 2 or 3 times with this thing.
It stresses everyone out and it gets people to the point of utter fatigue. I’ve appreciated our Human Resources Director who’s helped us to center our discussions in the organization on wellbeing. We’re going to have to do a lot more of it and be more present in these discussions, I as well as our leadership, managers and supervisors. It’s going to be incumbent upon ourselves to support folks.
As the world recovers, it’s not going to be an easy pivot from emergency response mode for a few years to supporting everything back to the way it was. It’s going to be hard because the demands on the human beings doing work throughout the entire organization don’t change. They were put under tremendous stress during COVID and as the world comes back to life, tremendous stress to keep the community moving forward and humming. I see that as being one of those things that we are going to have to accelerate into that we’ve learned from this pandemic.
Things like outdoor seating though seem like is here to stay.
We got folks and a whole team focused on economic recovery. We’ve been present in extending outdoor dining as we’ve been working towards an overall program. We’re going to be presenting to the council a formal program so that it can be perpetuated.
Is there anything else in that category that you think is here to stay like hygiene things?
Masks are going to be here to stay. The on again, off again tool that you need to help keep yourself safe and protected. This is going to be the status quo norm. Home antigen testing, I see that is not going away anytime soon. It is super important. Make sure if you’re not feeling well, don’t come to work. It’s an easy way to test. I see all those kinds of things as being here.
Is there anything that was cut that you think will stay cut?
I like that opening for a discussion because there are all kinds of ways that we mind and understand where the community is on all kinds of issues. Since I’ve been here, I’ve worked hard to be present at neighborhood meetings, attend as many meetings as I can, meet people, get introductions and hear what is present and what folks want to keep. What folks think we don’t need to do more of anymore? Where I’m headed is we did a poll and a survey in the community. One of the questions that we asked folks was, “What do you want to see the city focus on in this post-pandemic period?”
I’m not quite sure we’re in a post-pandemic period but we’re in a living with the pandemic period and that’s what it’s centered on. Homelessness and public safety are number one. Number two on that list is restoring public services. When you look at where we are in 2022 compared to where we were as an organization pre-pandemic, we are providing a much lower level of service and folks are frustrated.
Where I live in Sunset Park, I’m perfectly situated between two libraries. One library is partially open. One library is fully closed. I hear without any hesitation from my neighbors, the neighborhood leaders and folks throughout the city, “We want our libraries restored.” We had a tremendous assortment of after-school programs for elementary school, middle school, children and future leaders in our community. We’re about 30% to 40% of programs of what we used to provide.
Folks, parents and representatives of the PTA are hungry for us to restore these kinds of afterschool programs which are so important foundationally in terms of building a community, giving our future leaders structure and an opportunity to play, learn, educate and recreate so that they’re not going home as latchkey kids.
There are plenty of services that we used to provide that have resulted in sports fields being closed. Families want to enjoy our parks in the open space but because we don’t have the maintenance staff to take care of them, we have to keep some of our facilities locked up. I could go on and all this is deeply frustrating. When the question gets asked, I have not heard of folks as of yet saying, “We’re so happy we don’t have access to that service.” What I hear is a lot of, “We want the city to come back strong and restore services.” We’re very centered on that every day. The Finance Director, Assistant City Manager, myself and our leadership team are thinking a lot about all this.
You mentioned something in there about being able to play and innovate, whether it’s through COVID or the experience that you mentioned that people are having and what the city is going through. There’s always been this no, which is the first answer when it comes to doing stuff in cities. Most cities know this. There’s this, “We want to put this event on,” from small to big. There’s a range. There’s a total spectrum of this but traditionally, at least from my ears and experience, there tends to be that pushback for innovation and risk-taking. It’s not only Santa Monica. It’s bureaucracy in general.
It’s the nature of bureaucracy but most bureaucracies know that and are okay with it. It’s like Google where they think of things like small businesses. They think of things like having a laboratory of innovation where you can test ideas. They’re rewarded for coming up with new solutions to problems and don’t have to necessarily worry about the backlash. Part of that is the villainization of people where they can be publicly dismissed and barraged with mean things. That’s on the internet. Kids have to see that sometimes.
This is some of the connection between these two and I’m wondering how we can go continue. A private corporation is different from a city based on the people they serve and the need to serve as many people as possible fairly and equitably but how do we get there so that we can have a getting to yes mentality?
