We succeeded in stopping the $150 million vanity project… for now.

Hey! It’s David Kartsonis – I just left City Hall and I want to tell you about a A decision on the $150 mm pet vanity project was postponed until after the next elections. I just left city hall. Let me update you on what happened.

Last August 2024, Councilman Kaji requested that staff put together a report on Torrance annexing El Camino Village. Over the last year, city staff have spent considerable time analyzing and creating a report. Common sense would tell you that this isn’t responsible decision for Torrance taxpayers, but now we have research to back it up.

To give you a quick rundown, if Torrance is to annex this land, we’d likely need to build a new firestation, potentially a police substation, use eminent domain to seize private residences or businesses, and add additional officers. What would this cost TORRANCE residents? About $20-30 million in up front costs, NOT including any land we’d need to buy for police and fire, plus almost 13 million in budget deficits over the next AT LEAST 10 years. Torrance Police Department would need to add many officers to be able to cover this area, but the current council hasn’t filled the 40-50 vacancies we currently have, so likely the currently understaffed Torrance Police Department would be stretched even more to police that area rather than expanded.

A suggestion was made that we could offset these costs by contracting out police and fire services to LA county Sheriff and fire. I absolutely reject that suggestion. We should not ever consider piecemeal replacement of Torrance Police or Fire. This council has already contracted out parking enforcement and this would be a further erosion of TPD and TPF.

Councilman Kaji who initiated this request suggested that only the residents of El Camino Village would be on the hook for the expense, but reading the staff report - if the city initiates this annexation, the residents of El Camino Village would get all the benefits of being a Torrance resident, but would only be responsible for the nearly $150 million expense if they collectively vote to tax themselves. Which, let’s be real, I wouldn’t expect that to happen.

Several members of the community, including myself were there to voice our opposition and thankfully Councilmember Lewis was able to get the item postponed for at least a year. Unfortunately, that does mean we run the risk of it coming before a council with members even less fiscally responsible than ones we currently have.

If this isn’t the sort of leadership you expect of your city, go to David4torrance.com - I’m running for City Council in North Torrance to fix issues like this.