Last Friday, the City of Santa Monica announced that the search committee had settled on Oliver Chi as the choice for the new City Manager. Chi is currently the City Manager of Irvine. This announcement has led to a lot of speculation and discussion in the short time between the Friday before a holiday weekend and the City Council meeting tomorrow night where the Council is expected to debate and approve Chi’s appointment (Agenda, Item 11a).
But Chi comes to this position with a public record spanning two decades. While there hasn’t been much time to vet his work, here are some areas where the Council should ask Chi questions and evaluate his feedback.
- Charges of corruption at Irvine
In the release announcing Chi’s nomination, the city noted Chi’s experience not just as City Manager at Irvine, but also “leadership roles in the cities of Huntington Beach, Monrovia, Rosemead and Barstow.” However, since the announcement, Chi’s record has come under question by some of the city’s conservative political and community leaders.
Right wing columnist and television personality Dr. Houman David Hemmati claims to have spoken with people “very high up” in Huntington Beach government and proclaimed, “He is corrupt, he’s incompetent, and he’s going to be worse than his predecessor in our city. “ Hemmati offered no specifics and it seems unlikely that he will.
- The Tammy Kim Case
But if Hemmati wanted to make hay over something in the public record, it’s not hard to find controversy surrounding Chi’s time as city manager.
Irvine City Councilmember Tammy Kim has been arraigned and charged with 10 felony charges related to perjury and election fraud for listing an address on election forms for purposes of running for election where she did not actually live.
The details of the case can be found here at Liberal OC.
Kim withdrew before the CD 5 special election, but says the case against her was political retribution for not signing documents that claim that Chi and other city officials, including Chi, knowling broke the law in the awarding of a contract in the Great Park (still more on the Great Park below…)
Orange County Political newsletter The Vine summarizes:
According to Kim’s screenshots of alleged emails with Hildreth, a settlement agreement was proposed that required Kim to sign a sworn statement detailing alleged misconduct by city officials. The city officials named were City Manager Oliver Chi and then Councilmember (and current Mayor) Larry Agran as well as Citycouncilmember Kathleen Treseder. The alleged affidavit accuses Chi of improperly involving other council members in negotiations meant to be handled by a two-person subcommittee, potentially violating the Brown Act’s ban on “serial meetings.” It also alleges that city staff worked to sabotage the city’s deal with Live Nation in favor of a city-run venue.
Kim posted on social media that she refused to sign the document, calling the affidavit a coercive attempt to rewrite events for political gain.
There’s a lot, A LOT, we don’t know about this case yet, and obviously there’s only so much Chi can say “on the record” about pending litigation. But the Council should publicly get as much information about the case and about Chi’s involvement as it can before making a final hiring decision.
- His record before Irvine
Tricia Crane, the Chair of Northeast Neighbors and moderator of the least informative City Council Candidate forum ever, has been sharing this unsigned op/ed published by the grassroots newsletter “Irvine Watchdog” that warned Irvine of the dangers of hiring Chi.
The biggest controversies involve allegations that Chi sexually harassed a secretary in Huntington Beach and requested an improper search of the City Attorney’s emails, which would have required accessing privileged communications.
The case involving the secretary was dropped after a private settlement was reached.
There were never charges filed in the case with the city attorney, although the city’s chief information officer who had been requested to do the search complained to the City Council and press that even making the request was an ethics violation.
It might not be fair, or advisable in many cases, to ask a prospective executive to respond to unsigned editorials and online innuendo, but the reality is that if Chi becomes manager he’s going to face worse in our public discourse. Even though it’s a public and powerful position, city managers can often be anonymous in their day to day lives….unless their face is caricatured in the city’s largest gathering space on a banner with spurious and sometimes completely made up hyperbolic accusations.
- Airport to park
From the release, “Key achievements during his tenure in Irvine included establishing the landmark $1.2 billion, 300-acre Great Park expansion project.”
The Orange County Great Park is a large public park located in Irvine, California, occupying a portion of the former Marine Corps Air Station El Toro. Spanning 1,300 acres, it is one of the largest municipal parks in the United States.
500 acres of the park are currently developed, with another 300 in either the planning or construction phase. That 300 acres includes the airfield for the former military station. Much of the planning and outreach work on the 300 acres took place on Chi’s watch.
First, Chi should talk about what specifically he did in his three and a half years in Irvine as city manager as it relates to the park. This should include a discussion of the “Great Park Neighborhoods.” Irvine developed a series of neighborhoods ringing the park, similar to one of the proposals for the Santa Monica Airport Conversion project that is underway. If Chi has a strong feeling for or against a proposal based on his Irvine experience, it’s something the city should know.
Second, Chi should be asked about financing. Much of the cost for building and maintaining the park expansion is coming from bond debt. Most recently, in 2023, Irvine approved over $1 billion in new bond debt for the park’s development, including a $455 million bond issuance with a total repayment of over $1 billion over 30 years. The bonds are repaid by property taxes.
Once the original bonds are repaid, expected in about 40 years, the tax rate will decrease by approximately 65% to 82%, continuing indefinitely to fund park maintenance.
Does Chi see bonds paid for by property taxes as a way to finance our own great park? If so, how would the city equitably create those taxes considering that one of the future parks’ borders is surrounded by residents of another city?
- Closing comments.
When I’m conducting a podcast interview, I will often close by asking my subject if there’s anything that I should have asked, but didn’t. If so, they should feel free to just answer that question straight away. I’ve been researching Chi for about four hours to create this piece, I’m sure there are issues from his past work that I’m missing. There’s just over a day until the meeting, so if there are other issues, controversies, concerns, or victories that Santa Monicans deserve to know about, you should let me, and the City Council, know.
