Keir Jones has always felt at home in Signal Hill.
He can remember the moment he and his husband moved from Long Beach and found their “dream place up on the hill” and never looked back. He’s since made it his goal that everyone feels the warm welcome that drew him to the city, and now he’s ready to usher in the next chapter.
Jones sat with the Signal Tribune on Jan. 14 to talk about his term as mayor, his growth as a councilmember and the future he sees for Signal Hill.
This interview was edited for length and clarity.
Question: What made you want to get into civic service in Signal Hill?
Keir Jones: In a lot of my leadership roles that I’ve had in my life, I’ve been asked to serve. I’m a very pragmatic person, I try to get inclusion and try to get everyone working towards goals so I listen a lot and I take action. Folks were retiring from city council and someone said, “We really need you to do this” and so I ran.
The first time I ran I lost by one vote and so I’m like, “Oh, I almost won and I really want to do this.” So I ran again two years later and was elected. I really love our city, it’s really unique, it’s a mini version of Long Beach in some ways because it’s very eclectic, but it has a small town feeling so you get to know your neighbors. Being on city council, we really do have a lot of opportunity to shape the future of the city and that’s why I continue to serve because we really have some great opportunities with our vacant land to build some really special places, to really make Signal Hill continue to be a place where people want to live.
Q: What makes you want to keep running and serving on city council?
K.J.: When I first ran, [I didn’t] really have an idea of how this is going to work and how do you get your ideas to something on the ground and how do you make an impact in people’s lives? So you’re really, the first couple years, just figuring out the processes and how to make change. The commemorative flag policy that we have in the city was kind of my way I figured out how to do this, so we had to change our whole flag policy. It wasn’t just “raise the Pride flag,” it was to create a policy and then create a way ongoing on how we were going to do other commemorative flags.
So gradually over time we’ve had staff change and now I get to interview the director, the new city manager, and I have personal priorities that people have elected me to achieve. One being economic development, two is creating a diverse and welcoming community, and I set those priorities in my mind with who we’re selecting as the leadership team in the city and so what has me really excited is that we have a great team and these folks all see the vision that the rest of the council sees for the future of this city and we’re really working hard at making the progress now. So I plan on running again in two years because we’re getting the planning going, now we get to figure out how to execute it, and that’s what the next term would be, is executing the plan. This term is really about setting the groundwork and creating the planning and reaching out into the community to get everybody engaged.
Q: When you were new on the city council, what made you champion the flag raising?
K.J.: Signal Hill was a majority LGBT council in the early 2000s, and potentially one of the first city councils in the country to be majority LGBT. The council members were really about getting the work done for the city. They didn’t make inclusion or diversity really a focus. But of course, Signal Hill really did always celebrate diversity, but it wasn’t evident. In fact, a lot of folks didn’t even realize that we had an LGBT majority city council, right? They didn’t celebrate it, they didn’t talk about it, they just got work done.
I know that Signal Hill is a very welcoming place, that’s part of the reason I live here is that Long Beach and Signal Hill have always been a very inclusive community. Signal Hill is where I know a lot of the LGBT folks from Long Beach all moved to, and I felt like it was really important to celebrate that history and also make sure people always know that Signal Hill is a welcoming place for all. And I felt like the commemorative flag policy was a great visible way to show, “We see you, we welcome you, we celebrate you. You’re part of who we are.”
Q: What are some things you’re excited for during this term?
K.J.: One of the things I really want to talk about is our opportunity study area. Our economic study area consultant was put into place this year, we’ll get reporting throughout the year. So we’re looking at redeveloping all of Central Signal Hill, that is north of Willow and South of the 405, and so the report that we get will give us feasibility about what would be successful here, what types of businesses can you attract, what types of residential can you construct? So we’ll get the report this year, and then we’ll start doing community outreach about that plan and then we hope to create an overlay zone in that area so developers will want to come in and they’ll know that this project will be economically viable and they’ll already have the zoning in place so that they can construct.
[Editor’s note: An overlay zone is a special zoning district that adds additional regulations to an existing base zone. For the Opportunities Study Area, the overlay zones could allow for different development types that are not allowed today such as residential, hotels, high-tech manufacturing, or commercial development.]
Placeworks [the consulting group] will come back and they’ll say this is what we see as being feasible and then we’ll start doing community outreach around what the feasibility things are and then the final opportunity zone overlays will probably go to hearing and approval in the fall. That’s generally the timeline. It should be done by the end of the year because it’s one of my goals for the year.
