Meet The Candidate: Lance Simmens

MALIBU, CA — “What you should detect in my approach to things is I don’t think there’s a position I’ve held in the 40 years that I’ve spent in government and public policy that didn’t have the term ‘intergovernmental affairs’ attached to it,” said Lance Simmens, a candidate for the Malibu City Council. “I have an appreciation for the ability to combine all these intergovernmental units.”

Simmens, 67, has worked for Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, former Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell, and former California Gov. Jerry Brown, the US Conference of Mayors, and the US Senate Budget Committee, among other positions. He says that he wants to use his experience in different levels of government to advocate for a series of ambitious projects that would require cooperation between Malibu and a number of state and federal governments.

Arguably the most complicated of these is a redesign of the eastern end of the Pacific Coast Highway. Simmens says that he has worked with an unnamed highway architect on a proposal to make the highway safer and more environmentally friendly. The proposal would reduce the speed limit to 35 miles per hour on the portion from Topanga Canyon Boulevard to Civic Center Way, shorten the width of lanes to allow for two bike lanes, and create turning lanes every quarter of a mile. It would also create a median with shrubbery and trees from Topanga Canyon Boulevard to Civic Center Way. According to Simmens, the plants would absorb liquids and fuels that are now running off into the ocean.

Simmens also hopes to create a weekend shuttle bus transporting visitors to beaches. He led a charge against a proposed crosswalk at Corral Canyon Road that he felt was in an unsafe location, and instead wants to encourage more people to cross under an existing underground passage in the same area. He also wants to double the size of the Volunteers on Patrol that would crack down on speeding and parking violations along PCH, and is in favor of a supervised safe parking program to house people living in their cars overnight.

“This is something that is a long-term project - this is not gonna be done in a year, in two years, but we’ve got to start the process of interacting with the state on our proposal, because it’s a state highway, so we’re gonna need the state’s cooperation,” Simmens said, noting that with budgets hard-hit by COVID, the city would need to combine state and federal resources.

Another proposal requiring a great deal of intergovernmental cooperation is the creation of a California Fire Reserve Corps, a volunteer trained firefighting corps similar to the National Guard. Simmens imagines the 20,000-strong, statewide force being called to fight fires during crises. He said that at this point the idea is just a concept, but more firefighting resources are necessary.

“This is one way to address it - having individuals with their fire hoses out there, hoping to hell they can keep the fire away from their house is not the way to do it,” Simmens said. He believes that the Woolsey Fire was mishandled, and many residents were left to fend for themselves. Simmens told the Malibu Times he believes the mishandling was overall due to a lack of thorough preparation:

“I don’t know how you blame it on anything other than a lack of preparation for the worst scenario,” he told the Times. “I mean, every, every organization I’ve ever worked in in government, um, you do scenario-playing. And you go from the worst to the best. And you have options for each. You prepare for them. Um, we weren’t prepared.”

Simmens argues that many residents were left to fend for themselves during Woolsey, and believes the city should have set up a command and control center, potentially at Pepperdine University.

“You really need to be in the community when these disasters are occurring, so you can find out what’s really going on,” he said. “You can’t operate a command center from Santa Monica, or you shouldn’t, anyway.”

He also advocated for better communication systems in an emergency, but praised recent efforts to upgrade its communication and evacuation systems.

Simmens also believes that tackling climate change will help mitigate fire season, and has proposed declaring a state of climate emergency in the city, which will require a number of sustainability initiatives.

To address the many issues facing Malibu, Simmens has proposed the creation of Citizens Visioning Commissions, a type of concerned citizens group on various topics that will present an annual report card to the City Council on their progress. Simmens says that he has seen these work well in many communities.

“One of the things we discovered as we traveled across the country was...they had these citizen-driven, community-driven processes where people from all walks of life in the community would get together and would make decisions on what issues would make their community be a better place to live,” he said. “I think that Malibu is a place which is particularly well-suited for this kind of activity, particularly given that you have somewhat of an outcry that citizens may not be as involved in their community as we should be.”

Simmens suggests a visioning commission for debate over whether Malibu should change its form of government to allow a strong mayor, but opposed a measure that might’ve appeared on this year’s ballot. “I said if you’re going to make such a major change, that I’m not necessarily opposed to, but I need to hear the pros and cons. I need to have the experts come in, we need to deliberate on this. We need to take our time, and learn all the aspects of what would be involved in changing the governmental structure,” he said.

Simmens also recently wrote a letter to the mayor and councilmembers asking that they postpone the performance review of City Manager Reva Feldman until after the November election.

“In the current environment, with tensions in the community running high I sincerely believe that the most prudent course of action is to withhold the Performance evaluation until after the November 3 election when it is possible that a majority of the Council may be comprised of
individuals who have just been elected,” he wrote, also noting that “in these extraordinary times the City Manager’s position and the City Manager herself have become a lightning rod in the current City Council race. Some have even gone so far as to make candidates’ position on retaining or firing the City Manager a key if not THE key issue in this race. I have rejected that proposition.”

Simmens favors an independent Malibu school district, saying it’s important to residents. “Having local control of school districts is a big thing in the United States,” he said, and said that his friend Craig Foster, the sole rep from Malibu on the SMMUSD board, has said the situation is like ‘taxation without representation.’

“But we’re coming perilously close to having so few students now that we may not be able to divorce,” he added. “So it’s an issue which unfortunately I don’t think is gonna be solved any time soon.”

Simmens has lived in Malibu for five years. He has done quite a bit in that time: he ran for Council in 2018, and has led the Malibu Adamson House Foundation, the Malibu Democratic Club, the Malibu Public Works Commission, and is a member of the Community Emergency Response Team. Still, he has said that his relative newness can be viewed as an asset.

“Unity and community, no BS, no baggage,” he said. “I haven’t been around long enough to be beholden to any organization here - pro-development, no development, slow growth... I’m not wedded to any of the old crowd.”