Patrick West: New City Manager of Long Beach Takes to the Streets

When Patrick West was earning his M.B.A. (Class of ’86) at California State University, Dominguez Hills, he was deeply impressed with the campus and the features that made it an environment conducive to learning.

“I tell everybody that I talk to that Dominguez Hills is the best,” he enthuses. “I found it to be both super-friendly and user-friendly. The library was always accessible and there were beautiful places to go lie on the grass and study.”

Similarly concerned about his home environment, the former city manager of Paramount went into action when he found that his city was named the eighth worst suburb in America in the early 1980s, working with that community’s agencies and developing an infrastructure in the city to prevent and fight crime. Now, as the new city manager of Long Beach, he plans to do the same thing with the sprawling metropolis.

“The Paramount city council did not bury its head in the sand,” he says. We had a very strong redevelopment agency and a very strong city manager at the time, Bill Holt, who is my mentor. We took that [challenge] on, saying, ‘We are not going to be on that list. We had a lot of support from the community and a lot of redevelopment that turned that city around. Violent crime dropped 41 percent, crime dropped 48 percent. Paramount has a huge anti-gang program. As the population doubled, the number of gang members in our town decreased by 50 percent. It’s a beautiful city that people are proud to be from.”

One of the projects that West was involved in was an aggressive anti-gang campaign that targeted 5th graders.

“We developed a 15-week curriculum about the same time the DARE program was being developed. We said, ‘Gangs are bad. If you join a gang, there is a high probability you will die, a family member will die, and innocent bystander will die. There’s a high probability you will become addicted to drugs and alcohol. There’s a high probability that you’re going to do stuff to your body that will prevent you from ever getting meaningful employment and there’s a high probability that you are going to waste your life away.’”

According to West, a study showed that 95 percent of schoolchildren who went through the 1983 program changed their attitudes towards gangs; a high percentage of the students who did not participate retained their beliefs that gangs were a way of life. He hopes to eradicate the gang violence in the city of Long Beach with the same tactics.

“We need a common vision that everybody shares in every department,” West says. “I know we’re tapped for resources, we truly are. But, there are resources available. We’ve got a redevelopment agency, we’ve got a water department, we’ve got a gas and oil department and a public works department. We need to meet the public perception that we’re not responding to the streets enough. We want to make sure we’re all at the same table, and that whenever one department is touching a street that we all leave it better.”

West’s organic approach to improving the city depends upon the collaboration of its agencies. Public safety is a major issue for him, one that he intends to address by creating partnerships among the city’s many agencies and departments.

“I want to make the police department understand that [other departments] have resources to help them do their job,” he says. “In some of the poorer neighborhoods, density causes problems. We have a lot of resources that we can help public safety with, from the redevelopment agency, community development block grant money, money set aside for affordable housing and Section 8 dollars and housing vouchers. But we need really strict regulations to do those kinds of things that will change that neighborhood and make our police department’s job a little easier and safer.”

West described the city’s previous efforts to clean up troubled areas. Long Beach’s redevelopment agency has purchased drug and prostitution infested properties in proximity to schools and new businesses, and demolished them. White picket fences and installations of public art decorate the vacant lots as they await new development by the city or private investors. One such project in the works is the North Village Center, a development that will feature townhomes to attract middle-income families, a new library, retail establishments, and the preservation of a historic theater in the neighborhood.

West is adamant that tapping into the city’s resources is an investment in the future of Long Beach. He is willing to bear temporary shortages for long-term insurance of the city’s reputation.

“Crime in the country is going up but crime in Long Beach is going down. [The police department] spent their extra resources to make that happen,” he notes. “At the end of the day, I would much rather be in a situation with a budget problem than a situation with a crime problem, where Long Beach is looked upon as an unsafe city. It could take years to climb out of that.

As an M.B.A. student at Dominguez Hills, West appreciated the communal atmosphere of the campus and the accessibility of its resources. He hopes to provide the same for Long Beach residents, stating that the city’s success in improving its streets depends on a partnership with its citizens.

“We’re trying to help the police department change the social fabric,” he says of the redevelopment efforts. “If Long Beach residents see us investing in their property, they’re going to call the cops on a guy on the corner drinking a six-pack, instead of ignoring him. We want them to know that if they want to be a squeaky wheel, we’ll respond to them.”

- Joanie Harmon