Rick Cole on Pasadena's Future: Leadership, Homelessness, and Urban Challenges

TPR Interview of Rick Cole Who “Wants Pasadena to Lead Again”

Rick Cole previously served twelve years on the Pasadena City Council. After stepping down 29 years ago, he went on to serve as City Manager in the cities of Azusa, Ventura and Santa Monica, as well as L.A.’s Deputy Mayor for Budget and Innovation and Executive Director of the Congress for the New Urbanism. Since 2022, he’s been Chief Deputy Controller in the City of Los Angeles. In March he was re-elected to his old District 2 Council seat by a 60% margin -- and will be sworn in on December 9. In the meantime, he continues to serve on the Pasadena Planning Commission. The Planning Report checked in on what Cole sees ahead for Pasadena – including his perspectives on homelessness, housing and transportation. 

Planning Report: We’ve heard you knocked on 5000 doors in your campaign. What were the top issues for voters in Pasadena?

Cole: I actually stopped counting at 5000! Homelessness was the top concern, along with affordable housing, climate change and our public schools.

TPR: Pasadena’s unhoused population has been essentially flat for the past five years, even as cities like Los Angeles have seen dramatic increases. How do Pasadena residents view the situation?

Cole: Pasadena doesn’t have the visible presence of encampments. Yet despite our range of shelter and interim housing programs, we still have over 300 people out on our streets every night. That’s a sobering number – but given our community’s resources, it shouldn’t be a daunting one. Residents recognize we can’t be complacent. We need to aim for “functional zero” -- ending street homelessness by making it “rare, brief and non-recurring.”

TRP: What more should Pasadena be doing on homelessness?

Cole: I outlined three priorities. First, joining both the County and City of LA in declaring homelessness an emergency – and treating it like one! That means mobilizing not just public resources, but enlisting the full commitment of our faith, business, neighborhood, non-profit, civic, philanthropic and volunteer resources. Second, we need to advance beyond the once a year “homeless count” to develop real time data on who’s unhoused in our community. That’s essential to get the right help to the right people right now. Finally – and I always acknowledged this is the least popular and most expensive part of the answer -- we need more housing options of all types – shelter beds, tiny homes, transitional housing, group homes, permanent supportive housing and affordable housing – and the services to keep people housed and moving back toward self-sufficiency.

TPR: Pasadena also has a positive record on affordable housing – it’s inclusionary zoning requirement has been in place for over 20 years. Again, what more should Pasadena be doing?

Cole: A good start would be Implementing the Housing Element that was certified last year. We need a local funding source for affordable housing. My Planning Commission colleagues and I have pushed for objective design standards to replace the pointless wrangling that fails to produce better projects but adds costly delays. We also need to expedite using public and institutional land for affordable housing. We can’t coast on our past achievements when so many local residents have been displaced – and many more are barely hanging on.

TPR: That’s not most people’s image of Pasadena. They know it as the City of Roses or “the center of the universe,” as Mayor Victor Gordo calls it – with the Rose Parade, the Rose Bowl, Caltech, JPL, tree-lined streets and affluent neighborhoods and shopping areas.

Cole: Even in Pasadena, most people don’t realize that nearly 60% of our residents are renters. It caught City Hall by surprise when Measure H passed in 2022, implementing strong tenant protections and rent control. District 2 reflects Pasadena’s diversity. I talked to voters living in multi-million dollar historic homes as well as those living in run-down apartments and bootlegged units. Pasadena is a microcosm of Southern California’s toughest urban challenges, but we have the resources -- and I hope the political will – to be a leader in tackling them.

TPR: Another of those challenges is transportation, which is a major source of greenhouse gas emissions and of course traffic congestion is a perennial source of complaints across Southern California. When you were Mayor 30 years ago, the General Plan you spearheaded proclaimed the goal of making Pasadena “a city where people can circulate without cars.” Are you satisfied with the progress in the three decades since?

Cole: I don’t think anyone is. Residents are up in arms about traffic, especially speeding in residential neighborhoods, yet the City has sparked controversy by often poorly-conceived traffic calming project. We’re long overdue for a citywide conversation about how we can actually achieve the General Plan goal. Many other cities are pursuing serious efforts make it convenient, safe and attractive to walk, bike or take transit. Pasadena has lagged. We have a huge opportunity now that Caltrans has relinquished the infamous “710 Stub.” That’s 65 acres clawed out of the heart of our city 50 years ago to dump freeway traffic into residential neighborhoods. It was literally designed to pave the way for extending the 710 to Alhambra. Now that the City has reclaimed it, we can reconnect our community by rebuilding walkable neighborhoods with housing, parks and cultural assets. It’s a “back to the future” model for overcoming car dependence. The UN Secretary General says, “We are on the road to climate hell and we haven’t taken our foot off the accelerator.” If we think globally, we can act locally to make Pasadena more resilient – and a healthier and safer place to live.

