CITY HALL — Gordon Anderson is thankful that managing the city’s day-to-day operations isn’t rocket science, especially since he nearly flunked out of college because he couldn’t cut it in physics — his chosen major.
He quit college to climb the ladder in the financial banking industry, a field he’d been working in since the age of 15. And even though he had been taking college courses when he was still a high school student in Compton, a college degree wasn’t necessary in the banking industry.
After working for various banks for several years, the 54-year-old Santa Monica assistant city manager found his real calling when in 1982, the mayor of Pasadena recruited him to be the economic development administrator there. After presenting a development plan to the City Council on behalf of the bank for which he worked, officials at City Hall were impressed with Anderson’s knowledge of how commercial development deals were put together, among other things.
It was Anderson’s experience in Pasadena that made him realize that working in the public sector was the most rewarding work he could do. He went on to other cities in the Bay area — San Pablo and Hayward — where he helped rebuild the city’s economy and restored historic buildings, respectively.
And because education is a value coveted in the public sector, Anderson went back to school and finished his degree at Occidental College, where he had originally pursued physics. He received his bachelor’s degree in urban and public administration in 1988, then a year later graduated from the executive management program at the University of California-Long Beach. In 1993, Anderson got his master’s degree in business administration at Saint Mary’s College of California.
Then the job of assistant city manager came up in Santa Monica in 2000. He knew it was going to be a good fit after he sat down with then-City Manager Susan McCarthy, who retired earlier this month.
“When I came down and interviewed, and met Susan McCarthy, that was a meaningful factor in my determination,” Anderson recalled. “I had met someone who immediately gave me a sense of cooperativeness, fair dealings and ethical standards.”
After nearly five years as the second-in-command in City Hall, Anderson threw his hat in the ring to become the next City Manager of Santa Monica when McCarthy announced in July that she was retiring. The City Council ultimately decided on Lamont Ewell, the City Manager in San Diego. Anderson is serving as the interim City Manager until Ewell begins his job on Jan. 14.
Although Anderson believes he would have made a stellar City Manager, he said the City Council made the right decision in hiring Ewell. He said he’s looking forward to working with him on some of the city’s key issues, which Anderson believes are the growing mistrust between the community and government, as well as the ongoing problems of homelessness.
Anderson, who has never been married and has no children, lives in Ladera Heights, spends his free time cycling along the Pacific Coast Highway and the canyons of Malibu, as well as skiing whenever and wherever he can.
He recently sat down with the Daily Press in his office on the second floor of City Hall to talk about the future of the city and his thoughts on what local governance is all about.
What is your job as interim City Manager?
“It’s to not totally disrupt. I would like to be able to hand to Lamont what Susan left — a good operation that has room for improvement, that has a financial base that’s there. I probably can’t disrupt that too much in 30 days. I’d have to do something really weird to disrupt that. (Ewell) is going to come on board when the city and the community start talking about the upcoming budget so he is hitting us at the right time and I’d like him to be able to launch from there with everything that will help him to be successful, including me.”
What are your thoughts on the City Council’s decision not to hire you as City Manager?
“I think the council did well and the reason I think that is too often City Manager recruitments become very divisive times within a community. Our council was able to select a good recruiter and come together and build a consensus of what they thought they wanted in a new City Manager. It’s my understanding they received 60 applications from people from all over the nation and that speaks volumes for our community.”
But it wasn’t you. “I’d like to think that I could have done a good job for the community but I think they thought Lamont could bring just a little bit more and I’m optimistic about it.”
Is it because he’s new blood, offering a fresh perspective?
“It could be that and I’m not afraid of that type of thought process. I think new blood is good and healthy. I’m looking forward to how that new blood is going to help me continue to grow. I like to look at myself as the continuity, if you will, in the manager’s office and I look at Lamont as the new blood who can judge things with new eyes.”
What are the biggest challenges in Santa Monica from where you sit?
“The biggest challenge is going to be how do we improve upon the sense of trust among the community, the council and the staff? We need to have a greater recognition of that when we speak of government here in Santa Monica because it really does involve all three of those players. You cannot say that staff is weak and not recognize you don’t have a weak community. You cannot say you have a weak council and not say you don’t have a weak staff. We are all together...”
Is it an “us versus them” attitude? “That type of dialogue does happen and that type of dialogue is very unfortunate. I firmly believe it should not be an us versus them. We are the representatives of the council who are representatives of the community.”
How do you think it got that way? “I don’t really know. If you think back to Santa Monica’s growth from when I got here, Santa Monica was like Berkeley — there were always the ones to push the envelope. They were always the ones to totally step up to the plate on human rights, human access, to say what they want to say, to be who they want to be. That’s a value in the community and I’m not saying that’s not an important value, period. But for communities that are willing to pay the price, if you will... there is a lot more activism.
“But I would dare to submit that the issues are largely the same in all communities, it’s just how they’ve chosen to deal with them... I think that the citizenry has a way to be connected to its government and it’s important for local governments to maintain that.”
