At the City Council meeting on the evening of Monday, December 9, Council Member Bubba Fish was voted Culver City’s new Vice Mayor by the council, just after former Vice Mayor Freddy Puza was voted in as the new Mayor. Puza is Culver City’s first openly LGBTQ+ Mayor, meaning that Fish is the city’s second openly LGBTQ+ Vice Mayor, and this is certainly the first time that the city has a gay Mayor and Vice Mayor at the same time. With history made, Fish spoke to the News about the year past and the year ahead…
First of all, congratulations. On a human level, how does it feel to hold the title of Vice Mayor?
It doesn’t feel that much different. I think the big news out of Monday is the fact that our city has its first openly LGBTQ+ Mayor. I think that’s a big deal. And it’s not about a label or anything like that. It actually is about our history as a city, and the fact that we’ve been a city for 108 years and never had an openly gay mayor– that is a big deal. Just like it was a big deal when we elected our first black Mayor. It shows something about the direction that our city is moving in when our representatives look and are reflective of the people that make up our city. So to me, that’s the big deal. Not me being Vice Mayor. I’m really grateful to be serving alongside Freddy, because he’s been, personally, a source of mentorship and inspiration in my life.
That’s very modest. I would suggest that having an openly gay Mayor and Vice Mayor at the same time is historic as well.
It’s cool that the barrier has already been crossed. But beyond all of that, Freddy’s incredibly qualified to be Mayor, and I think he has proven that in his leadership style. Then also Odis being our next City Manager. He’s got 30+ years of experience in cities across the country. He’s done incredible things. He’s coming in with a lot of great ideas, and he has a really incredible story. He was formerly homeless. He has the life experience to understand how local government can shape your life and change your life, because he’s a product of that. I don’t want to speak for him, but that is a compelling choice, because he can speak to that when working with vulnerable people and designing those systems. He knows who it’s impacting, because he used to be one of those people. Beyond that, he’s incredibly experienced. He’s done amazing things to modernize systems and benefit the fiscal health of cities. All those things are really within his wheelhouse, and I’m really excited to have him onboard.
Not that it’s your responsibility or the Mayor’s responsibility to end bigotry, but how do you set about communicating with people that are still behind the times?
I think it’s about setting the tone. Right now, in Washington, we’re getting terribly hateful messages from powerful people. So on a local level, we can say, ‘Actually, that’s not how it works here. We do not double down on prejudice, bigotry, racism, sexism, homophobia. We have no space for hate in Culver City.’ I think when our local leaders stand firm on that, and we can show that contrast, not just in our words, but in our policy and our politics, that sends a powerful message. It’s not just about creating safe spaces. It’s about creating spaces where it’s actively uncomfortable and unwelcome to be hateful. I think that’s the important thing. It’s not enough to not be hateful, but it should be uncomfortable for people to be prejudiced. I think that’s the kind of culture that we should have. Everyone has freedom of speech, but we should not be in any way be enabling the worst kinds of attitudes that we’re seeing in Washington.
It matters what we say, but it also matters what we do. So when we talk about building affordable housing, for example, the people that are most at risk are queer people and people of color. They experience homelessness at a far higher rate. So every time we fight for affordable housing, we’re making it easier for queer people to exist in our city, for black and brown people to thrive in our city. Those things help break down barriers, just as much as discouraging hate speech does.
How do you think your time on the city council has gone so far? What do you think your biggest achievements are, as a group and individually?
We’ve had a banner year. I want to say that I think the five of us come with different life experiences, and certainly different views and visions for the city, but I do appreciate the perspective we bring. I think we’ve been able to work together and find common ground on a lot of issues. We supported state legislation to require that police not wear a mask and that they identify themselves with their badge number. Those bills passed when ICE started, when they terrorized the West Side. We responded by doing that. We also donated $50,000 – $25K to the Culver Palms YMCA for mutual aid and $25K to legal defense for impacted families.