TPR: You are arguing that Pasadena has to step up its leadership across a range of issues – yet when you take your seat in December, you’ll be the only new face on the eight-member City Council. How will you persuade your colleagues of the need for change?

Cole: I would reframe your challenge – it’s not just me. The passage of Measure H shows what happens when City Hall is slow to lead – the voters step up instead. The City Council long resisted the late Councilmember John Kennedy’s push for civilian police oversight – until community protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder forced the issue. Similarly, Pasadena was content to comply with state energy mandates until community pressure pushed the Council to adopt the most ambitious target in California – achieving 100% renewable power for our utility by 2030. Change is in the air.  Bear in mind that three other new faces have joined the Council in the last three years. I’m looking forward to engaging with both my Council colleagues and a broad cross-section of the community to ensure Pasadena leads the way in tackling the whole spectrum of urban challenges – and opportunities.

TRP: One issue you said was on voter’s minds was public schools. That’s not a new issue in Pasadena – the reputation of public schools in Pasadena never fully recovered from the controversy over integration back when you were in high school. What role can city government play in education?

Cole: A potentially catalytic one! With shrinking enrollment, there’s an opportunity to rethink both the existing active school sites as well as the nine that have been closed. We can reimagine their use to augment funding for our schools as well as provide affordable housing for teachers and staff. Mayor Gordo is also championing an ambitious partnership to revitalize vocational training so we provide young people meaningful pathways to rewarding careers. 

Pasadena schools are better than people think, but not as good as they should be. On the November ballot in Pasadena is a bond issue to retrofit our Central Library as well as two school tax measures – a bond for facilities and a parcel tax for operations. We need to think holistically about Pasadena as a “city of lifelong learning.” We underestimate the role that our public schools, our community college and our libraries can play in providing a competitive economic edge in the Digital Age.

TPR: Speaking of the Digital Age, are we seeing the long-predicted era where virtual work undercuts the traditional office location advantages of a city like Pasadena?

Cole: It certainly poses a significant threat that we need to counter. Our Planning Commission took a small step by eliminating the increasingly artificial zoning distinction between offices and research lab space. More broadly, I think we’ll need be more serious about placemaking to continue to retain and attract the best minds to locate in Pasadena. We’ll need to rebalance the separation of jobs and housing, which means more mix of uses, more adaptive reuse and more regulatory flexibility. Jane Jacobs pointed the way in her critique of sterile modernism. The renewal of Old Pasadena and the city’s historic neighborhoods demonstrates the enduring vitality of traditional walkable urbanism. I think there will continue to be a strong draw to places that are vibrant, dynamic, livable – and fun. We need to double down on that in Pasadena.

TPR: In your day job, you continue as Chief Deputy to Controller Kenneth Mejia. During the 2022 campaign he was both reviled as a reckless radical and hailed as a fresh face championing transparency and accountability. How do you see that playing out?

Cole: Context is important. Mayor Bass is working tirelessly to overcome the homeless crisis and prepare for the 2028 Olympics among other urgent challenges. Yet Los Angeles City government is hamstrung by severe staffing shortages -- on top of a generational failure to invest in vital infrastructure, facilities, staff training, modern technology and organizational development. In the Controller’s Office we see the citywide dysfunction every day, as we strive to pay the city’s bills, process the city’s payroll and do the city’s accounting. This year’s budget arbitrarily slashed 1700 positions citywide, including 20% of the Controller’s Office workforce. That’s put unsustainable pressure on the people who have to absorb a workload that’s continually growing. 

Nobody should be surprised that this will erode neighborhood quality of life. It will impede progress across the entire range of community needs. You see it already in overcrowded and dirty animal shelters; darkened streets because broken streetlights can’t get repaired; and thousands of tenant harassment complaints that go uninvestigated. 

Kenneth had been in office only a month when he started warning about the coming fiscal storm. Fifteen months later, it crushed this year’s budget. Kenneth and his team have built a remarkable record of making the City’s finances, programs and policies more transparent to the public. But real accountability is elusive when capacity is so constrained. Kenneth has advocated for systemic fiscal reform, including empowering a Chief Financial Officer; shifting to a two-year budget cycle; expanding participatory budgeting; and developing a strategic capital improvement plan. Los Angeles government needs fundamental fiscal and governance reform to avoid economic decline and civic stagnation. Everyone in the region has a stake in ensuring that LA works -- because it remains the economic engine for Southern California.