Council to Continue Deciding City's Mayor—For Now

If the  were to base its method of deciding Santa Monica's mayor by looking at comparable cities, it could quite possibly be deadlocked.

A recent staff report notes that The League of California Cities likens 11 other cities to Santa Monica, five of which have mayors appointed by their respective City Council: Burbank, Sunnyvale, Temecula, Thousand Oaks and Ventura. On the other hand, the six other cities—Berkeley, Inglewood, Pasadena, Poway, Santa Barbara and Torrance—put the decision to their voters.

But the Santa Monica City Council isn't so closely split on the two methods. During their annual retreat on Sunday, the members agreed to keep the mayoral-selection process as is, despite Councilmen (and former Mayors) Bobby Shriver and Bob Holbrook proposing alternatives.

Even so, Shriver and Holbrook alluded to the fact that the public could force the issue—letting them choose the city's mayor—onto the ballot for the next election. In their opinion, such a measure would likely pass.

"If a petition were circulated, I think it would go on the ballot, it would get the signatures. ... We can be overridden, so to speak," Shriver said.

"It would pass immediately, if put before the public," Holbrook agreed.

Of course, if the citizens of Santa Monica don't demand that they elect the city's mayor, there are other ways the mayor could be decided: The council could implement a rotation system, in which the members would trade off having the role; the most senior member could assume the position; or the top vote-getter in the most recent election could get the seat.

But after debating those options, council members didn't change the process, and don't appear likely to do so anytime soon.

As for the popular-vote route, Shriver argued that, during his short time as mayor last year, he had extra "political power" than he did when he was only a council member. More of his phone calls were returned—in part, he said, because the people on the other end of the line believed, albeit falsely, that he had been elected to the position.

"If anyone introduced me as the mayor, people would assume I was elected mayor," Holbrook concurred.

Moreover, Shriver believes—and Holbrook agrees—that Santa Monica is not maximizing its political clout because the mayor has not been "legitimized by an election." While the city's population has more or less stayed the same in recent years, its weight has increased thanks to HBO and MTV moving their headquarters to the city. The light rail, Shriver says, will further boost Santa Monica's political strength.

Shriver also pointed to the U.S. president's office that is devoted to mayors, and Holbrook recalled his participation in the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

Mayor  disagreed over the impact the current selection process has on the mayor's political power. He said that, in his meetings with Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and other mayors, "the subject doesn't come up" whether or not they were elected to the position by the public.

For her part, Mayor Pro Tempore  expressed concerns about amending the City Charter. City Councilman Terry O'Day didn't approve of making any changes, as the council wasn't "jelling on anything in particular."

Meanwhile, City Councilman Kevin McKeown, who was the top vote-getter in the 2010 election—and who is the longest-serving council member in city history to never have served as mayor—was also not swayed by Shriver's and Holbrook's arguments.

"Having a separate election for mayor would then take candidates out of the City Council race, or it might mean that people who are elected for four-year seats as council members, in their off-year, sort of as a hobby, run for mayor," McKeown said. "I don't know if we want to institutionalize that."

More than 10 years ago, the public rejected the idea of changing the process of selecting the city's mayor, Holbrook admitted. Barring any moves on their part, the process appears likely to stay the same.