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Feb. 1, 2021 - Epoch Times
27:49
How Local Government Can Shape California’s Future | Laguna Beach Council Member, Peter Blake
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You serve on the City Council of Laguna Beach.
Tell me why you started, you ran for the office.
I was starting to have some issues with some things that I didn't like that didn't feel comfortable anymore to me.
And I felt that the town was heading into a direction that I wasn't comfortable with.
What were those issues?
Homelessness.
I felt that we had homeless advocates and activists in the community that were blind to what they were doing.
What else was there besides the homelessness issue?
Property rights are a fundamental right.
This trickled down into our business community, where now all of a sudden we had placed restrictions onto any businesses coming into town.
See, the unintended consequence is you stifle the small business owner, but the only person left that could open a business was the chain.
How do you think that this community can break through to be able to bring all these ideas to the table?
The irony of all of it is that we all want the same thing.
It's unfortunate that when you enter into a situation like this and you see the corruption that power brings with it, they will have to sit down and they will have to come to a realization that it's not working anymore.
We can't just control this community.
There are people in this community that really want a say.
Laguna Beach is known for its diversity and tourism.
My guest today is Peter Blake.
He's an art gallery owner and serves on the city council.
Today, he discusses the city's current political climate and why he decided to get involved with the local government.
Welcome to California Insider.
Peter, it's great to have you.
Welcome.
My pleasure.
You serve on the City Council of Laguna Beach, a beautiful city in California.
Tell us more about this city.
Well, I should start by saying that my views are my own, because I can just imagine the city manager and the city attorney, what they must be thinking anytime I start talking to media about my views.
But I am a city council in Laguna Beach.
I love Laguna Beach, and it is the most beautiful city in the world.
And you got involved with the city about a couple of years ago.
You ran for the city council.
Tell me why you started, you ran for the office.
Well, I'd been a resident for close to 30 years.
I'd been a business owner in town for, at that time, 27 years.
I loved Laguna Beach.
I had come to Laguna Beach as a young man and started as a waiter in a restaurant and had this dream to own my own business.
And I opened my own art gallery and just never imagined leaving Laguna.
From the day I got to Laguna, I thought, this is the place I want to live for the rest of my life.
When I was getting close to the point where I actually ran, I was starting to have some issues with some things that I didn't like that didn't feel comfortable anymore to me.
And I felt that the town was heading into a direction that I wasn't comfortable with.
And I was trying to reach out to people who were potentially running.
People who were already in office to see if there was a possibility that others felt the same way I did.
And I felt that there was no other person that was talking to the issues that I had.
And one thing led to another.
I thought that I would at least start to express my views on this issue, however unpopular they appear to be at first.
And then I ended up going and signing the papers and ended up running.
What were those issues you were seeing?
The issues revolved around homelessness.
I felt that we had homeless advocates and activists in the community that were blind to what they were doing.
They were compassionate in the sense that they wanted to help people, but they didn't understand the damage that they were causing our community.
And they were emboldened by other experiments that we as a community had undergone and had totally excelled in.
I mean, Laguna was that place where when we had an issue with undocumented aliens seeking work, we actually set up a place where they could all go and we could go and help them and pick them up and employ them.
We have a place where people who are not mentally developed could live and we would employ them throughout town.
We were the first place that you could walk down the street with your same-sex lover and finally feel comfortable.
You could be yourself.
People came from all over the world to express their sexuality.
Everything about Laguna Beach was open-minded and compassionate towards all people.
And as we went into the homeless situation, I think we as Lagoonans took it on the same way we had taken on all the other social issues that we had excelled in.
And we viewed it as a possible experiment that we could overcome homelessness.
We could do what we needed to do to help the underserved of our community and get them on the path.
And we started to realize, or at least I started to realize, that we were failing.
And we were going down the path of Venice, Santa Monica, San Francisco, and other areas.
What did you see?
I saw a lot of drug use.
I saw a...
It was a different type of homeless.
Growing up, we had, for lack of better words, hobos.
And hobos just drank a lot.
And we all knew the hobos.
Even in Laguna, we had a group of homeless people that were our own.
They were part of our community.
We took care of them.
We fed them.
We gave them money.
We did whatever we could for them.
But now all of a sudden I started to see a different type of homeless.
This was a younger person.
They were a little more violent, a little more emboldened, and they were hooked on drugs that were beyond the typical drugs that we would normally associate with homelessness, alcohol, maybe they smoked some pot.
But now we're talking about heroin, meth, cocaine, fentanyl, opioids.
And it was the first time I felt frightened, where before I hadn't felt frightened from the homeless.
Now I was feeling frightened.
I was also hearing from families in the community that they would never bring their kids back to Main Beach and walk a stroller on Main Beach.
Parents were saying they wouldn't drop off their kids on Forest Avenue on a Friday night and pick them up later on in the evening.
