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By Henri Migala
View the full interview by clicking the image below, and scroll down to read highlights.
October 7, 2022 (La Mesa) – La Mesa Councilwoman Laura Lothian spoke with ECM via zoom about her run for re-election. Council. The interview also aired on KNSJ radio, 89.1 FM.
Lothian is one of four candidates running (a fifth, Kathleen Brand, has dropped out); ECM will be publishing and airing interviews with all the candidates over the next several days. She aims to "class up" La Mesa, bucking the trend toward high-density housing downtown, while also working to reduce homeless and crime, as well as cut regulations for businesses and homeowners with permit applications for new construction or remodeling.
Background and priorities
Lothian is a long-time La Mesa resident and according to her website “has become one of La Mesa's top real estate agents and enjoys the distinction of having sold the most homes in La Mesa these last 20 years.” She is currently on the City Council and is running for re-election on a platform to advance her four priorities: public safety, opposing tax hikes, supporting small businesses, and ‘cleaning up the streets.” Lothian has served on the Council for approximately a year, after winning a special election to replace Akilah Weber, who won a seat in the State Assembly.
Why run for public office
“I ran for City Council because I feel that, not only La Mesa, but cities all over the place, they’re forgetting they’re governing cities,” said Lothian. “All of a sudden, elected representatives are like ‘global citizens’ and it feels like the United Nations. No, no no! It’s about police, permits and potholes, take care of your citizens. I want La Mesa to be safe, so, support your police. I want La Mesa to be clean and beautiful. No litter, no graffiti, no giant chunks of potholes. I want businesses to look forward to working in La Mesa, therefore, make the permit process easier, more expedited. So, my focus has been local, local, local.”
“The Science is still not settled” on the climate crisis
Lothian is not supportive of proposals to enhance the city’s climate action plan. “If there is a “climate crisis,” and the science is not settled on that, then you would have to ask yourself, ‘why does a La Mesan have to give up their gas stove?’” Lothian asks. “Why would a La Mesan have to give up their gas water heater, or gas car, when you have a country like China doing billions of tons of coal burning. So, I don’t understand, on the world stage, why there aren’t, if global warming is an existential threat, why aren’t there riots against China. Why aren’t there boycotts against China? Why isn’t there pressure to bring China to the table? Instead, China gets this pass…. It just doesn’t make sense.”
Fact check: Regarding the claim that the “science is not settled on the climate crisis,” Cornell University published a paper in the Cornell Chronicle in October 2021 titled “More than 99.9% of studies agree: Humans caused climate change.” The authors state that “more than 99.9% of peer-reviewed scientific papers agree that climate change is mainly caused by humans, according to a new survey of 88,125 climate-related studies.” “We are virtually certain that the consensus is well over 99% now and that it’s pretty much case closed for any meaningful public conversation about the reality of human-caused climate change,” said Mark Lynas, a visiting fellow at the Alliance for Science and the paper’s first author.
Homelessness in La Mesa
All candidates recognize that homelessness is a major issue and have statements about what they are going to do about it. Asked what she has already done as a Councilmember to address homelessness, Lothian said she spoke last week with the Chief of Police and the President of the La Mesa Police Officer Association to suggest, “more patrols.”
She wants to eliminate free trolley rides, which she views as contributing to La Mesa’s homelessness problem. “My City Council colleague, Councilman Jack Shu, he’s on the Board of SANDAG and MTS. Councilman Shu has been promoting free trolley,” said Lothian, who added that “nobody” rides the trolley “because it is filled with homeless people. Every time I have ridden the trolley from La Mesa to downtown, I have witnessed an incident that is extremely unpleasant,” she said, describing a knife-wielding individual. “It’s disgusting riding on the trolley…Already they’re riding and no one is paying for it. But if you actually promote it as free, all you’re going to get are the kind of people on the trolley that other people don’t want to get on the trolley with.”
“So, I’m going to ask Jack Shu, as a Board member for MTS and SANDAG, and this could help a lot, start charging for trolley rides…. Homeless people are not going to spend $5 to ride the trolley, and they are using that trolley to infiltrate La Mesa,” stated Lothian. “I think the trolley should be more expensive, not free.”
Lothian went on to say that people pay million of dollars, taxes and homeowners association fees to live in our region. She believes it is “unfair” that they have to “walk around human waste, and have to deal with homeless people as you’re walking your kids to school, or walking your dog.” Lothian continued by lamenting that “we’re setting up magnets for more homeless. Here’s more homeless shelters. Here’s homeless hotels. Here’s homeless outreach. Here’s homeless food. Hey! We’ll give you rides to places. We’re making it easy to be homeless.”
