The standard anti-government mantra is “waste, fraud and abuse.” What’s your rejoinder? Since we don’t have money and since political will is hard to capture, the most effective things are long-term systemic change to move beyond the crisis management of the economic crisis and toward really building the future. The third is simply bandwidth most of the people in city government are up to their eyeballs in keeping the place running. We need more people equipped to make change. I would say we don’t need any more people appointed as watchdogs. That’s not going to run on the front page of the paper, but the chronic failure inevitably shows up on the front page. This year they answer calls with a person 85% of the time and people who left messages were getting an answer in one day. When he took office, the finance department was only answering phone calls 51% of the time in the month before the deadline for business taxes 49% of calls were going to voicemail and it was taking two weeks to return them. But put basic things in place and great things can be achieved. When government can’t answer the phones, fix the streets, then to talk about ending poverty and moonshot priorities lacks credibility. Mayor Garcetti is a remarkable exception to this because back to basics. Elections don’t talk about the things that are important to voters they’re about manipulation of emotions and not problem-solving. Elections are important, but they only happen every two or four years, and government happens every day. That’s the least salient indicator of engagement.

Change is imperative in a changing world, but sometimes, in the public sector, it comes at all deliberate speed. It’s always frustrated me that our politics and media coverage are so shallow and short term the things that matter in people’s lives take longer than the news cycle and the election cycle. I am impatient for change but patient with the pace of change.

You began as a firebrand Pasadena councilman now you’re more, shall we say, deliberate. How does Los Angeles look in his rear-view mirror? Now he’s about to resume the city manager role, this time in Santa Monica. For 30 years, Cole has been trying to graft the impossible to the necessary as council member and mayor in Pasadena, and city manager in Azusa and Ventura. Francis of Assisi: “Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible.” It’s practically a manual for the man who became Mayor Eric Garcetti’s deputy mayor for budget and innovation two years ago. The quotation appended to Rick Cole’s emails is from St.

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