Mayor Gordo Talks Elections, Success and Mental Health – Pasadena Now

As big issues beckon like housing, local hiring and the always present specter of the state overriding the City’s zoning code, Mayor Victor Gordo now finds himself a veteran at the dias.

Gordo was first elected in 2001. In 2009 he was selected by the Pasadena City Council to serve as its representative on the Rose Bowl Operating Company (RBOC) and was the longest-serving President/Chair, leading the Stadium’s successful renovation efforts.

Victor has served on the Council’s Finance Committee and chaired the Economic Development and Technology Committee of the City Council.

Now the upstart who questioned the impacts of development 20 plus years ago doles out advice to new Councilmembers as they join the dias explaining the need to be patient as they find their way and gain an understanding of the issues.

“The first thing I say to them is, no one comes to the job for the first time with the experience of having had the job. So learn as much as you can. Just absorb it all, and don’t feel bad if we’re using jargon that may be unfamiliar to you. And the other thing I say to them is, be willing to ask for help if you need it, and be willing to give it if you’re asked to.”

“That served me well. I use myself as an example. It took me a long time to figure out the different jargon for every department. Pasadena is a complex city. I tell people we are a large city trapped in the body of the small one. We have all the big city issues. Huge.”

But even if Gordo now has more of an understanding on local matters than he did when he first came to the City Council, one thing has not changed.

In every matter that comes before the City Council, Mayor Gordo has just one vote.

“It’s true. I am just one vote, but I believe my job as Mayor is to help members of the City Council serve their respective districts and constituents. And so if there are issues that are important to neighborhoods in your district or individuals in your district, and you’re not getting the response that you need from the staff or the City Manager or the City Attorney. Let me know and let’s work on it together. I’m here to help members of the City Council do a good job, and the staff do a good job and they help me too. It’s a team approach.”

But the team could soon change. 

At least one new member will join the City Council next year due to a pending vacancy that will definitely occur if District 2 Councilmember Felicia Williams goes through with her plans to compete for the California Assembly seat currently held by Chris Holden.

If she officially enters the Assembly race, Williams will have to vacate her seat when it comes up for reelection since she cannot appear on the ballot twice. The District 2 seat and the Assembly seat will both be decided in the 2024 election.

The District 2 seat is not the only one up for grabs. In total six seats 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and the Mayor’s chair will be decided.

“I think that the residents of Pasadena want balance,” Gordo said. “They want thoughtful individuals who are willing to work with each other and just as important, listen. I think the voters will pay close attention to who is thoughtful, who is pushing the city in the direction that benefits the greatest number of people that results in a better Pasadena for everyone. I think what’s going to win the day is the candidates who have proven themselves to be willing to work together and be open to different ideas.”

Right now Gordo is on the path to different ideas about success. 

When he was a student at Pasadena High School he took a shop class and although his career didn’t follow that path, his time in the class impacted him. 

At that time, the local school district offered classes in automotive repair, as well metal and wood shop classes. 

“I took some of those classes and quickly realized I better learn to do something else,” Gordo said. “You did not want to see me with a hammer in my hand or anything that resembled it, nor did I. So I realized that wasn’t for me.”

But although the classes weren’t for the future Mayor, he did see many of his friends succeed there and today they make their living with the skills they learned in shop classes. 

“They’re very successful electricians, own very successful roofing companies, metal shops, auto shops. I realize looking back they were exploring a path for success for themselves that they were interested in. I think we made a tremendous mistake in the early 1990s when we said, every child has to go to college to be successful.”

Now Gordo wants to work with institutions across the City to help institute paths to success.

“I’d like to see us open those paths to success and not just for trades people. When I talked to Dr. Lori Morgan at the hospital, who actually right here in this office helped me think through the idea, when I asked her, what can the City do to be helpful to the hospital?”

