Signal Hill Mayor Lori Woods and Vice Mayor Edward Wilson spoke with the Signal Tribune about the city’s top priorities heading into its centennial in 2024, lessons they’ve learned after nearly four decades of collective experience on Signal Hill City Council, and what got them into local politics.
Answers have been shortened for clarity, length and grammar purposes.
Signal Tribune: How do you feel the city and the role of Signal Hill Mayor has changed since your term in 2018?
Lori Woods: The role of mayor really hasn’t changed; here in Signal Hill the elected councilmembers rotate annually into the mayor position.
Over the years I’ve really come to appreciate the fact that we rotate being mayor, because the mayor is also exposed to more regional meetings and regional planning, not just for Signal Hill but for the entire region, the county, and the Gateway Cities Council. So we have time to be more exposed to regional issues and how they affect Signal Hill during our year as mayor as well.
ST: What are you most excited about for the new year?
LW: The thing I’m most excited for, for the entire community, is the centennial celebration. We’re really hoping to get as many of our residents and businesses involved. In the next few days, we’ll have a whole sponsorship package available for a variety of business members, community members, and residents to get involved and be recognized during the centennial.
The first major celebration will be in April. There will be smaller events going on, but the city was incorporated in April of 1924, so that will [be] the major celebration and kick off the rest of the year. We’ll have all of our normal events like our concerts in the park, and our spring fest, our halloween fall fest, things like that, but they’ll all be centennial-themed.
Starting in January, we’ll have a history room in the library so every month there will be a different display focusing on the different history of Signal Hill. We’re hoping a lot of people will go through and see and be educated on where we’ve come from and by the end of the year we’ll start rolling more things out about where we’re going in the future.
ST: What is most important, in your opinion, for the city to address or accomplish in the next few years?
LW: The top thing is always our financial stability. In Signal Hill we only collect about six cents on the dollar off property tax, so our revenue for the city and all city services and functions, we’re heavily dependent on the percentage of sales tax we receive, so diversifying that sales tax base is always one of our top priorities and ensuring the success of our businesses in Signal Hill and the diversity of those businesses.
It’s been really resilient. With the downturn in 2008, we didn’t have to lay anyone off, but we did have to tighten our belts a little bit. We had funds in reserves and so we were able to get through that time. Also during COVID, the diversity of our businesses helped us keep and maintain our annual city budget, our annual revenues and still provide all the services that we needed to in the community. At any time that can change or shift so that’s always the underlying; the financial stability long term and the resilience of that.
At our last council meeting we had our audit complete and we are under budget by $8 million and we were still able to give our full services to our residents — all programming, children’s programming, PD [police], [and] our library services. It’s not always that way, but it’s a really good confirmation of our strategy of setting up our budget and tightening our belts when we need to.
We’re not extravagant here in Signal Hill, but we get our things done and I think we do that in a very professional way and a very positive way that our residents can rely on.
We’ve always had a very healthy reserve set aside; a rainy day fund. Meaning if no other revenue came in after January 1 of this year, we’d still operate all of our city budget,all of our city programming for a good 10 to 12 months with the reserves that we have in place. Very few cities, especially very few cities in California can claim that those reserves, those rainy day funds set aside, are unreserved for anything other than the financial stability of the city.
ST: What’s the biggest lesson you learned during your time on Signal Hill council?
LW: I keep this in front of me at all times: yes I’m elected by the residents, by the voters, but I’m elected to represent them and to represent what’s best for the entire city. So there’s several times where something may come up and I personally don’t like it, or I’m uncomfortable with it, with my own background or whatever personal experience, but I very consciously have to say, ‘No this is the best thing for all of Signal Hill, not just what I want personally.’
The other biggest thing I’ve learned is to not jump to judgment at all until I’ve heard all aspects and I’ve really come to appreciate the diversity of opinions we have in this city and between my fellow councilmembers. I think there’s a great mutual respect, and I may not agree or we do not agree all the time, but leaving myself open to hearing the challenge or issue from multiple angles definitely informs the best decisions the council can make.
It takes a while sometimes, but the more open I am to everyone’s opinions, from their own diverse background or experience, the better the decision will be. Very few things we do here in Signal Hill are a failure. It may take a while to get there, it may take a while to see the bigger picture and do the studies and pay for consultants, to give us the bigger picture, but once we implement something, it’s a success. There’s very few reasons to really rush into a decision.
ST: What made you want to get into local politics?
LW: When I got elected in 2013, the council had not changed in 12 years. I didn’t have any complaints and I’ve been a resident in Signal Hill for 25 years. What I campaigned on in my first campaign in 2013, was, ‘Hey, this council has been together for a long time, and they’ve done a lot of successful things. Let’s get someone on the council to learn from these very successful people so we can keep this momentum, this mindset, this culture of success going.’ My fear was that suddenly, three council members would retire or something like that and there would be no legacy of information for people to learn from.
I came on to learn, to find out what they had done, what the culture was, what their thinking was, what their patterns were, and to continue that success and hopefully I’ve been able to continue that success, learn from it and add to the culture and and to the decision making and to the wisdom of the collective council that we work on together and with respect for each other.
