Mayor Declares Beverly Hills 'Healthy' in Annual State-of-the-City Address

EDITOR’S NOTE: Beverly Hills Mayor Lili Bosse gave the annual ”state of the city” address Wednesday evening at the historic Greystone Mansion Formal Gardens. More than 400 community members attended the event. Because of the speech’s length, Patch is presenting it to you in parts. Today is Part I.

I am thrilled to have this opportunity to speak with you tonight about the state of the city of Beverly Hills – and talk about how TOGETHER we can build a stronger and HEALTHIER community for us all.

As I mentioned back in March, my goal as Mayor – is for Beverly Hills to be the HEALTHIEST city in the WORLD – healthy PEOPLE, healthy BUSINESSES and healthy GOVERNMENT. Tonight, I plan to focus on the healthy business piece of our initiative, but, as we know, they are ALL connected.

When our WALK WITH THE MAYOR GROUP starts out from the steps of City Hall at 8:30 every Monday morning, we are building stronger, healthier PEOPLE. And as we walk, we TALK. That’s the healthy GOVERNMENT piece of the WALK.

Many of our residents, businesses owners and workers truly want to connect with their city and their mayor. We talk about their concerns and issues and, more importantly, we SOLVE them.

Every walk includes a visit to at least ONE Beverly Hills business – usually TWO! These businesses – both new and established – showcase their goods or services to a group of interested new customers.

We have formed an enthusiastic, new Beverly Hills family of hundreds of local walkers, as well as many hotel guests and visitors, who love our city and want to support our businesses. We are attracting new customers, while reinforcing our unique brand in a positive, innovative, community-building way.

And our businesses have taken notice! We now have a WAITING LIST of businesses who have invited the walk to come by. Some of these are new enterprises that have recently moved into our city and are looking for ways to connect to the community.

Our chamber is doing a fabulous job to assist them -- through ribbon cuttings, email blasts, networking events and with their My Beverly Hills program. The Walk with the Mayor takes the KEY MESSAGE – SHOP LOCAL! – Straight to the people!

The 60 Second Shout Out is another way we are promoting and supporting local businesses. We take recommendations from community members to celebrate a business for providing a great product or service – or just for their great community spirit. And we give them a moment in the spotlight – live – at every City Council meeting and on our local cable TV channel as the meetings are re-played.

Some of these well-deserving businesses who have received Shout Outs so far are: Beverly Hills Audi, Pussy and Pouch, Beverly Hills Market, Il Cielo, Urth Cafe, Luxe Hotel Rodeo Drive, Walter’s Cafe, the Nosh and Burger Lounge.

If you’d like to recommend a business to receive a shout out, please email me at lbosse@beverlyhills.org.

Every restaurant in the city will soon receive a letter inviting them to join our Beverly Hills Healthy City initiative by promoting healthy menu options. We will help get the word out to potential customers that this Beverly Hills restaurant CARES about your health and is an active member of our community.

I encourage EVERY restaurant to participate! – from Spago – to Clementine’s – to Il Pastaio – and more. Each will receive a Healthy City decal to display – AND – they will have bragging rights on social media. They will earn the gratitude of health-conscious patrons, and WE will be promoting and highlighting our local Beverly Hills restaurants in this new, positive way.

Incidentally, I just want to mention our fabulous Thursday night Summer Concerts on Canon series. This was our most successful summer so far. Many hundreds of concertgoers came to our business triangle to enjoy the music – for free – and outdoors – to have dinner and to share a community experience – ONE MORE productive way to promote and support our local businesses and restaurants.

END OF PART I.

PHOTO Credit: DVR Productions.