“She looked at me and she said, we need more nurses. We need more bedside assistance, we need people to work. And then when we see the reports on local hire, the trades will tell us, you don’t have the trained workforce. And so we’re always disappointed when we only see five, 10, 15, 20 people from our community, working on a big job.”

Gordo’s goal is to see more local people working on projects across the freeway including the 710 Reclamation Project.

“My goal is when that first shovel goes into the ground at the 710, that it be someone from this community who puts that shovel in the ground because they had the opportunity to train right here in our school district, in our city, and in our city college. When that first bulldozer moves a ton or two of dirt, I want it to be someone from our community who was trained to do that here.”

“The landscapers, designers, even architects, I want to introduce our young people to different paths to success. For those who want to go to college, we ought to ensure they have the resources and support systems they need to get to, and encourage them to go to college and be successful there,” he said. “But we also need to recognize that some people would prefer a different pathway using their minds  and hands in a different way. And that’s just as honorable. And somewhere along the line in society we made it, I won’t say dishonorable, but we put a cloud over that when we said everybody has to go to college.”

Gordo decided to run for Mayor to change the tone at City Hall. Although beating an incumbent in Pasadena has proven all but impossible.

This was different. 

Although Terry Tornek was the incumbent, Gordo was already in the Council Chambers also and was hardly an unknown.

Gordo entered his service at City Hall in 1997 as Bill Crowfoot’s field representative after voting lines were redrawn to create a district guaranteeing Latinx voters a fair chance at representation and the opportunity to participate in the political process.

As a result, District 5 was created, although Latino residents did not immediately elect a Latino councilmember, instead opting for Crowfoot.

After Crowfoot finished his term, Gordo successfully ran for the seat and worked with Mayor Bill Bogaard and Tornek before becoming the City’s third elected Mayor in modern times. 

“Let me first say I have a great deal of respect for my predecessor,” Gordo said. “In fact, I’ve met with him here a few times and I’m looking for a way to involve him. I think he has a lot to offer and he did a great job.”

Gordo thought he could connect with people from every part of the city in a different way.

“I felt like the tone wasn’t correct. And I felt that I could walk in every part of this city and every neighborhood in this city and connect with people at every social strata in this city because of my life’s experience and because I grew up in this city. I thought that’s what we needed.”

But there were big issues on the horizon during the campaign.

After City government shut down during the pandemic it was then-Councilmember Gordo who called for it to reopen in an op/ed in Pasadena Now after the Planning Commission met to vote on conditional use permit for a cannabis operator.

The campaigns were temporarily suspended by both sides to help guide the City through the pandemic.

And then there was the George Floyd incident in Minneapolis which moved a City Council that half-heartedly discussed oversight to have its serious discussion on a police oversight commission.

“We knew social equity was an issue that was just under the surface. But during the George Floyd events, it broke the surface in a very powerful way that changed a lot of people’s thinking and prioritized the need to address those issues.”

“The George Floyd incident, that from my perspective, changed everything from policing to housing to social services, and really brought to the forefront an issue that’s been maybe just under the surface. Again, we could have predicted those discussions, but during the pandemic, those issues just broke the surface with such emotion and that we’ve never seen before.”

And although he has no power over the Police Chief or the police department, Gordo says he still has a responsibility to make sure the people of Pasadena are being treated fairly. 

“It is my job to represent people. And so if residents have a concern, then it’s my job to bring it up to the City Manager and say, this is a concern. Can you look into it? I’m not always entitled to the information because many of the issues are personnel matters. And that’s the purview under our charter of the City Manager and the Police Chief.”

“But I do raise the concerns and I’ve had complaints cross my desk, or screen or cell phone via text where people have very legitimate complaints. And my job is to ensure that those complaints are taken seriously by the police department or any other department, that they’re investigated and looked into, and that there’s an outcome that’s acceptable.”

“Again, I don’t always know the specific outcome, but I do know how many complaints go over, how many are received, how many result in an investigation, and what the numbers are in terms of outcome, how many resulted in training or discipline or were unfounded. And that’s the data that we should all look to.”

