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Politics & Government

An Interview With Councilman Bilbray Ahead of Campaign for Second Term

Bilbray was first elected to a special two-year term. Here he discusses business development, the sandcastle competition and where the city has gone wrong in preparing for a new $29 million hotel.

Sitting in the living room of the Bilbray family home in Imperial Beach, Councilman Brian Bilbray took a break from helping his mother around the house to tell IB Patch why he thinks he should retain his seat on City Council.
Following the death of Councilman Fred McLean, Bilbray is serving a special two-year term.

Since being elected in 2010, Bilbray has advocated for relaxed rules at the Skate Park, accommodating facilities for medical marijuana patients and a dog beach when other Councilmembers gave up.

Patch: Tell me about your life here in Imperial Beach.

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Bilbray: I was born in Coronado and lived here my whole life. My dad was mayor, so we have always had that tight connection with Imperial Beach. Learned how to surf here when I was seven, love the city and grew up going to the beach here. I have always enjoyed the people of IB, even though a lot of them did not like my dad (Congressman Brian Bilbray). Every time I have had to go away, I always come back. I miss it.

It has been fun to see the changes happen here. We don't have the gangs running around like we used to have. It has definitely has gotten better, it is not "Venereal Beach" anymore. It is definitely Imperial Beach now.

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Whenever I go out among the county and different cities, everyone talks about how the city is a good city now. It has good water, we still have a pollution problem of course, but everybody recognizes Imperial Beach isn't what it used to be back in the 70s, 80s and early 90s. It has changed. A lot of that has to do with the sheriff's department and the hard work of past city councils.

Patch: Why do you believe you should remain on city council?

Bilbray: Honestly, I feel that we are at a tipping point right now and I feel that experience does matter. Now that I have been on for two years, if somebody else stepped in, it would take them another two years to get going. At this tipping point I feel we need people in there to do not only what is positive but can do what is best for the city now, and standing up for it.

I am nobody's puppet.

I enjoy talking with everyone on the council, but when I think somebody is wrong, I will tell them. I'm not shy about that. I enjoy that we are able to respect each other, even when we disagree and not go into name-calling. That's the main thing. It's your job when you disagree with somebody to change our minds with good reasoning and intellect. It is not to get mad.
It gets heated at times, but that isn't anything in politics when you are passionate about something.

It will be interesting this year, running for reelection, and hopefully I have done my job well enough to put me back on. Living in a small town where everybody knows everyone is a double-edged sword sometimes. People in a small town are going to vote for me because of my dad and others are just going to hate me because of my dad too. It doesn't matter what I do. Word of mouth gets around a lot quicker, but I'd rather be here doing what I am doing here in the city compared with what my dad is doing now, fighting for his district.

Patch: If you are elected, you'll have a bit more time because you only had a two-year term. What sort of things do you envision as some of your goals if you're elected to a second term?

Bilbray: Really promoting development down on Seacoast Drive. Trying to get all those empty lots rebuilt or built and then getting mixed use rebuilt in all those old buildings that are down there. I mean we're all in agreement on council that Seacoast is going to be our main draw because the beach is our main draw and we really need a push now to figure out how to get developers to come down and really revamp that old Seacoast area. Cause once that's done it's a catalyst for everywhere else in the city. 

Patch: That's something I was especially curious about because there was this workshop meeting held last fall where that was probably the topic of discussion, getting things moving on Seacoast, taking advantage of the fact that the new hotel's going to be there and all that, but to my knowledge that has not moved.

That has not done anything since that meeting took place and we're not getting any further away from when the hotel's going to be built. In fact, the short term plan was six months and we're coming up on six months from when the hotel opens and council hasn't even had anything to do with that. So what do you think about the fact that the city hasn't moved forward with those plans?

Bilbray: Yeah I think it should be… I mean at the last workshop it was a topic of discussion as well and we went into it. 

Yeah well you're right. The city hasn't done what I think should be done. I mean everybody keeps on reiterating it, and finally they will hear us but we also have the chamber helping us out with all this too. I'm the Chamber of Commerce liaison too. They're going through and trying to figure out what the city can do or anybody in Imperial Beach can do in order to get development starting to go on in Imperial Beach.

Yeah you're right it's kind of disheartening that we haven't put the emphasis on getting more construction done in the city or just revamping everything. The buildings are all super outdated. Everything needs to be done. 