A few things. I’m still learning about the community and the organization and still meeting all kinds of employees. My experience of Santa Monica from the outside and inside is filled with all kinds of amazing leaders. As I have met more employees throughout the entire organization, I am consistently excited, enthused, moved and empowered by the high level of employees that are in this organization that has produced all kinds of wonderful things over time. Some of these things are not always met with enthusiasm in all parts of the community so I say this to show tangible examples.
You go to the city hall. If you see that city hall East building that was opened and completed during COVID, that was a demonstration to the private sector of what you can do to create a sustainable living building. That building is amazing. It was expensive and there is controversy surrounding it but that is one example of who is the employee of Santa Monica. I’m going to obliterate it. Our folks in our Sustainability office will be upset with me but we have our zero emission delivery zone. I think that’s the right term.
It’s all centered around a small area within Ocean Park. We’re testing out these robots that deliver food and restricting certain types of vehicles from coming into the area. I believe we’re trying motionless cars. It’s all these things to try to create this environment to help address this urgent crisis around climate change to help bring forward some new ideas for a more sustainable Santa Monica. I can go on and on and on.
I’m sure we’ll touch on the issue of homelessness. If you look at the innovations, our police department and community services department is bringing forward the issue of homelessness. Another controversial subject is Parking Structure 3, dedicating city land to affordable housing. These are all things that predate me but it demonstrates the leadership of the city council and the organization to advance some big, bold things forward.
[bctt tweet=”Demonstrate the leadership of the city council and the organization’s leadership to advance some big, bold things forward.” username=””]
Certainly inherent in my responsibility and perspective is I want to continue to cultivate that. That’s hard in an organization that has gone through the types of cuts that we’ve been through. There’s a phrase that always rings with me, “Tyranny of the urgent.” You can get very caught up in the crisis and sometimes lose connection with the ability to think long-term and be visionary. I do my best to try to occupy part of my time with that when I go home at night or work during the day. I try to think about what are the next few steps down the road that I want to leave a legacy or help build the community. What are the things that are important to residents or businesses that I want to lay the groundwork for?
To get there, you have to continue to provide space and allow for people to make mistakes. Do not get hung up on when something doesn’t go right or something doesn’t turn out the way you want it to turn out. You take that step back, learn from it and see how it goes. A great example is when I joined the city, the police chief joined the city. Many acting, temporary and interim leaders became permanent. We were challenged with the pier. The pier had been impacted deeply by vendors and sidewalk vending. That was a concern around public safety, public health and the environment.
The organization had been chewing on different approaches and strategies to adjust the issue. It is not my idea but a great idea was to create a dedicated team focused on our police department, fire department, code enforcement, public works and the city attorney’s office from the bottom of the organization. We create a team dedicated to addressing vendors at the pier.
Without any hesitation, I would say, the residents would say and the stakeholders in our business community say we’ve been wildly successful. When our employees put together this approach and deployed it, no one knew that it would be successful. When I was educating folks about this pivot in our approach, I was always upfront. “This could work. This could not work but whatever the outcome is, I’m open and want this space for us to try.” If you don’t try, then you have regretted it.
[bctt tweet=”Whatever the outcome, be open and have this space for us to try because if you don’t try, you will regret it.” username=””]
For me, it was creating that supportive environment to say, “Go for it and let’s see how it goes.” We’ll go 1 week in, 2 weeks in, 3 weeks in, 4 weeks in or whatever the case may be. They did it. Our city council and the business community supported us. It was answering the call and that’s innovation. Creating that space for folks to try was what was important to me. Our employees that worked on that team in January 2020 and 2022 are knocking it out of the ballpark. They are delivering results that I don’t think anyone thought were possible when it started but they wildly exceeded expectations and I’m grateful.
You named some pretty big ticket items like city hall, homelessness and the pier. These are your big top of the news of issues. Do you feel that this mentality is infused with the more mundane stuff or everyday interactions that you have when you go to the service desk? Do you feel that the getting to a yes mentality and that innovative approach trickles down to the day-to-day experience of people and the community with the people in the city?
I think so. Does that mean it’s 100% all of the time from every single person and every single part of the organization? Probably not. People have bad days. People don’t engage in interaction while things happen but from my perspective, yes. It’s small boring things. Our public works director brought a boring item to the council. He wanted to bring on a classification of a maintenance worker. The notion is that a maintenance worker can provide a more flexible set of skills to the community, be present in maintaining city facilities and can go out and build tremendous amenities for the community like the Bubba Gump to the beach boardwalk.