She wants to see a regional facility with services built to help the homeless – but not in La Mesa. “There should be a massive campus, or compound, or closed base, somewhere that has acreage, and acreage and acreage, and buildings,facilities and utilities, where you can house the homeless [and provide them with] medical, counseling, detoxing, training, whatever.” She also wants leaders to resolve to “build it where real estate is less and then pull them out of our cities that are getting destroyed by homeless people.”
What about affordable housing?
“I’m not a fan of high-density housing. That’s part of the Climate Action Plan and the Green New Deal. There are people in power, starting with the World Economic Forum, that envision a country, or countries, where people don’t live in single family residences anymore. We don’t have our lovely leafy neighborhoods. And we all live on high-density, monolithic apartment buildings on public transit,” said Lothian. “So, we live in our apartment, we hope on the trolley to go out to see friends, or dinner, or go to work, and there’s that lifestyle living. And if you look at pictures of Moscow and Russia, and you see those buildings just congested on train tracks, I don’t want to see that happen here.”
Lothian stated that it took her three years to get the permits to build an accessory dwelling unit (ADU) in her backyard and will cost her $350,000. She went on to say that the reason housing is so unaffordable is because of “permits, bureaucracy, and regulations.”
Balancing development while trying to preserve community charm
Asked how to balance the needs for housing against preserving community character, Lothian responded, “Right now, there’s an apartment building going up at the old police station and it’s going to be exclusively low-income housing. So, it’s not a percentage. It’s exclusively low-income. And they don’t have enough parking spaces. There is not a parking space per unit because they think that because people are going to live in these apartments and because it’s next to a trolley, they don’t need a vehicle,” shared Lothian. “We live in such a place where everything is so expansive that you can’t have upward mobility, you can’t have autonomy, without a car,” she said.
Lothian added that the Randal Lamb building, that was burned down in the riots is also proposed to become 100% exclusively low-income housing. “There are four levels of low-income, this is the lowest of the lowest. It’s the most impoverished people. I don’t know why La Mesa has to aim there. It’s a perfect spot for a boutique hotel with a rooftop restaurant and bar. I want to “class-up” La Mesa, not keep doing congested apartment buildings.”
Helping small business by cutting regulations
As for her ideas to help small businesses that struggled during the pandemic, Lothian started with an example of what she views as burdensome regulations.
“There is a very popular restaurant in La Mesa, and it has a very attractive storage space. It has a small storage space outside that is not blocking anything. The plans for the restaurant did not have storage space inside the restaurant, so this is the only place the restauranteur can put empty kegs, cartons, wastebasket, whatever. The city is hounding this person to get rid of this storage space,” said Lothian,
She added that other businesses are complaining about shoplifting, homeless people, a knife being pulled on someone in a grocery store, and she doesn’t understand why the city is “hounding a productive business and not helping businesses in need.”
The underlying causes of the riots in 2020
Lothian does not believe La Mesa has racial tensions and did not attend the Juneteenth celebration earlier this year, due in part to her busy schedule as a realtor but also over safety concerns, though she acknowledged it turned out to be a positive and peaceful event.
Asked her assessment of the root causes of the May 2020 protest that ended in a riot in La Mesa, Lothian said, “2020 was probably the craziest year in American history. Everyone has been imprisoned in their homes and apartments. We had the horrific, live, everyone saw, the death of George Floyd… and it spurted an amazingly high amount of anger. So, when we had our own George Floyd mini-incident [a white LMPD officer who falsified a report against a young black man after an altercation at a La Mesa trolley stop that sparked a viral video], it became a perfect opportunity for people to express their frustration and anger,” shared Lothian. “I got angry at how the media portrayed the whole thing. They portrayed the police officer as conducting ‘police brutality,’ which was an exaggeration. And they depicted the riot as a protest, which was an understatement. So, they magnified one thing, and underplayed another.”
Endorsements
Lothian is endorsed by the La Mesa Police Officers’ Association, La Mesa Firefighters, the Republican Party of San Diego County, the Lincoln Club, Reform California, the East County Chamber of Commerce, El Cajon Mayor Bill Wells, Coronado Mayor Rich Bailey, Santee Mayor John Mitchell, State Senator Brian Jones, Supervisor Joel Anderson, and the San Diego County Gun Owners.
For more information on her candidacy, visit https://www.lauraforlamesa.com/.
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