City Council Member Deals With Power Day & Night

Carolanne Sudderth

Mirror Staff Writer

   Paul Rosenstein spends his days working with power. Wiring, amperage., wattage. He’s an electrician

   Paul Rosenstein spends his Tuesday nights working with power, governing the city. He’s a member of Santa Monica’s City Council.

   He came to political power as a member of Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR), winning a seat on the Council in 1992, but when he ran for re-election in 1996, he ran as an independent and subsequently founded the Civic Forum with other disaffected SMRR members. The Forum fielded a full slate of Council candidates in last year’s election, but only one -- incumbent Council member Bob Hol-brook -- won.

   Last year, having surprised local politicos, the bachelor surprised everyone else by taking a wife, resuming a relationship with a college sweetheart he hadn’t seen in over three decades..

   Rosenstein met Ada Hollie during the Civil Rights movement in the early 60s. They planned on marrying, but it never happened.

   “She went off to college in San Francisco. I used to go up and visit her once a month, ” he said. His eyes took on a softer focus as he gazed in to the past for a moment, then snapped back to the present. .

   33 years later, he found Ada Hollie again when he attended a graduation ceremony at Santa Monica High School, where she’d been working as a counselor.

   “I did a double take. She was in a cap and gown,” he remembered, “but all I could see was her face.” He quietly asked around and, “It was the same first name.”.

   A case of so near and yet so far, they lived in Santa Monica for nine years without encountering each other.

   Rosenstein said that Hollie no interest in politics. “She didn’t know I was on the Council.” But when she saw him, she recognized him immediately. That was in June of 1994. “And we’ve been together ever since. “

   Paul Rosenstein was born in New York and moved to Southern California in 1958--the same year the Dodgers did, he joked.

   “Well, I had a pretty checkered career in the early 60s.” he says of those early days.

   He left college behind and worked his way through the electricians’ union apprenticeship program, “And in a few years, I had become an electrician.”

   In 1974, he left California and the electrical trade to resume his academic career, studying Labor Relations at the University of Illinois. After a year of undergraduate studies, Rosenstein said he began to take graduate courses and, within three years, he was out of the ivied doors with a masters degree in his hand. “I had letters of recommendations and my grades kind of showed I could handle graduate level work,” he said.

   “I was, like, the second person in 160 years they admitted to grad school without a B.A,” he said with pride.

   From Illinois, he went to Washington, D.C., to work with the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees “It’s real big back east. One of the largest unions in the AFL-CIO.” Though he was based in Washington, he spent most of his time on the road.

   “I counted 35 different states I’d done programs in one year,” he said, “and I didn’t count the ones I’d done twice or changed planes in.

   “What I do miss is seeing the people -- the regional differences and similarities,” and the fact that Washington was home to “the sharpest people in town.” His work brought him into contact with every type of government employee. “Janitors one day, police officers, prison guards, scientists, different ethnic groups in each part of the country. It was a fascinating experience, working with such a variety of people. “

   The work was fulfilling, he said, but it got old, and, in 1982, he left Washington to return to the Southland, to the electrical trade and to the same mid-city neighborhood he resides in today. Later that year, he became a founding member of the Mid-City Neighbors organization and dipped his toes in the local political waters when he “became very involved with the development wars of the late 80s. “

   He was later appointed to the Pier Restoration Corporation board, and spent three years on the Planning Commission. In 1988, he took his a flying leap at a seat on the city council and missed. Unfazed, he tried again four years later, and won the seat he holds today.

   He’s proud of his efforts on the downtown transit mall, a project which will widen sidewalks and narrow streets in an effort to make downtown Santa Monica more pedestrian-friendly and revitalize , Second, Fourth, and Fifth Streets and “make for a great walking experience throughout the city.”

   “Unlike most downtowns,” he said, “our city is not going to go to sleep at 7 p.m.”

   Rosenstein said he hoped that the Transit Mall would enlarge the spotlight on the entire downtown area. The focus on the Promenade has brought a lot of high-rent retail outlets at the expense of the mom-and-poppers, he said. “Hopefully, they’ll find places [nearby],” he said.

   He continues to push for fluoridating the city’s water supply. “A lot of the children in the community have very bad teeth because don’t fluoridate,” he said, calling it one of the most efficient low-cost health measures that can be taken.

   Another great challenge he sees for the city is the disappearance of demographic diversity and the increasing gentrification he believes will come with the implementation of the Costa-Hawkins Bill which removed the rent control ceiling on vacant apartments.

   “Vacancy de-control will dramatically escalate the rate of gentrification and that’s why I’m so concerned that we find more ways of providing more affordable housing,” he said, because “starting with Ronald Reagan, government has reduced affordable housing monies by 80-90%.

   “The biggest challenge we face in Santa Monica is to grow and revitalize ourselves without strangling on our own success,” he said.