That is the result of managers, supervisors and employees who are thinking about how can we deploy a workforce that is maximally supportive and efficient. That’s a good example. We have a tremendous 311 call center. It’s going through its own set of growing pains because it’s getting more popular as the day goes by but that was rooted in the time of COVID, coming up with a centralized mechanism where you can report issues that you see in the community, big and small. I use it all the time. I go on a run. The joke certainly is, “Is it going to be a 50-minute run or a 1.5-hour run because I may stop too many times to put things to it?
I give the individual who oversees it, Christopher, a lot of credit. He is constantly thinking about how to improve that service. They’re bringing together employees from our resource, our RRR division or solid waste division and uniting those employees with our core 311 employees to create a much stronger operating unit. They can respond to a whole host of issues where some duplication or confusion was occurring to help support that function for the community. People are constantly thinking about ways to get to yes to make things better. We’re human. There are only so many hours in the day and we don’t always get to every issue right away.
Do you experience a level of polarity when it comes to some of these day-to-day things? It’s the general experience there on big-ticket items. There are plenty of polarities. Do you experience that at city hall where there’s an opportunity for better ways to get to a yes in terms so you don’t have too much battle but it’s done in productive discourse and less argumentative experience?
Always. When you are in an organization with very talented, experienced, some tenured and some like myself that are new with a different set of experiences, you’re always going to have polarity in how to address issues. Some folks bring a different set of experiences to the table and think something should be done X. Other folks think it should be done Y. Ultimately, that’s healthy and hopefully, if it is genuine conflict, can produce a healthy dialogue and conversation in some form of collaboration to find a path forward. That exists in the community as well.
Santa Monica is a very dense environment. A lot of places where I spend time are managing that interface between public business and residential spaces. I believe that’s been amplified under COVID. People are working from home and that’s a different experience for the community than they would’ve had before. There is a lot of polarity in trying to figure out and address those common everyday issues to the maximum benefit of those who live next to these environments and those who are enjoying these environments. That’s a challenging situation.
Do you feel like the city healthily does this?
I feel like I’m surrounded by talented people that healthily do it all the time.
At the council level or on some of the bigger items, where do you feel there are improvement needs?
I wouldn’t suggest an improvement. For me, it’s about context. I’m lucky to have the council that I have. We’ve got seven very smart, energetic and passionate individuals who have deep connections to the city and care tremendously for the current and the future of this city. They are very concerned about the day-to-day response and where we head in the future. Most folks have to appreciate and understand that when you have individuals who have their belief systems, it will produce conflict, debate and differences of opinion. What I appreciate is they can have that dialogue and conversation but ultimately provide me a clear direction on how to move forward.
I’m grateful that they’re able to center me on those issues that are important. They’ve been all very generous and I’m grateful for this because they’re very busy. Most folks don’t always appreciate it. Council members are a public service at its finest. They are part-time and paid a pittance. It’s all about the commitment and the passion for the city. There are all kinds of different ways to make the city better and each one of them bears that in their heart and mind. They’re very generous with me which is a gift because they have busy lives to help me understand what’s important to them.
My job is to listen to that and then bring that forward in my daily work. When you talk about improvement, I don’t think about improvement. I think about continuing to want to deepen the relationship. The only other comment I make is also context is important for the council. Three of them came on board right in front of a pandemic. Others came on board during a pandemic. If you put yourself in the shoes of a council member or a city manager, you’re inherently inclined to make things better and that can mean all kinds of different things to each person.
Put yourself in the shoes of a group of individuals who had to come into an organization that had been decimated. Significant cuts, lack of resources and you’re constantly in a crisis mode. The primary function of a government is to help manage an emergency and that’s where they’re focusing their first time on the council. That’s hard and then you take transitions in leadership that the organization has seen.
[bctt tweet=”The primary function of a government is to help manage an emergency.” username=””]
That becomes hard for the council to build strong relationships with the leaders of the organization moving forward. I don’t think about improvement. We all have to be focused on the context of where we were and where we are. I’m very positive about the future. They’ve been very generous with me. I try to give them all the time in the world that I can and likewise, they give me all the time that they can give me. I hope that will help us as we continue to recover from the pandemic and that we will be able to accelerate and do some of the things that they want to do for the city.