They didn't want their kids riding trolleys.
And as I was hearing this, I thought to myself, you know, I lived in big cities.
I accepted that that's what big city life was like, but I didn't come to Laguna Beach for that.
And that wasn't, as far as I was concerned, something that I wanted in Laguna Beach.
And at first I addressed this issue as an issue of my own.
And because I wasn't hearing anything about it in the community, I assumed that most of my community felt the same way that the homeless advocates did.
That we were going to help the homeless, we were going to build permanent supportive housing, we were going to have a shelter, we were going to do everything we could because we could.
We were that community that was the type of community that helped people in need.
And I don't think we truly understood what we were getting ourselves into.
And by the time I started to really look into this and really thought about it, it dawned on me that we had a problem and it was heading into becoming a big problem.
And because a lot of my artists live in Venice and Santa Monica One of my favorite places to go and visit was San Francisco.
We had started doing some art fairs in Seattle, which required us to drive up, go through Portland and Eugene and up into Seattle.
I started to see what happened to communities that embraced homelessness and also empowered the homeless via the laws and groups like the ACLU. And I saw what was happening and I wanted to make sure it didn't happen in my community.
What else was there besides the homelessness issue?
Property rights are a fundamental right.
The word right in that word is that you have a right to do with your property as you see fit within the guidelines that are established by a community.
What I found was that we had certain guidelines that had been established for our community in terms of height limits, setbacks.
But those were being abused by a group of people that felt compelled to maintain their nanny state control over everything.
And that included what color you painted your house, whether you could have a spare bedroom for your son that was coming home from college, or whether you could build a home office to work from, or a home theater room.
And when it started as kind of a group that really wanted to maintain height limits, and they were very successful in the early 70s in terms of making sure that we didn't have high-rises, and we owe them an extreme debt of gratitude for what they had done.
But like with all things, power corrupts.
And over the decades, they had become so powerful that they ruled Laguna Beach with an iron fist.
And it started to get to the point where there was really no end to where they were willing to go in terms of where that power would start, where that power would finish.
So what started out as, let's prevent high-rises, turned into, let's prevent mansionization, turned into, you don't need that extra bedroom, you don't need to expand your house, I think a thousand square feet is just fine for you.
And then it went inside the house.
We actually started to dictate what you could do inside your house.
So now you don't really need a closet that big.
You don't really need a second sink in your kitchen.
You don't really need a bathroom that big.
Do you need a sunken tub?
And it just kept getting worse and worse and worse.
And this trickled down into our business community where now all of a sudden we had placed restrictions onto any businesses coming into town.
And we were anti-chain.
And that was understandable.
No one wants a town full of Taco Bells.
But at the same time, there are certain chains that really serve the community.
There are chains that, you know, I'll just mention polos since I happen to be wearing polo and I do all the time.
Why can't we have a polo shop?
That's a chain.
But under those guidelines, that would be what is called a formula business and therefore you wouldn't be able to have a chain store there.
As things were progressing, I opened my art gallery in 1993 as a waiter.
And it was a very modest gallery, but I could make enough money waiting tables and working in the restaurant to pay off the losses while my ex-wife worked at Barney's New York.
And she made enough money to pay our rent and put food on the table and put gas in our car.
But as time went on, I realized that there were no opportunities for a young man in his late 20s to open a business.
Because now, given the restrictions, you needed a lawyer.
You needed a, what I'll call for lack of better words, a spinner or an entitlement consultant.
You needed the right architect and you needed to hire the right contractor.
And by the time you assembled this dream team, then you needed six months, nine months, a year before you could get through the planning process, get through the building process, get the permits.
Who was that business that could possibly afford to wait that long?
It was ironically the chain.
See, the unintended consequence is you stifled the small business owner, but the only person left that could open a business was the chain.
And at that point, we had also degraded our visitor to a point where that visitor was a day-tripper, which only allowed for cheap t-shirt shops, tchotchke shops, ice cream stores.
It didn't leave a lot for...
For businesses to come in that were really a value to the community.
So now that you're serving, you happen to win the election two years ago and you've been serving for two years.
Tell me how's that experience?
It's been probably the greatest experience I've had in my life.
I love serving.
I never thought I'd see the day when I said, I love being a politician.
I know that there are a lot of people in my community that probably just vomited at the thought of me being a politician that represents the city they live in.
I even learned to dress like a politician.
I went to Brooks Brothers in different places when I was in Washington DC and learned the attire of a politician.
I haven't learned the mannerisms of a politician.
I haven't learned how to be a statesman yet.
After getting elected, I really thought that that was going to happen.
I thought that the ugliness of the campaign was going to go away and I was going to become a statesman and I was going to reach across the aisle and work with people and And work with the community to make the changes that I felt were necessary.