In Signal Hill, I do my best, and I know the other councilmembers do their best, to hear each other out. Yes, we can get frustrated and annoyed with each other but ultimately all five of us love Signal Hill and we want the best for our city so there’s a mutual respect among each other to not get petty, not get personal, [to] take care of business, express our opinions, [sometimes] disagree but once the decision is made by the majority of the council, the rest of us get behind it.
And we all recognize our strengths and our weaknesses. We kind of turn to Tina when it comes to code enforcement because that’s the thing she does with the county. We turn to Ed for CPA and financial things because that’s the background he has, it’s his experience. Leadership skills and strategic planning is what Kier is really good at. We all have our strengths and we kind of turn towards that person.
I think councilmembers turn to me, I have an active real estate license and I’ve been in real estate for 15 years so they kind of turn to me for land and real estate related questions. So we have a good balance of experience on the council and like I said, the one thing we all have in common is our love for Signal Hill and our pride in our city and doing what’s best.
ST: Anything else you want to mention?
LW: We really are making decisions and including programming and our communications to have Signal Hill residents and businesses really take a pride of ownership in Signal Hill, not that we’re just a little pocket of the greater Long Beach area, but to really take ownership in our community and to feel the pride. That’s my thinking as we move forward and make decisions.
The other thing we do that’s kind of new, residents can now watch the city’s cable channel on our website’s homepage so that there will be 24/7 programming about programs and community functions and community events on signalhill.org. People can download the cablecast app to view programming from their phones and as the year goes on we’re going to roll out more information about our new system on social media, through our community newsletters.
I’m happy to be in this city and be involved in leadership in a city that can move forward, we’re not just focused on surviving, we can dream and plan and move forward and talk about the possibilities of the future. I don’t know how many cities are in the position of survival mode and working with the bare minimum of what they have. It really is a great position to be in because of all the decisions that past councils have made, to be in a position to think ahead and dream big for our little city.
Fun Facts About Lori Woods:
Favorite thing to do in your free time?
LW: I do a lot of handcrafts, I weave in my free time. I have a three-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter, so I spend as much time with her as I can in my free time. And I love movies, I love going to the movie theater and I’m a pretty avid reader as well.
Favorite tv show or go-to?
LW: I’ll kind of binge-watch whatever is out there. I binge-watched “Bridgerton” and there’s a show called “The Midwife.” I don’t do sci-fi or any kind of horror.
Favorite movie?
LW: This time of year, my favorite movie is “The Christmas Candle.” It’s kind of my go-to holiday movie. I do enjoy, if I have a favorite movie, looking up the soundtrack to those, like “Sleepless in Seattle” or the soundtrack to “The Greatest Showman.”
Favorite musical artist or album?
LW: I really don’t have a favorite. I have such an eclectic taste, I was raised on music and I actually sang my way through the summers to pay for my college education. If I had a favorite it would be folksy, when I was younger I really liked Roger Whittaker.
Favorite meal?
LW: My go-to would be a good sushi restaurant. There are very few things that I absolutely won’t eat.
Edward Wilson is the first and only African American to be elected onto Signal Hill’s city council. He has been on the council for 27 years, and he said this is the last year he plans to serve. Wilson was planning on leaving the council in 2020, but the “social unrest” of the country made him feel like he had to stay on and provide his perspective on issues.
Signal Tribune: What made you want to serve on the Signal Hill city council, and what’s made you stay all these years?
Edward Wilson: I moved into Signal Hill in 1993 … and it was a number of things. This was not in this particular order, but one: at the time there were no councilmembers with kids. I felt we weren’t addressing the concerns of our youth adequately because it wasn’t on people’s minds. When I say that, it’s about programming for kids. It was on our mind that we needed to safeguard our kids, but programming is important because that’s part of our public safety, giving kids something to do that they want to do is important for them to learn.
The second thing was my dad was in the Air Force for 31 years, my mom was in the Air Force Reserves, my sister was in the Army, both of my brothers in the Air Force as well, my nephew is in the Navy. I didn’t go into the military. I planned on it but when I went to USC and I got out, I already had a job in public accounting because that’s the path that USC wanted accounting majors to go through … so this was an opportunity to give back that I didn’t do in the military. There was no person of color that had ever been elected and I thought that was something that needed to change. I thought people of color needed to be represented in the city, and well represented. Not just people of color, but that perspective too.
I didn’t think the finances were in the best shape, so I said, ‘We need to do something about that.’ I ran on putting million-dollar homes on top of the hill. We didn’t have a grocery store, we shared three different zip codes with Long Beach. So there were a number of things that I saw. I just thought that we weren’t looking or planning, we were reacting.
ST: How do you feel the city has changed during your time on the council?
EW: I think it’s become really, really inclusive. We’ve had our first female City Manager, we’ve had people of color on all of our commissions, we have a Diversity Coalition Committee … Signal Hill had a history in the area and it wasn’t kind to people of color, where people of color kind of avoided it and people of color who lived here were afraid of the city. I think now, from my conversations with people and seeing them at events, you see a lot more diversity at all of our events and people feel like they belong and I think that’s important.