Much of the improvement that I was referring to is more around the interaction with the community. Polarity is fine but the intensity and the level of communication at which that happens can sometimes be highly emotional and particularly unproductive. The people on the council are people. They’re humans. They’re not machines. They have feelings. A lot of times when I see people yell at them, come off like that or make ad hominem attacks, 1) It’s not nice and 2) It’s not productive and you can hurt someone’s feelings. This is public service at its finest.
A lot of this leads to how you get to a solution faster. It’s not just about the emotional aspect or the nice aspect of it. The problem with unrest and polarity could even be the wrong word is it could create heightened responses to the situation that is unnecessary and also prevents you from getting to the solution or having a productive input. One of the reasons I created this experience for us to have here is I believe that it could be approved. We’re experiencing it at a federal and local level. Are there any improvements there that you see as possible?
That’s tough for me. I wear different minds in the discussion. First and foremost, in my ideal world, I would love to be the shield for the council and the community so that when folks are unhappy or there’s a negative interaction, I’d be the one to take it. I would love to be the one that can be in front of the yelling, the screaming, the upset, the passion or whatever it is. Unfortunately, I can’t be in all those places at once. I would love to encourage every interaction to be positive, compassionate, productive and thoughtful, whatever the case may be.
The caveat though is I can’t control where any person is at in their lives. They may have experienced a loss in their family or received some very difficult news in their professional life. What I can’t control is where people are at that moment in time which may result in a difficult, negative interaction for that reason. I try very hard from my perspective to be present and understanding. I don’t know what’s going on in their world and that interaction may be driven by a whole host of other factors that I have no knowledge of and no control over.
While I want to always want positive communication, that’s not always going to be realistically achievable. I do hope that both employees and the community try to understand that first interaction is filled with some form of compassionate interaction but sometimes when you’re passionate about where you live and about an issue, emotion drives the discussion and it leads to a different kind of energy. I would always love for it not to be attacking or confrontational.
Attacking is the keyword there.
I would love for all of us to have deep training and non-violent type communication and know how to work with each other in that way but as I see it in our employees, residents and businesses. People are exhausted from COVID and frustrated with the high cost of living. People are sick and tired of feeling helpless around the mass shootings that we’re seeing throughout this country. That can breed exhaustion and fatigue that can result in difficult discussions and interactions.
If we see that in each other, maybe it’ll take some of the heat out of the room and create a more collegial discussion. I do my best but even I’ve been prone to failure in that regard. You go to a council meeting until 2:00 AM or 3:00 AM and then you have to be back at work at 8:30 in the morning. You can get hit with a big issue and if I don’t take a deep breath, I’m a human too.
We’re all humans and it would be nice in these tough issues for us to realize that about each other. One of the things being in this space for a while is you tend to notice that there’s a tendency for a small group of people on any given thing. They’re not always the same but there are tendencies for loud squeaky wheel minorities to dominate a conversation around whatever the issue is from small to medium or large. Very often, these people who have time and money tend to be older. With that, maybe they’re done raising their family or they’re retired but it’s a small percentage of the population.
I wish I knew that number but I’m going to go with 5% of the people who are actively involved in civic stuff who live with Santa Monica. When I say active, I mean they go to their neighborhood meeting. This is 1% of that. The tendency is that those voices get heard. They write most amount of the emails. The council hears them and the entire conversation shifts from what you would think a majority of people may want but they’re articulate and it seems to create local ordinances. That’s not only Santa Monica. That is a systemic issue and I’m wondering what your thoughts are on that. Is it preventable? What does that mean when we’re thinking about true democracy?
I have two thoughts. One is I try to hold onto the notion of every voice counts. I try to honor the fact that even if it’s 1 person or 5 people, folks have a lived experience. It’s my obligation in my role and job to hear 1 person, 5 people, 100 people or 1,000 people. The challenge for us in government though is we are making decisions that should hopefully create a legacy, stand the test of time, serve future generations and leave them better off. How do you balance what may be a loud voice or a few loud voices with perspective?
[bctt tweet=”Try to hold onto the notion of every voice is important or that every voice counts, and honor that even if it’s one person or five, those folks have a lived experience.” username=””]
It may very well be the case. That one loud voice is spot on and truthfully ends up speaking for thousands of people. I feel like it is incumbent upon myself and us as a city to be engaged, attending meetings and neighborhood groups and having informal conversations to be able to understand what are other points of view. When you think about the staff and council dynamic, we bring recommendations to the council infused with the best possible analysis where we have data to analyze and the best possible summary of where the public is at on issues to help give them as much information as they can digest to make a decision.