That didn't happen in my first year.
I started my second year hoping the same would happen.
It got worse.
And now I'm starting my third year, which based on the four-year plan that I had, the first year was going to be an era of, I don't want to use the word fighting, but disagreements.
The second year would be a year of forming agreements based on those disagreements and agreeing to disagree.
The third year was going to be a year of starting to implement the changes.
And the fourth year I was going to kiss babies and shake hands.
And I'm entering into my third year getting myself ready for a worse fight than the first two years.
Why do you think that is?
Power was something I didn't understand, never having had power before.
I didn't understand how people would react to power when it was taken away from them.
And this group who always billed themselves as a...
A charitable group that was there for the environment, to help the underserved, to promote the small and quaint village that we lived in, was actually a ruthless political action committee that maintained their grip on power and maintained that grip via the City Council and who the City Council appointed into groups like the Design Review Board,
Planning Commission, Historical Heritage Committee, I assume that power is something that's handed off.
It's time to pass the football to the runner or throw the football to the receiver and move the game downfield a little bit.
But they were not willing to.
Even as they got older and older and older, they never felt the need to start to pass that torch on to another generation.
The average person in Laguna Beach is in their 50s.
I'm in my 50s.
I'm 56 years old.
I just naively assumed that they would say,
You've got some great ideas and like we had in 1971, we can understand where you're going with this because obviously things have changed and we want to sit down with you and we want to address some of these issues that you have and see how we can pass some of this authority that we have over to you and to others and hopefully form some type of a unity government as we start to get ready for the generation coming after you,
which is We have the millennials coming up.
They're coming out of school or they've gotten out of school and they're coming home right now.
They can't afford to live in Laguna Beach anymore.
How are we going to address them?
How are we going to address our elders that can no longer afford to live in this community?
How are we going to bring better businesses that somehow or another address the more sophisticated people who have moved here, who are wealthier and are moving from different parts of the country over the last 10 or 20 years?
How are we going to not only be a great town known for culture and art, but how will we be known for architecture?
How will we encourage architects to come to Laguna Beach and build really beautiful structures that are architecturally significant?
How are we going to get past this reputation that we have for being tough on architects and tough on business?
But they weren't willing to give up anything.
They weren't willing to seed a single inch.
And at some point I woke up one morning and realized, well, I can either just play a role of councilman and, you know, go home and, you know, put my red and blue striped tie away at the end of the night, or I can fight.
And I chose to fight.
How do you think that this community can break through to be able to bring all these ideas to the table?
This is a country where people have different ideas, they come together and they make things better.
How can your community do that?
You know, I would like to think, you know, that we can all sit down and via compassion find a middle ground and find a way of working together because, you know, the one thing that no one can ever doubt is our love for Laguna Beach.
I would never ever think that that group doesn't love Laguna Beach.
I would never think that me or my group love Laguna Beach more than they do.
We all love Laguna Beach.
It's a question.
The irony of all of it is that we all want the same thing.
We all want a small, quaint village that's cultured and that is a place where the water is blue and the air is clear and the sun is white and light.
We want the same things.
It's unfortunate that when you enter into a situation like this and you see the corruption that power brings with it, I can only go back to the...
I've been an independent my whole life.
I've never agreed with the Republican Party.
I've had issues with them over abortion, gay rights, certain social issues.
And I've never been able to agree with the Democrats.
I'm not a socialist.
I'm a free market guy.
Ever since I've been a young person, I've always felt the urge to be an entrepreneur.
And I've never had any inclination to be engaged towards socialism, communism, or any of it.
So I've been a man without a party my whole life.
Ronald Reagan had a line, peace through strength.
And it's something that I remind myself over and over again when I come home frustrated after a city council meeting or I meet with some people or I read some of the horrible things that they write about me or they have these cartoons that they've been drawing lately of me.
And I think to myself, wow, how is this ever going to go away?
I always remind myself of peace through strength.
And that's what's going to happen here is that eventually this group, as all groups, will realize that there are enough people in the community that feel this way.
They will have to sit down and they will have to come to a realization that it's not working anymore.
We can't just control this community.
There are people in this community that really want a say.
And they're not just my generation.
My generation shouldn't be the next generation at 56 years old.
I should be grooming the next generation right now.
The people in this room should be getting groomed to take over Laguna Beach.
They should be the 20 and 30 year olds that are coming back from college that are starting their families.
We should be sitting down and talking to them and finding out what's important to you.
And finding out that maybe some of the beliefs that I have are actually very different from the beliefs that they have.
You know, I think a lot of our next generation is much more socially minded than people in my own generation.
And how do we sit down with them and kind of come to terms with where is it, where do we meet them in terms of socialism?
How do we bridge that gap and sit down with people?