Q: What are your other biggest goals for your term?
K.J.: Functional zero homelessness; to continue that. We really made it a priority to hit functional zero last year and we really wanted to make sure we had a sustainability plan to stay functional zero and we’re almost at a year now. So, we’re still there, and our goal is to continue to serve people in need. We utilize the county programs, we supplement with our city programs, we have the community foundation, and our goal is to make sure no one falls through the cracks. We really do try to think outside the box to find ways to make sure that we continue to be at functional zero on homelessness.
There’s also the Hillbrook Park grand opening, we have the Audi grand opening coming up. So hopefully we’ll continue to focus on developing a really strong and thriving business community. Walnut Bluff is our first workforce housing, it’s kind of into the opportunity study zone, so it’s north of Willow. That project is moving along very well, it’s affordable housing.
The other aspect of that is the design element, so we were going to be ironing out the design aesthetic, basically for that whole Central Signal Hill, because Walnut Bluff will be the first residential project in it. We’re really excited to work with the community on, “What does downtown Signal Hill look like?”
Do you want it to be super modern? Do you want it to be throwback? Do you want it to look like a Western town? Do you want it to look like an oil town? We want Signal Hill to have its own distinctive look.
Then we have the courtyard residential project on Temple that we have groundbreaking on this year, so that’s eight market rate units on Temple; single-family detached. The Civic Center Master Plan, the first element of that is the groundbreaking for the new amphitheater, so we’ll have that this year. The new amphitheater is kind of the cornerstone to our whole Civic Center Master Plan. We’re hoping, along with the amphitheater that we approved this year, that the terraces and the green space get improved around Signal Hill Park.
This year, my focus with the commemorative flag program is unity. The commemorative flags are really about celebrating our people and unifying our community. We are flying, for the first time, the Youth Art Month flag, we’re flying the Older Americans Flag for the first time, we are flying the International Men’s Day flag for the first time, and then we’re flying the Interfaith Month of Gratitude Flag for the first time. The idea is to create unifying moments for our community to come together, learn a little bit more about each other, but celebrate what we have in common and what our goals are.
Q: In what ways have you seen the city change since you’ve been here?
K.J.: The biggest change is that now we live in a city that is proud of who we are, where we came from and who our neighbor is and we’re excited to learn about different religions and faiths. My neighborhood is incredibly diverse, and we’re all at the gym together and we’re all walking the hill together, and I don’t know that I saw that when I first moved here or wasn’t aware of it as much as I am now. I think that is really huge, and that’s what’s going to make our city super successful, is that people want to live here because of the diversity. People come here and they feel comfortable.
Q: Earlier you called Signal Hill a mini Long Beach. I know many people like to separate Signal Hill from their neighbors, they don’t like the comparison. What’s your perspective on that?
K.J.: Every challenge that Long Beach has, we have in Signal Hill. We have crime, we have low income, we have high income, we have industrial areas, we have infrastructure that needs to be fixed. We are in the same brush zones that Long Beach is, we have airplanes flying over, we have port pollution.
So all the challenges that Long Beach has we have here, and because we’re a small city, we navigate those challenges in a different way, and that way is we have a way smaller budget to accomplish the same goals of serving our residents and our business community. We do that through a phenomenal team. Our team in the city works hard, they figure out ways to get it done, they look for grant funding, and they take pride in our city. They want to shine, and I think my role in the council, to be honest, is finding the best people and then making sure they’re happy. So we really work on recruiting and retaining the best possible people so that they can continue to build the best possible city.
For our police department, really hiring the best police chief we could hire was a priority. We wanted to make sure that our team at the police department was well-trained and had somebody that could lead them to results, and that’s why losing the chief was so devastating, because he was great. So it’s still a very huge priority for us. It’s a priority for the city, to make sure we have a world class police department, a world class chief. Our chief of police [Brad Kenneally] is interim and he’s great, and the team loves him, so I’m expecting to have a lot of continuity there. But it just speaks to, you know, our staff is family, and we take care of our family.
The Chief wasn’t here very long and his impact will be felt for years. His saying was, “If you’re good, I’m good,” and he left us in a good place.
Q: What do you think is the biggest challenge facing the city right now?