Patch: Well whatever is going to get done, if it was worth enough time for council and city staff to meet for two hours to talk about this as a major subject and then when you emphasized it as being important, I understand that redevelopment has kind of gotten in the way of any sort of other plans, but this hotel has been on the way for a while, and [Councilman] Spriggs in one of the last times I spoke to him, he was saying something like this should have been in motion at least a year ago.

Bilbray: Oh it should have been two years ago. The way that government works it should have been two years ago. We're trying to do all this at the last minute and government doesn't work that way because you've got to get approvals through every bureaucratic red tape you can think of in order to get something even built down there. 

Patch: What about the sandcastle competition? Have you heard anything about that? When I talk to people around town, that's the one that they always bring up like why the heck would they let it fail? And I understand it's all volunteer.

Bilbray: Yeah it's all volunteer. It's been volunteer since the very beginning. When my father actually was mayor at the time and appointed the two council members that were part of that original committee and my mom has helped as a treasurer since the beginning too. For the most part what I've heard rumors about is that somebody wants to take it over but move it up to San Diego. 

Yeah we really have to fight tooth and nail. We really need to get some new blood in there. We need the mayor to maybe step up and appoint two more council members in order to get a new committee going and maybe we'll figure it out. I don't think it's dead, completely dead. We're going to miss it for a year and people are going to start stepping up in the city and really taking it over. Or that's what I'm hoping.

It needs new fresh faces. Everybody's just burnt out on it and we really need to look as a city at ourselves and why sandcastles failed. And I would like to really dive into that and maybe have a briefing from committee members, the sheriff and the city and see what they all have to say about why this failed. Cause there's a lot of finger pointing going on, and if we're really going to figure it out . We really need to talk to more people or get them on the record and what they have to say about it. 

Patch: Tell me more about your thoughts on the beach and the Tijuana Estuary.

Bilbray: My passion for the estuary and the ocean comes from being out there all the time. My family has had different opinions about what could have happened with the estuary but it is there and we need to do everything we can to preserve it.

Right now it is silted in. If they silt in anymore then all the wildlife down there that we are trying to keep here for ecotourism will be gone. It is going to turn into a wasteland. They are there because of the fish and invertebrates in the water. Once those things get choked off the fish aren't going to be there, therefore the cranes will not be there. The birds aren't going to be there because they are there for the fish nursery that the estuary is. I recognize it, I believe it is beautiful, but we need to fight to figure out a way to preserve it.

Some concessions have to be made because if you want to stop the silting problem we are probably going to have to have a commercial company come in and do sand dredging in the river valley. That is letting somebody make a profit off it. You are taking taxpayers money, that is millions of dollars every year or two to make dredge out the silting ponds in the river valley. To me it is a lot more cost effective to allow somebody to go in and dredge it out. They can go deeper and they will catch more silt and then let them ship it out of there. Save the taxpayers' money and you have a guarantee that someone is going to maintain it.

Patch: How does the Imperial Beach Master Plan work with Chula Vista's Master Bayfront Plan and do you believe the fight over redevelopment agencies is over?

Bilbray: Chula Vista's redevelopment will help the area. I think really concentrating on Bikeway Village and the bike path I think it will be an exciting time. It will be that catalyst the city needs to get 13th Street all redone, and that is really a forgotten spot in Imperial Beach. People forget that our city goes that deep. It will be nice to have all that done and then have our sister city of Chula Vista doing it at the same time. It will be quite a change there.

I hope the fight over redevelopment is not over, but I am leaning towards that fact that it probably is over. Which is a shame, because without redevelopment, everybody knows the hotel wouldn't' be happening, 9th and Palm wouldn't be as close to happening as it is. A lot of things going on in the city wouldn't be happening.

We might have to lay off some people that work for the city. It's a shame that nobody saw this coming earlier because we have been playing Russian roulette with other people's money for so long.

The hotel should have been put in a long time ago. 9th and Palm should have been done a long time ago. Hopefully, with this happening it will open everybody's eyes that some concessions need to be done for development so we can sustain our surfer town way of life. Otherwise, we are going to be absorbed by San Diego and you can kiss our small town surfer town way of life goodbye. They are going to come down here and turn us into Pacific Beach or worse, South San Diego. That's what I'm really afraid of.