And how do we sit down with the 70 and 80 year olds that Prove that we could be successful and keep our community small and not let it become a big city and get mansionized.
And how did we maintain this historicity that we're all so proud of?
How did we maintain this small village that we live in?
And then reach out to the next generation.
And how do we address some of the social issues that they have?
How do we address some of the issues that they're going to find as they grow older and find that they work from home?
Therefore, we need to rezone certain areas to make sure that they can live and actually work in their homes.
They can have a small hair salon downstairs.
They can have a candle making facility in their garage.
They can actually make juices in their kitchens or bake bread in their kitchens or they can have a business that finds food.
First press records and sell those out of their homes.
There's so many things that we still need to address.
It's hard to imagine that we're just catching up to my generation at a time when we still have to address a younger generation that's coming back to Laguna Beach right now and can't afford to live here or start their families here.
So, do you encourage other people in your community to get involved in the politics?
Every single day.
Every single day, I encourage business owners, I encourage residents, I encourage the next generation.
Living downtown gave me a different perspective.
It actually confirmed a lot of things that I had suspected about where our town was going in terms of the day-tripper, the homeless that were coming, the lack of better businesses.
I find that the more I talk to people, the more I learn, and the more I kind of come to terms with what it's going to take to truly maintain this really special environment and special nature of Laguna Beach.
Peter, do you have any other thoughts for our audience?
You know, I'll speak to something that's fresh on my mind right now, and I'm sure it's fresh on the mind of a lot of people.
Because I had ideas and thoughts that went against the grain of some very powerful people in my community, there was this attempt, and there is this attempt to constantly suppress my thoughts and suppress my ability to express myself.
We are right now at a point with our country where I've never seen the First Amendment being threatened the way it's being threatened.
And granted, you could argue all day long whether these threats are actually along the lines of yelling fire in a movie theater or whether they are actual attempts at suppressing political speech and freedom of thoughts by people who have become way too powerful.
I will only speak for myself and what I've gone through in terms of the suppression and the oppression that I've been exposed to in my community.
These groups, rather than sit down and talk to me, have made every attempt in the world to somehow or another discredit me personally, discredit me from the perspective of what my motives are.
And at the same time, simultaneously enact agenda bills that somehow or another are meant to literally suppress me and accuse me of lack of civility and other situations that have come forward.
I really hate to see the day when we lose our ability to express ourselves because it's within our ability to express ourselves that I view the really great things that have happened to us as a society have happened as a result of the exchange of ideas, the exchange of, you know, and that could even be images, the exchange of images on Instagram and how much more sophisticated we've become.
What I've seen these people do to me in the last, or attempt to do to me in the last two years, what I've seen happen in the last few weeks by Twitter and by Facebook, You know, the way they came after thoughts that were not within their political thoughts and just single-handedly oppressed it in ways that were unthinkable up until just a few weeks ago.
I don't think it's going to take shape.
I think we're realizing the power that these groups have and the monopoly that they now have, the monopoly that the news media has over this country.
And I have a feeling that we're going to fix that.
I read an interesting line the other day.
It says that the arrow has to come back before it launches.
And I think in many ways that arrow has come back and it's going to get launched and it's going to travel as an arrow does and hopefully hit its target.
And that target is going to end up being compassion, compassion towards other people's views and being able to sit down with people and just say, this is the way I feel and I want to hear how you feel and what can we do to find a middle ground in all of this?
Um, To go back to Ronald Reagan, it's a peace through strength thing.
It's a shame that it has to come via strength.
But if there's one thing I've learned in the last two years of being a politician, it's that power corrupts.
And that when people have power, it's very difficult for them to relinquish power, any amount of power.
And that's unfortunate.
And the only way we're going to see change is by Maintaining the power levels on all sides, which force the other side to the table.
They can either come and sit down at the table or they'll be forced to that table.
I don't really think that half of this country who's just thrilled with what's taken place by shutting down Trump and shutting down all these groups, they have no idea that this is coming for them next.
That this other...
This type of suppression, it will find its way, it will mutate in ways, and it will come back to the people that started it, that had that power.
We'll see these people being judged by the monopoly that they have.
I hope in the next two years, in the next two years of my term, that via power or via however it comes, I'm able to sit down with these groups And come to terms with all of this and somehow or another fix the things that I ran on,
which were property rights, a better business environment, and the eradication of homelessness that is destroying the quality of life, not only for communities like my own, but for the people who are involved in homelessness, the actual homeless who are being allowed to live with so little dignity.
We do not extend the civil rights of a homeless person while they're living on a sidewalk in their own feces, jacked up on meth or heroin or fentanyl.
We're prolonging their misery.
And I'm going to do whatever I can to somehow or another at least fix the things that I sought out to fix.
And I have two more years left.
Well, best of luck with that, Peter.
Thank you so much.
My pleasure.
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