Current Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster was interviewed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe during the final segment of the Mayors Oral History Series.
Photo and story by Nick Diamantides
Staff Writer
Serving as the top elected official in California’s fifth largest city is not an easy job, but being able to make a positive difference in people’s lives makes it all worthwhile. That was basically the message that Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster gave to the audience attending the final installment of the Historical Society’s Long Beach Mayors Oral History Series on Thursday August 6.
Interviewed by Los Angeles County Supervisor Don Knabe, Foster began with a brief autobiographical sketch that stretched from his birth in Brooklyn, New York, to his graduation from San José State University. Foster said he is thankful for his upbringing and praised his parents for teaching him the value of education and hard work.
After graduating from San José State, Foster began working toward a doctorate degree in political science at the University of California at Davis. At the same time, he was employed as an intern for the California legislature, working on energy efficiency. During that time he also ran his own carpet-installation business, and his wife Nancy gave birth to their first child.
When the time came for Foster to submit his thesis, his career had already taken off, and he didn’t have time to complete it, but he said he has never regretted that. He worked as a lobbyist for a private-sector organization known as the California Energy Commission for a while before the Edison Corporation hired him to run the company’s Sacramento office.
In the early 1990s the company transferred him to its Southern California division. He and Nancy moved to Long Beach in 1994. He was promoted to senior officer in the company’s southern division. He noted that by 2002, he already had many years of learning how government interfaces with the private sector, but when California’s energy crisis struck in that year, his skills in that arena increased exponentially. Eventually Foster became president of Southern California Edison.
Foster was elected mayor in 2006. Knabe asked him if he found it difficult to transition from a position of absolute authority as company president to his role as a mayor who must work to get a majority vote from the city council in order to implement plans and programs he believes are in the city’s best interests. Foster corrected Knabe’s notion of leadership in the private sector. He noted that even in the business world, to be an effective a leader, one must garner the respect and support of fellow administrators and employees. “There is no time in my entire career when I have told someone, ‘you must do this’,” he said. “If you (as a leader) have to do that, you are done.”
The mayor stressed that he has good working relationships with most of the members of the city council and for the most part they cooperate with each other and him to do what is best for the city, “You would be surprised to see how many times there is a 9—0 vote,” he said.
Foster said that public safety has to be the top priority of any government. He acknowledged that a strong police department is necessary to control crime, but he insisted that law enforcement is not enough. He explained that education, supervised recreation programs and job training are ways to give young people hope and an alternative to gangs, drugs and other criminal activities. Foster said the city and society at-large have to find ways to invest in those alternatives or face the prospect of having to spend more on law enforcement and incarceration. “It’s like the guy on the old oil change commercial used to say, ‘pay me now or pay me later’,” Foster said.
Turning to the city’s future, Foster said city staff and the business community have done a great job in increasing tourism, conferences and conventions that all bring revenues to the city. “We’ve got a wonderful place here, and people love it,” he noted. But he acknowledged that international trade¬— a major source of jobs and revenues— was in decline and would probably take a few years to come back.
Foster also pointed out one of the city’s failures. “We have not done a good job on technology,” he said, explaining that Long Beach needs many more high-paying manufacturing jobs. “If we can bring in good, clean manufacturing, it will be an economic boon to the city like you have never seen,” he said.
During the approximately one-hour dialogue, Foster announced that he would be seeking reelection in 2010. He also interspersed his comments with amusing stories, including how, during his first few months of office, he was often addressed as “Mayor O’Neill,” his predecessor’s name.
In his closing remarks, Foster discussed a neighborhood close to the Los Angeles River that had suffered extensive damage from flooding due to a faulty storm drain on Southern California Edison property. The mayor related how he got personally involved in making sure the drain was repaired and the residents compensated for their losses. He added that being able to make a difference in the lives of suffering residents was the most fulfilling aspect of his job.
The entire five-part Long Beach Mayors Oral History Series is available on DVDs. To acquire a copy, call (562) 424-2220 or visit www.historicalsocietylb.org.
