Vice Mayor Talks JPA, Metro and Pensions

Dr. William Brien was elected to the City Council in 2009 and is now serving his rotation as the vice mayor. Before that he was on the Recreation and Parks Commission and Beverly Hills Unified School District Board of Education. 

Civic duties aside, Brien is an orthopedic surgeon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He is the hospital’s executive vice chairman of the department of surgery and the director of the Cedars-Sinai Orthopedic Center. He is also a former Cedars-Sinai chief of staff. 

A lifelong Beverly Hills resident, Brien attended Hawthorne and Beverly Hills High. His four children have also attended city schools. 

Patch recently met with the vice mayor for some coffee and conversation. In part one of our interview with Brien, we discussed the Joint Powers Agreement and negotiations with the school board, the possibility of a subway tunnel going under the city’s only high school and future plans regarding the pensions of Beverly Hills employees.

Beverly Hills Patch: What is the status of the latest , a four-year contract in which the city pays the school district for access to school facilities? 

Vice Mayor William Brien: The end goal is to come up with a funding formula that can be supportive of the schools and also makes sense for the city. 

I don’t think the concept of major reductions that meet the other percentages of reductions we’ve had will occur. We recognize the value of the school facilities and also the need that the school kids and district have.

What the final funding number will be, I don’t know yet. We need to sit down and get into some of the details with the school district … what their expectations are … in terms of access and use, and what’s going to be available. But I don’t foresee major reductions in this. And certainly we’ll work together to protect the kids in this district … that’s really what we want to make sure we do here.

Patch: What are the city’s next steps in opposing a Metropolitan Transportation Authority subway tunnel from ?

Brien: The reviews that came out basically said [Metro staff] believe that there was a , and there was not a significant safety risk from an earthquake—in geotechnical and seismologic standpoints—from going under the high school.

The staff will make their recommendation to the [Metro board of directors] and I’m sure their recommendation will be under the high school. Then it will be up to the Metro board members to decide whether or not they believe that that’s the right thing to do or not. And we’ll see what they have to say on that. I think from the standpoint of the city and school district, I believe that all of us have been unanimous in opposing the subway going under Beverly Hills High School.

I believe that there is a reasonable alternative still on Santa Monica. I don’t know whether it’s unsafe or less safe, and whether or not something can be built structurally sound and made as safe with additional dollars if it goes down Santa Monica. I think those are the things that we need to look at. If it’s totally unsafe on Santa Monica, I would not support building it in that area. 

Patch: Will the City Council and the BHUSD school board join together in an effort to stop Metro from tunneling under BHHS? 

Brien: I think that we as a city and a school district need to put aside the —because that’s what it was—and actually start looking at the science that was put out and see whether or not the reports are scientifically accurate, factual and really represent the risk or not to the Santa Monica alignment. I think that that’s our job to do now. 

We actually have data and I’ve said from the beginning I want to see the data. I want to look at this in a scientific way and I want to make that assessment—still opposing going under the high school—but I wanted to see that data and I think that that’s the way you make good decisions.

I think that the rhetoric was dismissive and unfortunately unnecessary, and yet we were all saying we don’t want it under the high school. Just some of our voices were not being heard no matter how many times we said that. In the end we now will put together a working group. Council member [Lili] Bosse and I will be looking at this and we will be reaching out to the school board and they will decide who’s going to liaison with us, if they want to liaison with us, and then we’re going to come up with a plan to jointly review [Metro’s] information, I hope. 

I think the community needs to be able to understand our assessment of Metro’s data. Then we’ll be able to better assess what our options are, whether the final EIR [Environmental Impact Report] is appropriate or not and if there are issues, demand that those issues be addressed. 

Patch: How much is Beverly Hills willing to spend to stop a subway from going under the high school? 

Brien: When you look at these types of issues, No. 1, you identify what your options are. And our options are, not being the decision maker, to oppose things. You have to look at the rationale of how you’re going to oppose that and what is the most successful way by which you can win. Some of that may be based on science, some of that may be based on challenging components of the final EIR. Some of that may be political. You look at all of those and you see which way you can best accomplish what the goal is, which is to not have a tunnel under the high school. 

At the end of the day you have to do an assessment on how much it would cost and what your chances are to win. At that point you make a decision how much you’re willing to expend. We’re going to spend money on this but at the end of the day, if the court system rules against our wishes and in favor of Metro’s, if that ends up being under the high school, then you start to run out of options. 

The other issue here though is they don’t have federal funding yet. We’ll see if it happens.

To throw away precious school dollars, building dollars, dollars for kids … for the city to spend precious dollars taking away from critical city services—because we’ve made a lot of cuts over the last few years, and any more cuts do affect city services—you’ve got to weigh that in terms of whether or not you even need to spend at all right now. 

Patch: What is the status of for city employees?

Brien: With regards to pensions, some of it is actually negotiated; some of it is governed by state law through CalPERS and is controlled by the state Legislature. Some things that we might as a city want to change, and maybe even some of our colleagues in the different unions in the city might even agree to change, sometimes you can’t change it because state law trumps that and there’s legislative control over that.

I do think that in general, in the state of California locally and in cities around Beverly Hills, people have looked and basically said the current pension structure over the long term is not sustainable for municipalities, for counties and for the state. 

I think that you have to have some pension reform, and that’s OK.  

The reality is we need to find, working with our unions, a way to … sustain pensions for our employees that are retired, our employees that are here today and employees that come in the future—in a way that doesn’t bankrupt the city in the next 20 or 30 or 40 years. A dollar saved today has a profound impact over 40 years’ time in the city. 

What can change going forward for people within [current pension plans] is contribution—the employee contribution can change. And that can impact them. If you take 1 percent employee contribution, where right now the city or municipality is providing all 9 percent of it, that in essence is a 1 percent decrease in [employee] take-home pay because they’re putting money towards their retirement.

This interview has been edited and condensed.

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