We did a community poll. Some would say, “There are segments of the community concerned about public safety and homelessness.” The poll spot-on identified what maybe some voices in a room are indicative and representative of what a lot of folks in Santa Monica believe. We do informal surveys and conversations. We talk with stakeholders. All of that is designed so that when I may be speaking with the council about an issue or staff may be presenting a recommendation to an issue that at least they have other points of view for them to ultimately make a decision.
Those are things that we can do and will do to help to broaden the discussion if there is a concern that it’s an isolated or a specific voice. With that being said, if it’s one person and that person has deep roots in experience and they’ve got a lot of experience, sometimes it takes one voice to move a discussion and that’s how it goes.
There are times when one person sparks something. It’s like, “That’s true. We didn’t think of that.” Most people seem to feel one way but this one person created a real thought it who got us all thinking about this.
For example, an experience in a previous life. I was serving a commission. In doing the recruitment for that commission, one person was bending my ear about how the application was framed. It’s a minor thing in the grand scheme of things but concerned about the questions we asked, how we helped folks to identify themselves, their cultural and ethnic background and their gender identity. I took it to heart. I listened and worked with that person. Other folks and I ended up producing a whole different application.
It was tremendously well-received in the community. They appreciated its inclusiveness of it. I didn’t go out and necessarily seek the advice of thousands of people but you can sometimes get a sense with even one voice in the room. Your wisdom, morals and ethics are touching a chord. They’re seeing something you don’t see. I always try to encourage that every voice counts because you have to be open to any individual’s experience. You don’t know where it’s going to lead you. It may take you down a path you don’t want to go down but it may also open your eyes to a whole new set of experiences or emotions that you never had before and to me, that’s fairly meaningful.
[bctt tweet=”You can sometimes sense when even one voice is in the room. Your wisdom, your morals, and your ethics are touching a chord.” username=””]
How do we blend that, which makes a lot of sense? Sometimes they are the same people who don’t want things done. On the other side of that, what you laid out was a beautiful story or experience when that can work out. When it doesn’t work out, it generally feels not fair. When there’s a small number of people that can control a conversation, that seems blatantly obvious to many people and their surveys were done and all sorts of stuff. A few people come in with a couple of ideas. I don’t know if it’s the same voices but the same type of truncations that make that individual. It’s a small percentage. That happens a bunch.
There are two scenarios here. One is the one you laid out and the other is the one where it’s like, “Let’s not do this because we don’t want to do it.” It feels like it’s the same argument over and over. There’s a balance there somewhere. When do you know how to strike that balance? The bigger question is, what does democracy mean? How do we encourage a deeper democracy and at the same time, try to strike that balance?
There are many different forms of democracy. I’m not sure that I’m quite astute enough in my civics anymore to get it right.
I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit.
I’ll bury myself deep but we have what I would consider a representational form of democracy. Voters vote for council members to represent them 2 or 3 times a month depending on what the call of duty is. Council members have a set of perspectives based on their accumulated experience and they bring that to bear. Some assumptions may be necessary to think through that they will bring forward those things that are important. Sometimes people will say, “Why does government ‘work’ take so long?”
If we do it right, when you build a building, it’s going to sit there for 50, 75 to 100 years. I’m not saying that anything is perfect but you would certainly want to deliberative process to ensure that whatever rises from the ground will be something that will stand the test of time. A deliberative process is great in that regard. When it comes to democracy, that’s where a deliberative process is probably what democracy should be about.
An opportunity to listen to all voices, for myself to listen to all voices, for our staff and our council so that they can find a solution to a problem that meets folks where they’re at. Where you could get caught into a trap and maybe this is where the discussion resides is you make a decision quickly based on that one thing that comes up at the moment, as opposed to allowing for a deliberative process and seeing where folks want to be.
That’s why I don’t mind when things take time. If it’s centered on true community engagement, putting information out there so we can get the response back about what’s going on, because that ultimately helps, can produce better outcomes. That does ultimately require tradeoffs and concessions on all sides to allow someone’s vested interest to maybe be changed from what they initially went into a conversation on.
Do you see an opportunity to help engage the community more richly?
Always.
How can we do that? Maybe to focus it on two ways in general but also at the staff level.
It’s hard. There are only so many hours in the day but as we get to a more in-person type of activities, we’re putting ourselves in those spaces. Not just myself but I do my best where I can. Certainly, our staff as well and they’re doing it. I was hoping I was going to run into you. I went to the Pico Business Improvement District board meeting. It was an awkward interaction.
