Last Words With Steve Burrell

Hermosa Beach City Manager Steve Burrell retired last week, after 18 years of service, to a host of accolades, many of them praising his accessibility. Your guest editor is impressed - he returned her call within 20 minutes and was gracious enough to offer his thoughts on the city and his plans for the future.

Patch – What’s your favorite memory of being in City Hall?

Burrell - I actually anticipated someone asking me this question. But there’s been so many, it’s hard to boil it down. Probably the best thing about it all was simply coming to work every day and … All these smiling, friendly faces of the people that work here. Probably that’s going to be the hardest thing I’m going to miss.

And accomplishments, we had so many. You know, like physical things like the Plaza, the parking structures, the hotel, the rennovation of the pier, Upper Pier Avenue, a lot of street work and sewers, things that people don’t really notice too much. Most of the parks have been rennovated in that period of time or built. That’s kind of the memories I have. They’re just part of what goes on everyday in the City Hall, and some of them are notable and people make big deals out of them and some of them aren’t. Got awards for all kinds of things, one thing or another, but those are all the people involved. They’re not just me. There are a whole bunch of other folks who are involved in so many ways to make things happen.

Patch – So what are your plans for retirement? Are you going to be hanging around City Hall or are you packing your bags to take off?

Burrell – Oh, I don’t know. We’ll see. We’re not moving. We live nearby. We’re just going to take off and figure that out. I don’t know. I’m not moving or going away. I’m just not going to come here. But we have a lot of things to do to keep me busy, so we’ll see what comes up.

Patch – Is there a second career or lifelong passion that you haven’t had a chance to indulge until now?

Burrell – No, this has sort of been my passion. There might be some opportunities in some other kinds of work that I might take a look at. But I’m not really focused on that right now. That may happen later.

Patch – Any regrets or anything that just didn’t happen as well as you’d have liked?

Burrell – Not really. I don’t really have any regrets. My sort of approach to life kind of makes those hard to have. I think the best way to describe it is what could we have done better? Well I think the whole idea of community involvement and getting people involved and moving forward on common issues and things and solving their problems and things, it would have been nice to do more of that. To make things happen that way so there was more of a community spirit moving things forward. There’s a lot of it already. Don’t get me wrong. But it would be nice for that to grow and expand in the future. I think it makes a much nicer place for people to live if it happens.

Patch – Repeatedly, as people have recognized you over the past week, they all talk about how accessible you are, how optimistic you are. Where does that come from, do you think?

Burrell – (laughing) I don’t know. I’ve had a long-term passion. I have wanted to do what I have done here since I was in high school. I thought being a city manager would be a really cool thing to be, and I’ve done it. And to me, it was always about bringing people together, and accomplishing goals for the community, and the only way you do that is to have the community involved to help accomplish the goals. And that’s what we did. And that’s how it needs to get done. And how in the future it will work well. The optimism, I’m not so sure where it comes from. I don’t know. My parents probably raised me to be very independent. I’ve done that with my kids and so forth. But it’s just always nicer to stay on the optimistic side than the pessimistic side. So it’s where I land.