K.J.: Our biggest challenge going forward is having feasible projects that are financially viable for developers that help us achieve our goals. We need to continue to diversify our economic base […] But we face some significant obstacles in economic development being that we are an oil city and those obstacles are really preventing further development when it comes to housing. In the coming year we hope to work with our state government and our developers so that we can continue to move away from oil operations to mixed-use residential and commercial development.
Where we need to work with Signal Hill Petroleum (SHP) a lot is when there’s an active well on a site, it needs to be moved or it needs to be [re]mitigated. So, SHP happens to be who’s operating the site today, but in the past, the site could have been operated by 10 different oil companies and the standards now for remediation are much higher. So when you go in to develop the site, all the old wells that might have been there from 20, 30, 100 years ago, have to be all remediated and brought to current code. Even though there might be one active well, the site could have had a hundred inactive wells that were remediated in the past that have to be re-addressed and brought to current standard. Signal Hill Petroleum being our primary operator tends to be the best suited to resolve all that too.
With oil, what is your perspective on how it’s been working with the very divided, very impassioned interest in Signal Hill being an oil town and moving forward from that.
K.J.: My job, as I see it on city council, is to continue to do what’s in the best interest of Signal Hill. Today, our interests are way different than they were 100 years ago, and ultimately, in Signal Hill, we will have no oil production. It will happen. It might not be tomorrow, it might not be next week, it might not be next year, but at some point, that’s the ultimate goal, is that it’s all cleaned up and we have zero production. And that’s my goal.
I think that’s what most of the residents and even SHP know that the goal is. So it’s really about finding the best way to that goal and making sure that Signal Hill continues to be a safe place for people to live. And if we can progress towards that goal more quickly, that might be ideal. I’m not trying to slow that down in any fashion, but I also understand that our current oil producer, SHP, is in the best position to help us get to zero. I’m working with everyone involved to try to accomplish that goal.
We will hit that goal someday and the goal to get to zero can’t be in spite of doing what’s best for the city and the residents here. We want it to continue to be a safe place and my goal is to make that happen. We have been impacted by oil production from day one, and have taken every effort to make it as safe as possible for our residents and we’ll continue to do that, with the ultimate goal of, you know, oil production will be gone someday.
Our biggest obstacle is the funding to make that happen and our best mechanism today to clean up a site is new development because the new developer comes in and they have to mitigate all those old wells and clean it up. The whole site has to be profitable enough for that to happen, and then it gets cleaned up and then we can move to the next site. So, if we can’t develop, we really have our hands tied to make progress towards that goal.
Q: Who is your biggest leadership inspiration?
K.J.: I’m gonna say my stepdad, his name’s Chris Magnusson. My stepdad is the reason I moved here. He had his own business and he asked me to help with his business. He just had such a positive, can-do attitude about life overall, and every moment in his life was a reason to celebrate. He was a hard worker, but he was always there to help people achieve what they wanted to achieve. He would find out where you are trying to go, what you’re trying to do, and he would work at helping you accomplish that goal.
Q: What is your favorite thing to do in your free time?
K.J.: I spend my free time with my husband and my dog Cooper and we walk the hill. Cooper is a rescue dog that is absolutely the smartest, cutest dog ever. So I spend time training Cooper on things. I mean, this dog communicates at this point and part of that is I’m a pretty empathetic person and look for cues so I pick up on Cooper’s cues and know what cues for me that he’s picking up on.
I’m at the gym every day in Signal Hill, so my health and wellness is a huge priority for my free time and we have a great place for that in Signal Hill. We have excellent parks, I explore them frequently, we go around with the dog around the hilltop, and hopefully in our master plan, our trail system will continue through Central Signal Hill all the way to North Signal Hill.
I’m the president of the Community Foundation. Besides my insurance [job], this is my goal to get people to really get into the foundation. If there is one thing I continued to do in Signal Hill, it would be this forever, because this is where I make the most impact that I control. The best example of that was during COVID, there was suddenly a huge need for food, people needed food. People didn’t have jobs, and particularly at the beginning with the uncertainty, and we got a huge grant from residents and businesses and we created the most wonderful food distribution program … So anything the city doesn’t provide, folks can apply to the foundation for a grant like for swimming lessons, CPR classes. after school care, piano lessons.
Q: Favorite book?
K.J.: “The Four Agreements.”
Q: Favorite movies?
K.J.: “Groundhog Day,” “Scrooged,” “Devil Wears Prada” and “Out of Africa.”