On one hand, you have Coronado. That whole city is a redevelopment agency. Then, you have Imperial Beach where we actually need that money to get everything going. That's who it's hurting, it's not hurting Coronado. Coronado could care less.

They have so many hotels there they don't need the money. A town like us, we are struggling and just starting to come out of everything and now we get hit again. This is the second time Governor Jerry Brown has come down here and taken money from the cities. He did it back in the 80s when my dad was on the council.

Right now I want to push to find some developers to come down on their own, give them what they need to build another hotel somewhere on Seacoast, so you have two hotels. That way you can start getting the Transient and Occupancy Tax's in, which will start bringing revenue in and will help businesses come into Imperial Beach. That means looking at what is inhibiting people to come down to IB; what are our policies that make people not want to come down to Imperial Beach and invest in the city.

Patch: During your first campaign, you advocated for cleaner water and beaches. Where does that stand now and what progress have you seen?

Bilbray: I am continuing to advocate for clean water. I'll never stop that fight. It was my privilege to give a speech at the International Boundary and Water Commission sewage treatment plant dedication. People may not have agreed with what I had to say, but I told them exactly what I thought needed to be said, that it took us 34 years to get to this point and we shouldn't be patting ourselves on the back. We should be hanging our heads in shame.
I enjoyed that and I will keep doing it. Unless we keep pressure on both federal governments than nothing is never going to happen. You can't just sit back and expect something to change by being everybody's friend. You have to poke them to get them going.

I will continue with that and working with the federal government, my friends in different places, to get every extra inch of new sand for our beaches. The beach is the number one draw to the city. It's not ecotourism, it is the beach and that is what we really need to concentrate on doing is getting beach goers to come here. Then we can start working on the ecotourism more. First thing is getting the beach goers coming, fill that hotel and when they get tired of going to the beach then they can go down to the estuary and the bay and enjoy the wildlife.

Patch: Do you feel council is keeping up with the city's master plan and are there any solutions or ideas that you have to make it better?

Bilbray: There are some things I would have done differently (with the Imperial Beach Master Plan), like looking at the height restrictions on the hotel. It is hard for me to sit and listen to Mr. Spriggs when he doesn't agree with one part, because I don't agree with everything, like the hotel height and the restrictions to the new zoning ordinance. A little more higher would not have hurt. It's not how high you go, it's how you go high.

Like 9th and Palm, it is only one story. There is no reason it couldn't have been a two-story. It could have doubled residential like they have in Eastlake in Chula Vista. They did a really good job out there and that is what we should be modeling after. But, it is still better than nothing. It is better for the city to let the project go ahead instead of stopping it and redoing it. It would be another 10 or 15 years before anything is done. It is making those concessions.

Ten or fifteen years ago did you think you would ever be able to get internet wirelessly? What do you think it is going to be in 10 years? Everything is going to run off solar panels. We are not even going to have to wire anything. We just drop them in. The crosswalks are already solar powered. To stop a project for one thing would have stretched it out much longer. It would not have been two weeks. Concessions have to be made.

I understand wanting better lighting but that is why you set it up for the future when everything else needs to be put in that this is what we want in the future. Set the groundwork for it now because in 10 years everything is going to have to be changed out anyway, that how the infrastructure works these day.

Everything has to be upgraded, especially with California being the way it is, I guarantee that things are going to have to be solar powered in 10 years. It's going to be federal and state mandated. I can see it coming. Therefore, we are all different in several things but we all respect each other. That was one of our more heated discussions.

Patch: You have pushed to get council to come up with programs and social networks to get young people involved in local politics, why is this important to you?

Bilbray: I am really looking forward in finding ways to motivate the young people to come out. Even if it is, just to get them to come out to the city council meetings. It's getting the information out there. Yesterday, they were asking me to get the dates for Operation Beaver and Sandcastle.

So I went over the library where they have those binders of old newspapers they got from Chula Vista and I was looking through them and Operation Beaver, there is my dad with a radio in his hand and then there was Serge Dedina when he was 16 sitting on the dyke my dad was trying to build.

At 16, that is what started Serge Dedina's career. It got him motivated and that is what we have to do. Get young people to come speak at the council meetings and demonstrate something and start following local politics, starting in high school. Tours, internships, something to allow them to come in and really work, that is where it all starts. That is where my dad started, in high school politics and my grandfather always talked politics with everybody in the city.

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