Early in his career, Gordo asked the U.S. attorney for the Central District, which covers Pasadena, what he should look for to make sure the police department was running properly. 

Gordo was told to check the complaint system, and make sure complaints were being received, followed up on, investigated, and to look at the outcomes. 

At that time a police department in the midwest was making news after 1,000 complaints resulted in just one investigation.

Gordo began looking into the local department asking the chief about the number of use of force complaints the department had received and how many resulted in investigations. Of the 26 complaints, 23 were actively being investigated. The other three would later be investigated also and 16 of the complaints resulted in disciplinary action and three others resulted in further training.

“People don’t always like or want to accept the outcome, but fairness is an important word. Fairness applies to everyone across the board. We have to follow the rules. It’s when we stop following the rules that we find trouble.”

But now Gordo wants to change the rules when it comes to mental health.

“People say to me, what happened? How did we end up with so many more mental health issues in our society? I think they’ve been there, but no one wants to lead with I’ve got family members or friends or I myself am struggling with mental health issues. Nobody wants to lead with that. And particularly in communities of color and socioeconomic and families at the lower socioeconomic levels, people don’t talk about it because if you talk about it, then suddenly the question becomes, what are you going to do about it?”

“I think what the pandemic did is suddenly we were all at home together. We were all relying on our close circle of friends, and it surfaced. It was staring us in the face, and it triggered issues in some people. And suddenly we had nowhere to run.”

“When we pulled up at the corner and someone was there panhandling. We didn’t want to see the fact that there were other issues there. But now it’s growing in such numbers that it’s staring us in the face.”

“A lot of us would prefer to just look straight forward and still do. But I think we have to just face it. I had the opportunity to connect with United States Senator John Tester from Wyoming, and I asked him about the mental health issue from his perspective at the US Senate level. And his answer to me was very revealing. He said, ‘Mayor, it’s likely the most important issue facing our country, and this country is going to struggle with this issue for at least the next 50 years because we’re not equipped right now to deal with it today.”

“And so we have to put infrastructure in place and then get underneath it everything else and deal with.”

In April, Gordo and Los Angeles County Supervisor Kathryn Barger stood side by side to announce a new partnership that will acquire a Kaiser Permanente building that has stood empty in north Pasadena and transform it into a housing and community services site. 

The purchase of the $12 million building and grounds at 450 N. Lake Ave. has been approved by the Pasadena City Council, but has not been finalized.

The property will be transformed into a community services site and housing that offers affordable housing, mental health care services, and primary outpatient services. The project was initiated in response to a motion introduced by Barger in March to bring the services to the north Pasadena region, which was identified as a high-priority area by the County Department of Health Services.

“One of the things I learned when I went to the county is they’re leaving money on the table. They’re not even spending the money because they don’t have the capacity. So that money just sits there. Going into the pandemic, we were down as a state. We already had a shortage of 44% of the needed public sector mental health clinicians going into the pandemic. We had a shortage in order to meet the need before the pandemic of 44% of the new mental health clinic. So we were starting under zero. So then I looked further and I approached the Department of Mental Health. I said, look, we got to have a clinic. We got to have services at Pasadena.”

But as Gordo dug deeper there was even more bad news. L.A. County has 3,000 clinicians which led to a training component that includes Fuller Seminary and Pasadena City College, both schools will reimburse tuition.

Barger’s motion called for the County to develop a funding plan to acquire a property where housing, health and mental health departments, and local mental health organizations could co-locate and fill a service gap.

“Suddenly I’ve learned a lot about a lot of different issues. More than I ever imagined,” Gordo said. “It’s been a tremendous, tremendous experience with a lot of work and a lot of hours here at City Hall and in the community trying to grapple with these issues. We work with the staff to ensure that we have the resources that are needed and assure the community that we’re going to address those and everything’s going to be right. It’s a heck of a challenge.”