Peter Ostroff
A Voice for Beverly Hills — Past, Present, and Future
City Council Priorities
The article emphasizes the need for clear accountability and oversight within the Beverly Hills City Council by designating specific individuals to manage strategic priorities, allowing them to operate without micromanagement. It advocates for regular progress reports and an end-of-year analysis to evaluate success and learn from the process, while also limiting the involvement of consultants.
When it comes to Beverly Hills City Council Priorities, who was responsible for the numerous items and who is accountable for success or lack thereof.
The October meeting will include a further report and, perhaps, adoption of specific Council Priorities. Not a committee, not an ad hoc committee, not a department, not unidentified “staff” but to a specific named person. Council should then allow that person to do their job without micromanagement and without predetermined goals and work plans. If the Council has to do this work, for what do we need the Department or staff?
The Council should appoint one (not two) Councilmember to oversee the work toward accomplishing each strategic priority. Together, the designated person and Councilmember should make periodic reports throughout the year on their progress. As a footnote which reveals my bias against the over-use of consultants, no consultants should be involved without express written advance approval of the Mayor and the responsible Councilmember.
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Accountability
At the end of the fiscal year, an analysis of each priority item should be prepared by the responsible person and responsible Councilperson reflecting whether the priority has been accomplished and what can be learned from the process. And the responsible person and responsible Councilperson should be held accountable for success or failure.
This will be consistent with Yogi Berra’s admonition and, with luck, we actually may get where we are going.
Peter Ostroff is a long-time Beverly Hills resident of over 50 years who retired in 2017 after a 50-year career as a trial lawyer. He was born in Washington, D.C. in 1942. He graduated from Washington University (St. Louis, Mo) in 1964 with a B.A. degree in political science and economics. He graduated from the University of Chicago Law School in 1967 with a J.D. degree. He taught law at Monash University Law School in Melbourne, Australia in 1968. He became a member of the Illinois Bar in 1967 and the California Bar in 1969, He clerked for Hon. Shirley M. Hufstedler of the United States Court of Appeal 1969-70, practiced law with Nossaman, Waters, Scott, Krueger & Riordan and successor firms from 1970 to 1980 and with Sidley Austin from 1980 until 2017. During his full time law practice years he was a Committee Chair and Member of the Council of the American Bar Association, Litigation Section and was President of the Association of Business Trial Lawyers. Since 2018, he has served on the Beverly Hills Planning Commission. In addition to his work on the Commission, Peter has chaired the BHUSD 7-11 Surplus Property Committee and contributed to planning efforts for the District Offices site on S. Lasky Drive and future uses of the Hawthorne School property. He also served as Co-Chair of the Citizens Advisory Committee for the City's Climate Adaptation and Action Plan. He has been married to Anne Y. Ostroff since 2002, has two children, Nick Ostroff and Natalie Anne Cookson and has two grandchildren, Elliott Cookson and Emma Anne Cookson. Some family information is collected under Family Tree in this website. Since April 2024, he has written a weekly column for the Beverly Hills Weekly The columns are collected in this website.
petero@ostroff.la