Torrance’s Measure TC would reform city charter and increase council salaries – Daily Breeze

The Tuesday, Nov. 5 general election is quickly approaching — and with it the deadline for Torrance voters to determine whether they want to support a sweeping overhaul of the city charter, along with some changes to compensation levels for council members.

Measure TC was put to a vote by the City Council in July, after Torrance held four public hearings and a slew of other meetings to determine what would be included in the measure this year.

The measure, which requires a simple majority, is largely aimed at updating Torrance’s city charter — the living document that governs the city’s operations and can only be changed with voter approval.

Torrance’s original charter was drafted in 1946 and has since been updated on several occasions through 2020, according to a February 2020 report. city ​​staff report.

“The main reason for this request is to update the charter,” Third District Council member Asam Sheikh said during a council meeting on Tuesday, July 16. “There is verbiage in the charter that is literally illegal. It is time to make a change and reflect where we are now.”

A large part of Measure TC would allow Torrance to update outdated language and implement provisions aimed at good government reforms – including disclosure of lobbying activities, ethics training for city officials, updated transparency on the expenditure of public funds, and more.

For example, the measure would update references to City Council members, the city manager and other positions to use gender-neutral language, instead of using he/him pronouns.

“Under our current statute, some of our council members should not actually be council members because they are women,” City Attorney Patrick Sullivan said during a Tuesday, July 2, hearing. “So we cleaned that up and made it gender neutral.”

Other outdated language in the current charter includes a provision that requires the city clerk, for example, to notify the council via “telegraphic communications” if a meeting is canceled.

“I don’t think (the city manager) has a telegraph in her office, so we took that out and changed it to email, text or other electronic communications,” Sullivan said.

But in addition to language updates, Measure TC would also implement more modern governance standards that Torrance would be required to follow.

A new section would be added to the charter that would give the City Council additional control over local elections, according to a staff report. In other words, the council could determine whether Torrance should conduct a vote-by-mail, ranked choice or immediate runoff, or other election methods.

However, the measure would not change if Torrance holds its elections. As it stands now, local general elections will align with statewide primaries. During the presidential elections, local elections are held in March; during non-presidential elections these are held in June.

Measure TC would also add new grounds for determining whether a council member has left office, including conviction of misdemeanor assault, “a crime involving moral turpitude,” a crime involving the person’s official duties, and failure to attending council meetings.

Other good government reforms included in Measure TC include provisions to increase transparency of public meetings and ensure the public can participate in the local government process, the staff report said.

Measure TC would also require lobbyists to disclose their activities to the city clerk and implement revolving door restrictions on elected officials once they leave office.

Measure TC would also:

• Implement anti-nepotism provisions to prevent council members or city leaders from hiring their relatives for paid jobs.
• Require council members, board members, committees and commissions to undergo ethics training every two years.
• Require Torrance to adopt its annual budget by June 30 and post a copy of the budget on the city’s website.
• Make it clear when independent audits of the city’s finances should be conducted and that they should be registered with the city clerk and posted on the city’s website.
• Clarify the powers of the city council, boards, commissions and committees.
• Prevent incumbent elected city officials and high-ranking city officials from negotiating future employment/business opportunities with any entity that has an item pending a vote by a body of which they are a voting member.
• Prevent former city officials from engaging in direct communication with their former department, board, committee or commission in an attempt to influence a decision.
• Implement conflict of interest and illegal contract prevention provisions for elected officials and city employees.
• Removes outdated references to the Torrance Unified School District from the charter; TUSD is already an independent entity with its own elected board, budget and state legislative administration.

A full copy of the proposed City Charter reforms is available on the City Clerk’s elections page website.

By far the most controversial item in Measure TC, however, is a proposed increase in compensation rates for City Council members.

As it stands now, Torrance council members earn $100 a month – or $1,200 a year – a salary that has remained unchanged since 1956.

Measure TC, if approved, would increase — and also limit — the council member’s compensation to align with the state minimum wage, which currently stands at $16 per hour, or $33,280 per year.

“For the avoidance of doubt, the monthly compensation for council members will be calculated by taking the California state minimum wage and multiplying it by 2,080 hours to get the annual amount and dividing the annual amount by 12 to get the monthly compensation, ” according to the proposed revisions to the charter.

The change would not affect the job classification of council members. In other words, it wouldn’t make them city employees or hourly workers, and it wouldn’t entitle them to overtime.

While the majority of the city council voted to include the compensation in the entire measure TC, two dissenting members argued against the possible wage increase in its entirety – while others argued that one part of the measure could jeopardize the passage of measure TC to take.

“I don’t want this one issue to get in the way of all the other recommendations moving forward,” District 2 Councilmember Bridgett Lewis said at the July 16 meeting. “I am still afraid that this could be the reason why the whole measure fails.”

But according to the city clerk, it would cost the city just over $390,000 to place two ballots on the November ballot, rather than just bundling all the bylaw changes into one ballot.

Fourth District Councilmember Sharon Kalani, one of two councilmembers who voted against including the proposed wage increase in Measure TC, argued that the proposal came too soon after the passage of Measure SST – a 0.5% local sales tax used to to fund city services, which voters approved in 2022.

“Very recently we went to the public and said: the city is in dire need of revenue. We passed (Measure) SST – our residents believed us,” Kalani said. “I think it’s just too early to compensate all of us, $33,000, over a quarter of a million dollars. I just don’t feel comfortable there.”

District 6 Councilman Jeremy Gerson, also a dissident, said he believes compensation should not be the reason people are pushed to run for public office.

“When I ran for school board, people asked me why I decided to take a $92,000 pay cut. It was a higher calling, same thing when I came here, I came here to serve,” Gerson said. “Compensation should not be the thing that drives people to this position; it must be the desire to serve the community.”

But the rest of the council’s five members and the majority in favor of the proposed pay increase argued it was less about their own financial gain — and more about helping open the aisles of public service to a broader range of people.

“I’m actually the council member who would benefit the least from this since I’m going to be impeached in two years,” said Fifth District Rep. Aurelio Mattucci. “Nevertheless, I insist, because to attract younger working-class people, we must at least alleviate some of their financial burden.”

A position on the City Council, Mattucci and other council members said, is a full-time commitment. While the majority of council members have jobs outside the city to support themselves, this may not be a viable position for those who are not independently wealthy.

“I can afford to be here, and that’s why I’m here — I’ve been here for six years,” Mattucci said. “But the next person to take my place may not be in the same position. It’s not really about money, it’s about what’s fair.”

Mail-in ballots were sent to Los Angeles County residents earlier this month, and voting centers opened on Saturday, October 26.

The elections start on Tuesday, November 5. The polling stations close at 8 p.m. on election day. For more information about the elections, please visit lavote.gov or the Torrance City Clerk website.