What’s one of the challenges for local government?
“I think here, unfortunately, one of the things I do hope we can do in the future is to improve upon the trust factor that I think is important for the community and municipal government to be the best that they can be.”
Why do you think the Santa Monica community mistrusts its local government?
“I haven’t quite put my finger on it yet. I have to honestly say that as a person who has come from the toughest community to work in, Pasadena, we had some weighty issues going on there... so coming here... from being very successful at working from a very strong trust base to coming to Santa Monica where the level of trust is growing, I think it could be a whole lot higher and the community would realize so much more than the great things the community has already benefited from.
“I think that one of the strongest models here is the childcare task force. There is a strong sense of trust among the residents, among the agencies that are involved and among the staff. It is a delight to work with them. I don’t know if that trust was generated because the fundamental essence of the children and meeting the needs of children, reasonable minds were able to come together and create a consensus. What’s important is when I look at that model and sat through the RAND Corp. negotiations, everyone did-n’t agree but they were able to talk through their issues with a lot of respect and civility toward one another.”
What is the childcare task force? “The childcare task force is a coalition of all of the providers in Santa Monica, private as well as the city, and the school district and the college and even the ancillary communities. It’s a coalition that comes together to address the needs of children. City staff provides an umbrella for them. The city provides a lot of the childcare opportunities in the city. We have a scholarship program... It has worked really, really well.”
That program came from the RAND Corp.?
“Yes. My very first day on the job, I had to meet with the executives at RAND because the city was just closing on the land transaction to purchase the land from RAND and RAND was ready for the entitlements in the agreement. That is what led me to the childcare task force — RAND’s commitment to early childhood development. It was a big meeting. It was a very exciting meeting.”
What are your thoughts on ethics in local government?
“The International City Manager’s Association (ICMA) is the premiere organization for government professionals. One of the things nationally is that there is a distrust growing in local government, in national government and I think it’s important to recognize how and why and what institutions there really are to hopefully counteract that a little bit. Local government, professional government, is something that recognizes that we staff members are professional managers. That’s all we are. Communities are run by its people, its elected officials. They have the right to choose whatever they want to do... we are just here to give them the best possible advice we can to make those determinations... ICMA helps to equip us to do that. ICMA is an organization of nearly 9,000 people worldwide. We have a code of ethics that every member has to subscribe to. We have what’s called the committee on professional conduct that we use for violations of that code. I was chair of that committee twice. It’s amazing, unfortunately, what managers do sometimes around the world. Sometimes they have be judged by their peers and held accountable for that. ICMA is a very important organization to me. I was fortunate to serve on their board twice.”
Why is it so important to you? “Because part of me is that whatever I am involved in, I like to get into the essence of it, the governance of it... it was important to me to understand what local government was about other than what one could see on the surface. And what I discovered, is it is something that I can feel intrinsic about...
“We are supposed to be transparent. We are not supposed to allow our own political thoughts and biases influence our professional decisions and that’s very hard to do sometimes. People will ask me often times, ‘what do you think about the design of this? What do you think about that?’ Personally, I might think one way but let’s talk about what I think of it professionally and why we are recommending it. It’s not what I think personally. It helps you stay transparent and helps you sleep at night. You don’t have to worry about whether ‘should I have gone to that dinner?’ ‘Should I have not taken that gift?’ It helps you say ‘no’ or helps them understand why you say ‘no.’”
What’s the most challenging part of your job?
“I’m doer, a fast-paced doer. The most challenging part of my job is wading through process. But what I’ve learned in the 26 years of being in local government, especially here, is that process is everything. I spend a good part of my life trying to figure out how to respond to the process requirements and get it done a lot faster.”
What’s your least favorite part of the job? “The notion of non-trust. That can be with the community, the council and even with the staff. As a person, I’m a trusting person initially. I go from a base of trust, not mistrust.”
What’s your favorite part of the job? “I love it when people who see the fruition of something they’ve wanted. I had such a kick at the Public Safety Building grand opening. The library grand opening is just going to be a blast. The dedication of the (Martin Luther King) auditorium is going to be great. The opening of Virginia Avenue Park, walking around with those residents... people were just marveled over it. That is the most fun part of the job.”
What’s your favorite place in Santa Monica?
“I’ve made a goal that in every place that I work, I do all my shopping there because it does support my salary. I do all of my shopping in Santa Monica. My soon-to-be favorite place will be the new library, I’m sure. I walk down Fourth Street down to Wilshire and then walk back on Ocean. I’ve met a lot of businesses along that street. There is a glass place there that I make a purchase at every year...”
Least favorite thing about Santa Monica?
“Traffic. And the most troubling is the homeless here. The council and the staff are working so hard at re-engaging itself toward the homelessness initiative. It’s very important. We just had the homeless services report come out and it was great to talk about the accomplishments that are underway, but as several of the council members pointed out, we can’t just rest on those accomplishments. And probably our biggest challenge is how not to become complacent.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 26, 2005. Read the original PDF.