u/Dakart

I’m David Kartsonis and this is part two of a video about how the last four years in Torrance have damaged our local economy. I’m here in front of the vacant building that used to be Sony Honda Mobility - also known as Afeela. My opponent calls this his largest achievement, but this businesses and those like this don’t make any sense for Torrance. Sony Honda Mobility was open here for literally just a few days before closing and leaving our city with nothing to show for it. If it had stayed open, it would have brought us negligible revenue due to the way distribution centers are taxed. Let’s talk about Friendship Cities and how converting Torrance to be a “Micro-nation” is leading us to have a “micro-economy.” If you watched my last video, you know I was endorsed by BizFedPAC. Bizfed represents 420,000 employers in Southern California. You also learned why people are calling our Torrance economy stagnant at best and failing at worst. What’s the cause? In short - the Friendship Cities Program backed by my opponent Jon Kaji.

This program started 4 years ago when my opponent took office. The first Friendship City was - unsurprisingly enough, our Mayor’s hometown. This program has ballooned to costing residents hundreds of thousands of dollars to fund all expense paid city council international trips. As a result of all this investment, Torrance has seen $0 in return and 0 new businesses. The biggest benefit being touted for this program is that it will allow the taxpayers of the City of Torrance to subsidize the Taiwanese national team when they’re in LA for the 28 Olympics.

Now, if this all sounds bad, we haven’t gotten to the bad part yet. The bad part is how many of our city staff members - especially those in the Economic Development department have been repurposed to serve as essentially glorified travel agents for some of our Councilmembers. This is where Torrance really is impacted. When our Economic Development Department isn’t doing economic development, Torrance loses. We lose businesses, we lose jobs, and we lose revenue. Most people estimate that Torrance has lost millions of dollars in revenue due to this disastrous economic development policy. After the last report of the failings of friendship cities, my opponent decided to double down and increased their travel budget by $70,000! Worst of all, those $70,000 in Friendship travel funds don’t even need to be used on approved Friendship Cities. This is the definition of a Council slush fund where they are able to use those funds to travel anywhere in the world with no justification required.

We’re at a point now where sales tax is no longer funding our city services, but instead the property taxes of our residents. We need to reverse that trend.

It’s time to put to an end this self serving program and get Torrance back to being a leader in the business community.

Hi it’s David Kartsonis. I’m here at the Southern California Association of Governments meeting. But I want to tell you about how May 5th‘s council meeting was wild. There were allegations of two disgusting conspiracies revealed - but I’m going to address one of them. Three councilmembers were accused of a quid-pro-quo arrangement and all but admitted to it - or at least did everything in their power to allow it to continue. The city clerk brought up concerns that Commissioners have been complaining about specific sitting members of council compelling endorsements from them in exchange for keeping their seats. The suggestion was simple - move the commission appointments out a month to prevent a lame-duck council from penalizing commissioners who didn’t fall in line. The very Councilmembers I know have been accused of this voted against implementing the simple solution - Councilmembers Kaji, Mattucci, and Mayor Chen. I know personally who was accused, because I’ve heard these same complaints from Commissioners who were threatened, but decided to support me in my campaign instead.

To be clear, all of this is alleged, but I will confirm that in previous elections I was the target of these quid-pro-quo calls by member of that very group, so I have first hand experience. This technique is absolutely disturbing and unethical. As a Councilmember, I’d never even consider trading political favors for our important Commission or staff appointments. Certain members of this current city council obviously do not want to address the ethical issues, but the next city council needs to prioritize implementing enforceable ethical standards and election reform.

Hi it’s David Kartsonis. I’m here at the Southern California Association of Governments meeting. But I want to tell you about how May 5th‘s council meeting was wild. There were allegations of two disgusting conspiracies revealed - but I’m going to address one of them. Three councilmembers were accused of a quid-pro-quo arrangement and all but admitted to it - or at least did everything in their power to allow it to continue. The city clerk brought up concerns that Commissioners have been complaining about specific sitting members of council compelling endorsements from them in exchange for keeping their seats. The suggestion was simple - move the commission appointments out a month to prevent a lame-duck council from penalizing commissioners who didn’t fall in line. The very Councilmembers I know have been accused of this voted against implementing the simple solution - Councilmembers Kaji, Mattucci, and Mayor Chen. I know personally who was accused, because I’ve heard these same complaints from Commissioners who were threatened, but decided to support me in my campaign instead.

To be clear, all of this is alleged, but I will confirm that in previous elections I was the target of these quid-pro-quo calls by member of that very group, so I have first hand experience. This technique is absolutely disturbing and unethical. As a Councilmember, I’d never even consider trading political favors for our important Commission or staff appointments. Certain members of this current city council obviously do not want to address the ethical issues, but the next city council needs to prioritize implementing enforceable ethical standards and election reform.

Let’s talk business. I was recently endorsed by BizFedPac. BizFed is an alliance of chambers of commerce, trade organization, and economic development organizations. It represents 420,000 employers.

Why do they agree that Torrance needs a change in leadership? Why are we all concerned, and why should YOU be concerned about the future of our Torrance economy with the damage from the last 4 years? Words alone may lead you to think our city is doing great, but let’s look at the numbers.

My family chose to headquarter our business here in Torrance over 30 years ago. Since then, we’ve been active members of the business community. I served as Chair of a committee on the Chamber of Commerce for many years.

Yes, the entire region and world is recovering from COVID, but Torrance is really not competing with our neighbors. In fact, considering we’re supposed to be the economic powerhouse of the South Bay, we’re dramatically falling behind. I’ll tell you why in a moment, but it all boils down to the self interest of some members of our council - my opponent being the one leading the charge.

Since 4 years ago when my opponent took office, Torrance has added almost no new jobs, shows a loss in employment opportunities, and has a dramatic increase in unemployed residents. And we have thousands of less jobs than we did in 2019. We were moving in the right direction, then in 2022 my opponent changed our economic strategy and we started heading in the wrong direction.

Maybe it’s not just Torrance… Maybe it’s all the South Bay? Nope. It’s just Torrance. Comparing us to Carson, Inglewood, Los Angeles, and El Segundo we’re really falling behind. And this has a DIRECT impact on our residents. Torrance is funded largely by sales tax - which is good, because we want our visitors coming to our mall and restaurants to fund our police, fire, roads…. However, because of our faltering economy, Torrance has transitioned to being primarily funded by YOUR property taxes.

While the South Bay and Los Angeles County grow, Torrance is falling behind. This is a two part video, so stick around for part 2 where we’ll get into how my opponent, Jon Kaji lead us to this place.