I introduced myself to this wonderful human being who ended up being a city employee. We ended up having a great conversation and I got to see the work that she’s doing. I got to learn a little bit about some of the great work that she’s doing, maybe even outside of economic development. Putting ourselves in those positions helps us frame recommendations that help frame new endeavors for the council that we think are responsive.
A quick shout-out to Jennifer Taylor who is a wonderful addition to this community in economic development, also with PIO, which is a great organization. I’ve known Jennifer for a long time. She’s the type of person who puts themselves into the community space. It’s exemplary, I would say.
There are lots of folks that do that every day. It’s impressive.
She is a leader in the city. That’s another example of the great leadership of people who do that. I got started on this path through the Ocean Park Association. Eventually, after years of that, I became president. I had the opportunity of transforming the culture as I saw it to be one of a calmer disposition welcoming all perspectives with no yelling at the meetings. That was a rule. I had to say something to someone once I’m like, “You don’t have to agree but you don’t get to yell at this person in this room. That’s not cool.”
These types of organizations are where I see the neighborhood. The neighborhood and business district levels are the real opportunity to learn how things work. You can get involved on many levels but if you want to learn how the city works, those are the places I see to start. I tend to encourage everyone who comes to me and says, “How do I get involved? I know you’re active.”
You can also join a commission. We have tremendous commissions and you talk about democracy in ways that we get input. That’s what a commission is for, to create more perspectives to look at issues. Also, our police department does a fabulous Citizens Academy. That’s a great way to see firsthand what our police department does all the time. There are lots of ways to get engaged, influence and shape the government and get a perspective. Neighborhood meetings and councils are a fabulous way but I want to give a plug for our commissions because we want people to engage, apply and be part of the team in that way.
They’re harder and more selective. You can only have so many people on. At the neighborhood meetings, they want lots of people there. You don’t have to necessarily be elected to the board to participate. Your voice is heard and that’s how people think they can’t make a change. If you start somewhere and go to the places that welcome you, even council meetings, your voice can be heard and you will influence people by being there. At the local level, I feel like the opportunity for democracy is abundant.
[bctt tweet=”If you start somewhere and go to the places that welcome you, even council meetings, your voice is heard, and you will influence people by being there.” username=””]
That’s why I love the local government. It is that place. For me, it is a unique environment that forms a government where you can see the outcome of your advocacy. It impacts you. The folks who advocate for more police, we bring forward a budget, it allocates more police. If you don’t want to see that residential project occur, you advocate and the planning commissions in the city council make a decision and that project doesn’t occur. If you want to fight for XYZ to open up or a new resource, you can open up. It is that area where you see the direct impact of the people’s direct action.
Hopefully, we can encourage more people to attend, show up, learn about how things work and how their voice is heard and find innovative ways so people can have their voices heard more easily on smaller issues that they’re like, “Why did that tree go up on my thing?” I only got this one card in the mail that looks more like a postcard. You say, “How many people are going to engage on that?” Maybe those are the places where we have the opportunity and those mailers where it’s like, “Five local things you can participate in now. Here they are. This is happening. It’s your chance to be part of this.” I enjoyed this conversation.
Thank you. I appreciate the opportunity.
You look great. If you’re bald and bearded, you can look at any bald bearded guy and use your finger and say, “That’s a bald bearded guy. You look great.” There’s some bit of brotherhood there. There’s a connection. Fifty percent of our head is the same. For the rest, you have to make out the details between the spaces. Thank you. I wish you a wonderful rest of your day. Thanks for all you do here.
Thank you. I appreciate your time and creating this space.
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About David White
As Santa Monica’s City Manager, David White is the organization’s chief executive. He oversees a total City budget of $705.5 million and a workforce of 1,923 and is responsible for the effective operation of 12 City departments and for implementing City Council policies and priorities.
White joined the City of Santa Monica in October 2021 after serving as deputy city manager in Berkeley where he championed reimagining public safety, including a new model of civilian oversight of Berkeley’s Police Department. Before his time in Berkeley, White was the city manager of Fairfield, CA. With an extensive background in finance both as an investment banker and as Fairfield’s finance director, White is well-suited to see Santa Monica through our economic recovery.
A resident of Santa Monica and a Los Angeles native, White graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree in psychology and anthropology. He holds a master’s degree in city planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.