Candidates Alissa Roston, left, and Myra Demeter are vying for two open seats on the Beverly Hills City Council in the March 5 election. (photos courtesy of Alissa Roston and Myra Demeter)

Beverly Hills City Council candidate Alissa Roston has been busy sharing her vision for the future of the city following her campaign launch in December. She is stressing the importance of having experience in governance and the need for more collaboration with residents from all walks of life to address the city’s pressing issues.

Roston has been a Beverly Hills resident for more than 40 years and raised four children in the city. She served on the Beverly Hills Unified School District Board of Education for two terms from 1999-2007 and was vice president of the Beverly Hills Education Foundation. She has also served on the city’s Charitable Solicitation Commis-sion, Recreation and Parks Commission and Climate Action and Adaptation Committee, and is a recipient of the Embrace Civility Award. Roston said her extensive experience in city affairs will enable her to make an immediate impact.

“I think that we do a very good job in the city of Beverly Hills of how things are managed. I do believe we’ve been on the right track, but there are certainly things we need to focus on and my main areas of focus are safety, planning and accountability,” Roston said. “Public safety is still the No. 1 concern of people in our community. I believe it starts with increasing the police presence and visibility throughout the city. We do a great job of apprehending criminals with all the technology that we have and I think all the technology is excellent – we need to continue to fund that. We also need to continue to fully fund our police department, and I think we need to increase the visibility and presence of police officers around the city.”

Roston said more law enforcement presence will be particularly important with the Metro subway opening in 2025 and major upcoming events bringing visitors to Beverly Hills. While the subway will bring more opportunities for transit, it is important to have an adequate police presence around it to preserve public safety, she said.

“Los Angeles is going to be home to the 2026 World Cup, the Super Bowl in 2027 and the Olympics in 2028, and we really do need to be collaborating on a much more regional basis. It’s imperative that we begin a safety plan now, because the impact on our community is going to be enormous.”

Roston also stressed what she called “collaborative city planning,” which will help guide growth in the coming years while preserving quality of life.

“I think that we need to do a much better job on our outreach to our residents and keeping them informed, because many of them feel very much outside of the loop on major developments,” Roston said.

She said she supported the Cheval Blanc hotel project, one of the largest development projects to go before the city in recent years. The City Council initially approved the project, but a referendum was held and the project was rejected by voters.

“I struggled with that project when it came before the voters because I felt that it was out of scale for the area, and I shared some of the feelings that the city wasn’t getting enough money in the development agreement,” Roston said. “I did not actually vote on it until a day or so before the election, and I ultimately did support it. I voted for it because I felt that the financial benefits that would be derived outweighed the negative [impacts] at this point in time.”

Roston also commented on lawsuits currently pending against the city, including one alleging racial profiling against the police department, another over the city removal of trees on Robertson Boulevard and a third alleging the city conspired to block a reproductive clinic from opening. In terms of the racial profiling allegations, Roston said she favors more training for police officers to ensure profiling does not occur.

She said more collaboration with residents and business owners may have led to solutions with the tree removals on Robertson Boulevard. The same type of collaboration and cooperation with the reproductive clinic could potentially have prevented litigation in that case.

Roston also said she believes  financial accountability is paramount, and the city should provide more oversight on how taxpayer money is spent.

“It requires transparency and how the city involves the community in the budget and finance process. I personally have served on multiple boards, and on the Budget and Finance Committee also, and I’ve always begun with a full financial review of how things work,” Roston said. “If you look at the finances, you could really understand priorities. I would approach this job the same way. There is concern over how money is spent, and I do think that we need to evaluate the return on investment for these various expenditures. There are numerous consultants, third party contracts and vendor agreements, and I think we need to create more oversight of those to be sure we’re getting the bang for the buck, and to mandate accountability from all of them.”

Roston said she plans to continue meeting as many people as possible and there will be many upcoming opportunities for residents to voice concerns to her.

“I am out walking, knocking on doors and enjoying meeting my fellow residents and hearing from them as to what they think is important,” Roston said. “I really do think that this is not an entry level position for someone wanting to come in and be active in the city. I think experience counts, and having a grasp of governance. I have that comprehensive grasp of governance, policy and finance, and I think that’s really vital.”

For information, visit rostonforcouncil.com.

Demeter determined to bring improvements to Beverly Hills council

Beverly Hills City Council candidate Myra Demeter, who currently serves as chair of the planning commission, said she is intimately familiar with the issues that affect the city.

She began her civic service after moving to the city from New York 27 years ago with her husband and family. She has been elected to the Beverly Hills Unified School District Board of Education, and has served an appointed city commissioner and nonprofit leader with Friends of the Beverly Hills Library. She said she will bring a unique perspective as an educator to the City Council, and knows the importance of listening to constituents. Her experience on the planning commission, as well the city’s health and safety commission, gives her the knowledge needed to be an effective legislator, she said.