We walked through the financials and I think that’s important. We’ve built our reserves, we’re not struggling. When I first got on council back in 1997, the city manager told me, ‘Hey we’re having a difficult time putting our budget together because the state wants to take money.’ So I asked, ‘Has the state taken money from the city in the past?’ and he said, ‘Yes’ so I said, ‘This isn’t a one-time bit, if they’ve done it in the past, they will do it in the future’ and they did. So we need to budget based on the information we have, not based on what someone else might do.
But at the same time, let’s start building our reserves so we’re not having the issue of cash flow. So that’s how it started.
ST: What are your top priorities for the new year?
EW: Planning is big, so when I look at what we’re doing, it’s ‘Are we planning for our future?’ and I think we are with the Civic Master Plan, with the Workforce Housing Planning coming and with the Gateway Cities affordable housing.
We have to maintain our capital infrastructure projects. I think when we talk about our city and our history, we need to talk about the whole time and everyday is history, once it’s passed it’s in the past. We don’t just want to just focus on the origination of the city and the founding of the city. We do want to give that proper breadth, but there are a lot of different errors that we need to celebrate too. Personally, I just think the last 27 years have been the most productive for the city. Of course that’s a personal opinion and everyone might not agree with that.
ST: What are you most excited about for the new year?
EW: I’m really really excited about the 100-year anniversary, that’s a really big accomplishment for the city. One hundred years, wow, that’s pretty exciting. All the planned events we have, people participating in that. I’m going to enjoy this last year and keep steadfast in how I approach being on council and representing people. I really believe that I represent the citizens and not myself when I’m on council. So what’s in the best interest of the city is what’s most important.
ST: What’s the biggest lesson you learned during your time in Signal Hill council?
EW: You know what you know and you don’t know what you don’t, and everybody comes into the arena with that same perspective and we are all part of the built environment because it existed before we came here. So what we’re doing is modifying what currently exists.
Systemic racism exists because people have adopted things without even knowing why they were adopted someplace else. For example, a police manual. Some national organizations today will say ‘this manual works’ … but in the city they created it there might have been some issues, they may have been trying to keep certain people from doing something, so those people are not equal under the law. So if we simply adopt it then we’re perpetuating it.
It’s important when we’re making decisions, even if we’re keeping the same status quo, it’s important to question why we’re doing it, and understand any of the discrimination that might currently be existing for people in our community and try to remove that stigma.
ST: I heard you’re the guy on financials, is that true?
EW: Yeah I’m a CPA, though my license is inactive. Part of that is understanding the fiduciary responsibility, that’s always key. I’ve always kept that in mind as we do things. We don’t want to waste money and we want to spend it wisely.
On council I said we need to be budgeting more than one year at a time, we started with one year and then did a five-year forecast. Best practice is for cities to do biennial budgets and so we adopted that. Building our reserves; it was less than 5%, I started saying we should go to 15% then we went to 25, 50, I’m trying to push them to do 75 or 100% as the floor. What that allows us to do is that if all the revenue stops, you have a whole year in which to make decisions as opposed to a couple of months. Not a lot of cities are in that position, not a lot of states are in that position.
ST: Anything you want to add?
EW: I do, I also want to mention Ron Settles, was a college student at Cal State Long Beach, a football player. He was arrested in Signal Hill for a minor traffic violation. This was in 1981, I was a sophomore at USC at the time. It was raining and the power went out in the jail, and when it came back on he was found hanged in his cell. That’s a huge, huge issue for this city.
They ultimately settled on it, but now we have a Ron Settles Day. Forty years to the date, we had our first celebration as a city [in 2021]. I was mayor at the time, and his aunt came. Both of his parents had since passed, but I did have a chance to meet his dad when I first got on council and I was talking to him and he said, ‘You can’t change the past.’
His mom said if there was some way for the city to recognize his life at some point, please do that. So I was really happy to do that and that’s why when the social unrest came up [in 2020], those things came up and I felt it was important to stay on council through all of this. I helped spearhead that through.
We now have a Ron Settles Day, the only day that I know of that’s designated for an individual person. He has a permanent place in the library which sits on the old jail. Cal State Long Beach issued his diploma post-mortem and that’s in the library as well.
Jimmy E’s is a great place, people hang out at Jimmy E’s, but they didn’t want to hang out in Signal Hill before, but now they feel safe and that’s a great thing. Our police department is awesome and we’re working through things. If you have an open mind and you’re not entrenched in the past and believe that’s a reflection of you, then you can move forward. But if you believe that’s a reflection of you and you have to suffer for that, then you’re going to be very resistant to address that.
Fun Facts About Ed Wilson
Favorite movie?
I love comedies and the one I laugh the most at is “Trains, Planes and Automobiles.”
Favorite or go-to TV show?
Westerns, I love Westerns.
Favorite thing to do in your free time?
I’m recently engaged so spending as much time with her as possible is important to me. It took me 50 years to find her! I do like golf and I like video games.
Favorite musical artist / album?
Prince is my favorite, pretty much everything he does.
Favorite meal / type of food?
I like spicy food, I like Thai, I like Cambodian. I like to taste all kinds of stuff, but my comfort food is grits.
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