We also expanded our Rental Assistance Program. That was unanimous. I believe we unanimously became the first city in California to legalize single stair residential buildings, which will unlock naturally affordable housing across the entire city. And that will make it possible to build housing on small lots that never would have been able to build homes on. We approved the largest 100% affordable housing project in the City’s history, Jubilo Village. That’s a historic thing that we were able to do. We are also undergoing budget reform, and that’s something I’m really proud of, creating a civic assembly to ask Culver City residents, ‘how do you want to be involved in the budget and the yearly budget process?’ Because we know our budget reflects our values. The number one, in my opinion, most important document of all, is the city budget, because it literally shapes our future. and it’s a $180 million General Fund every year, so it’s an incredibly powerful document.
We also endorsed SB 79, one of the biggest housing bills of the year, that’s going to create millions of new homes across the state. So we’ve been hard at work, doing a lot of really impactful things, and I’m I’m really looking forward to the year ahead because I think we’ll be able to get even more done.
Right now there’s a progressive majority on the council. Last time out, there wasn’t. It does tend to switch, 3-2/2-3, with each election cycle. Do you enjoy working with council members with different viewpoints?
I do enjoy working with Councilmember [Dan] O’Brien and Councilmember [Albert] Vera. I enjoy working with all five of my colleagues. I think they each bring something different to the dais and each of them represent real views that exist in the city, and real people that support them and are a part of our Culver City community. I think working with them shows a willingness to work with everyone in our community, and I think it’s my responsibility to do that. I think as a council member, it’s not my job to just plow forward with whatever gets me going. It’s my job to listen and work with people who have different views, and that’s part of the joy of it too. Part of the joy of the work for me, is sitting across from someone who thinks differently than me and hearing them out, because the best ideas aren’t always the ones that are perfectly aligned with your ideology. Sometimes good policy is crafted when you get the best ideas from different people. I think that gets the best results. So I really try to make a bigger effort to continually try to get my colleagues out and see where we can agree. And certainly there are times when we just can’t get there, but I think there are times when they have suggested something that has changed my mind, and we’ve been able to find common ground forward together.
The differences with Councilmembers Vera and O’Brien in particular seem to be more about how money is going to be spent…
I never doubt for a second how much my colleagues care about the city, and how much they
work and have served and volunteered for this city. We all have all sacrificed to do the job, but it’s also an incredible privilege, and I think we all five take it seriously. I come from the perspective of wanting to help our city become more climate resilient and more welcoming to people of all backgrounds and incomes. I was an independent candidate. I did it independently because I wanted to represent the people of Culver City, and I’m grateful that I get to fully and completely be an independent voice that represents the people of our city, our workers, our residents and our students. I feel grateful that I get to represent them. A lot of the positions I take are informed by the fact that our city is getting way too expensive for normal people to live here, and that we have to take action quickly to reverse that trend, because we’re losing our diversity. Our social economic diversity, our racial diversity, all of it is at risk if we don’t tackle affordability. So that has been the focus of my term so far.
So affordability is a priority for this coming year?
Yes, absolutely. We have a lot of affordability initiatives in the pipeline that I’m really excited about–ways we can protect folks from becoming homeless in the first place. And I’m going to continue working on civic engagement. In order to make a city that reflects the values of its residents, we need more voices at the table, and right now the meetings go way too late. People can’t participate in them. We hear from the same folks because we’re not doing a good enough job of getting out there and hearing from people, and making ourselves more accessible, whether it be our budget process or city meetings. So I’m going to keep focusing on, ‘how do we reform our meetings, but also our elections?’ We saw over $400,000 poured into the last election, $600,000 in the election before. Elections as a result of Citizens United are getting more and more expensive, and corporate interests are taking a huge role in them like they’ve never done before. So that’s going to be another cornerstone of my work, in the Governance Committee with Council Member McMorrin. How do we make our local elections more fair and allow grassroots voices to be heard? So those will be some of the things that I continue to work on in the year ahead.