“I’ve been on the planning commission three and a half years, where I enjoy it a lot. I’m known for my investigative skills, my deep research into projects, my listening to all parties, both the applicants as well as the residents, and making decisions, encouraging development that does not have severe restrictions on residents. Whether I like the project or not is not a factor. What we are charged with doing is determining the effect on residents,” Demeter said. “It takes a lot of study and knowledge of the city as well as state processes and ordinances. I’ve been encouraged that since I have this unique background, and work to collaborate, to lead and to achieve goals, that the City Council would be a good place for me to be.”

Demeter said public safety remains the top priority in the city and she believes the Beverly Hills Police Department has made progress. She said more can be done, however, and she plans to ensure safety remains at the forefront.

“We have an excellent police department, they are very well equipped,” said Demeter, who added that she recently completed the BHPD Citizens Police Academy. “Where we do need to work, for instance, is creating a hotline for hate crime, a hotline for antisemitic instances, something where residents can report things very quickly to get them taken care of. I think that we can also look toward promoting the fact that if you come to Beverly Hills to commit a crime, you will be caught. We have to make sure that our synagogues, our places of worship and our schools, and our play areas are well protected from these things.”

Demeter also said development is a pressing issue, and she has dealt with it extensively on the planning commission. The city must find places to build affordable housing, on which Demeter said she will take the lead.

“On the planning commission, we have worked with staff to review and do a survey of every single place within the mixed-use zone that could possibly fit housing,” Demeter said. “I do not feel that we should encroach on R1 (single-family residential) and other residential areas. We do have the mixed-use area, and there are particular areas in our city where we can encourage more density, more height, such as Gale Drive, which is right near the subway. We also have another publicly owned space in the north industrial area (along Foothill Drive) that would also be a wonderful place [for housing].”

As a member of the planning commission, she supported the Cheval Blanc hotel project and fought to ensure the developer followed rules and offered benefits to the city.

“My record is transparent. The City Council directed us to evaluate independent technical studies and to listen to the issues presented by the neighbors on Rodeo and residents. It was a two year process and we made our concerns very clear to LVMH, and only after they agreed to major concessions and revisions, and satisfied the neighbors, did we vote to certify the project. It was not a political vote. We had no say on the development agreement. I do honor the concerns of residents who felt the project was not right for the city.”

Demeter said as a former New Yorker, she supports the subway and believes it will provide a new way to navigate the city.

“I think that we have great opportunities with the subway coming into Beverly Hills. We will be able to go downtown quickly, we can go to Koreatown, we can go to The Grove, employees in our shops and offices can take the train to work and the subway will hopefully reduce some traffic,” Demeter said. “That being said, on the subway system, there have been well documented mental health issues and issues with crime and drug use. One of the things I support is the creation of a resident Rider Advisory Committee who would inform City Council on recommendations to maximize ridership, reduce traffic and promote safety. We also need an increased the BHPD presence around Metro stops making the area safe for residents and riders. It is a concern that we must address before the stations open.”

Demeter said she has strong opinions on lawsuits currently pending against the city alleging racial profiling against the police department and the city’s involvement in blocking a reproductive clinic from opening, as well as the removal of trees on Robertson Boulevard.

“With the DuPont abortion clinic … I would like a full investigation into this, because I do not believe that it is the City Council’s place to interfere with a lease between a landlord and applicants, and it should not have happened. I feel very strongly that the City Council was hypocritical in terms of supporting abortion access and making a proclamation and then supposedly going on to interfere with the lease in the DuPont clinic,” she said. “With the other two, I think that the trees on Robertson were not handled well. I do not feel there was enough information put out to people. I think that many, many people expected it but their voices were not heard. And I hope that the courts will look at this and that they will stop any more from being taken down.

“With racial profiling, in the Citizens Police Academy, we took a survey of our perceptions at the beginning and it included if we think they are biased, and then we took a survey at the end, after we went through the entire course on the way they operate, saw the data, and were able to determine what criteria they are using in order to keep us safe. I was convinced that they are doing a very fair job. I do not believe that they were biased in any way.”

Demeter said she will represent people from all backgrounds, including renters and landlords. She is staunchly opposed to limitations on public comment put into place in 2023 limiting comments from three to two minutes in City Council.

“Protocol now in city council is to restrict public comment. They have shortened the public comments and they do not read letters anymore,” Demeter added. “I don’t think that discouraging public comment is the way to move forward in our city in terms of anyone who wants to get up there.”

Demeter criticized the city’s budgeting process, and vowed to bring reforms.

“I am convinced right now that we should pursue zero-based budgeting. We should not take the existing budget with the designated amount and keep adding on. You should go back to a clean slate. It’s going to take time and it’s going to take money, but we should determine how worthwhile each one of our expenditures is, and one of them is our holiday decorations.”

Demeter is looking forward to meeting more people throughout the city to share her strategies for making improvements.

“I have no special interests,” she added. “I am for the people, I am one of the people and I’m really very, very proud to be encouraged to go to City Council.”

For information, visit myrademeter.com. ­