myBurbank Talks
myBurbank Talks
Meet the Candidate: Konstantine Anthony - Burbank City Council Candidate
Konstantine Anthony's journey from the Bay Area to the Burbank city council is anything but conventional. From his early days near Oakland and a brief stay in rural Iowa to pursuing a passion for cinema and comedy in San Francisco, Constantine's path took a significant turn when he moved to Burbank in 2004. With roles in films like Iron Man 2 and TV shows such as Entourage, life seemed set in the entertainment industry. However, his laid-back humor and curiosity eventually led him to politics, where he now serves as a dedicated city councilman.
Our conversation with Konstantine covers the intricacies of local government, focusing on the Olive Street Bridge funding debate between Burbank and Glendale. Constantine offers a candid look at the challenges of adaptive policymaking and how these disputes underscore the need for collaboration. We also delve into the ongoing rent control debate, where Constantine shares his experiences as a co-author of Measure RC. The interplay between local initiatives and state laws like AB 1482 highlights the complexity of managing housing policy at the municipal level.
Listeners will gain insights into Konstantine's vision for Burbank's future, including plans to revitalize the local film industry and foster city council unity. Through discussions on homelessness, police department expenditures, and local tax incentives, Constantine emphasizes the importance of community-focused leadership. His dedication to improving Burbank, from advocating for a year-round homeless shelter to securing fair funding, underscores his commitment to serving the city's residents. Join us for an engaging episode that explores the intersections of entertainment, politics, and community service.
My Burbank Talks presents another episode of Meet the Candidate, the show where we invite anyone appearing on the Burbank ballot in the 2024 election to join us here and give our listeners a chance to learn about their background and the issues important to them. Now let's join our podcast.
Speaker 2:Hello, burbank, craig Short here with you once again and we're doing another Meet the Candidate episode. And we have a very different episode. We're doing one with an incumbent this time. We've always done it with the challengers, but this time the incumbent. So it's a little something different and I think you'll enjoy it. And we want to thank everybody for all the great comments we're getting so far on all these great shows. We appreciate that and we consider it a great service to do to you, the voters. So, anyhow, thank you very much. So today we have with us I'm sorry there we go. Today we have with us our city councilman, constantine Anthony. How are you doing, councilman? I'm doing well, how?
Speaker 3:are you today?
Speaker 2:Things are good. Things are good. I've got to. Sometimes I've got to remember which button to push when I need to push it, but we'll get things here. So you've done a lot of Ask the Mayor episodes here. In fact, anybody wants to go back and watch those. They're on our YouTube channel and all our podcast stations also. So you know you've been around. You've done this before here, been here before, but it's a different type of atmosphere this time. We never really talked about you as a person. It's always been about the issues at the city at the time. So let's start off. Where are you from? Where did you grow up at? You know what's your beginnings?
Speaker 3:Sure, yeah, yeah. I haven't been in the studio since, yeah, since we did the Ask the Mayor stuff back when I was serving as the mayor, so it's good to be back. I see some of your technology has improved. It's impressive If you try.
Speaker 3:Yeah, well, let's see. So I grew up in the Bay Area, just outside of Oakland, a little suburb called Castro Valley, not unlike Burbank, in fact. When I first moved to Burbank it really reminded me of my hometown. I went to school at San Francisco State, studied cinema. I minored in screenwriting. I actually spent this is funny for a couple of years. In middle school.
Speaker 3:I actually lived in Iowa, rural Iowa, a town of 2,600 people, northwest iowa, lion county, rock rapids, and uh, that was a very different uh place, a very different part of the country um than you know. The suburbs I grew up in, probably great experience, though it was incredible. They had all four seasons. Uh, they had four really hard seasons. Um, and just the culture, the economy, the people, um, the experiences were so vastly different than what we get here on the west coast. Um, but then I ended up moving back um, it was part of my dad's job. I moved back to my hometown in castro valley and um yeah, finished high school, went to san francisco state um lived in daily city for a while, lived uh. Then moved down uh near the san jose area, lived in sunnyvale for a while. Uh started doing comedy down there. Um, I was with um, an organization called comedy sports. That's comedy sports with a Z on the end, because in 1985, that was funny to do, that when they started.
Speaker 2:And it still isn't.
Speaker 3:So I did improv comedy for a very long time, about 20 years or so. I moved to Burbank in 2004, just over 20 years ago to pursue comedy and acting and film and television and all of that stuff. Got a couple parts here and there.
Speaker 2:Worked at Universal Studios for a while Is there anything that we would have recognized you in?
Speaker 3:If you look closely, you can see me in a number of stuff. Iron man 2. I'm at Iron Man's birthday party. I was in one of the Academy Awards openings, the one with Ellen DeGeneres. I play a Borat impersonator. That was very fun. And then I did a couple episodes of the show entourage uh, their seventh season, um, and that was, uh, probably the biggest paycheck I got. Um was doing that show and I still get some residuals from there. Um, but I worked on a bunch of shows, um castle law and order, la, if you remember, they did like one season.
Speaker 3:They tried, yeah, yeah, yeah, I worked on that show, um, but yeah, I worked on all the studios around town. Um, just, uh, you know, was trying to make a name for myself, um, trying to really dig into that comedy career and that kind of thing. So, um, I was doing live comedy and a little bit of stand-up as well to mix in with the improv. Some sketch comedy started doing shorts, uh, online youtube, vimeo, and vimeo was really hot with the comedy uh, short um sketches. And then you know, sort of had a kid and decided, well, you know, I need a real job, right, got to start providing and so I started driving for Uber and Lyft. I actually got a part-time job doing property management for apartment buildings and so between those two started to eke out a living and still, you know, kept up with my um comedy and auditions and acting and stuff like that Um, it sounds like a lot of life experiences.
Speaker 2:Oh boy, okay, politics. So what? When did you think about? Did you think about politics at all when you were, when you were younger at all, or what? What? What led you into politics?
Speaker 3:If you'd have told me that I would be an elected official at any point in my life, I would have thought you were nuts. You know, people know me as a very funny, easygoing guy who doesn't take anything seriously. Funny, easygoing guy who doesn't take anything seriously. Um, I'm very, you know, calm and relaxed and sort of laid back. Um, that's how everybody knows me.
Speaker 3:So, for me, to take on a job as serious as, like you know, being the steward of a city uh, it was, it was a drastic change for me. Um, in 2016, I was poached by a presidential campaign to write jokes and do memes online, um, and I thought, you know, this is such a unique and rare opportunity, mostly because the candidate she was running against was very easy to make fun of. So I, you know, wanted to serve my country by making memes. So it was just that's America. Yeah, exactly, uh, that's the political discourse we find ourselves in.
Speaker 3:So in 2016, I was I got recruited by Hillary for America specifically to work on disability rights platform and a Facebook group to generate content to make the lighthearted poking fun of her opponent, but really to like, send out messaging about why that presidential race was really important and it was stuff I could get behind. I had looked into the policies and I had been working in disability rights activism for a couple of years, not in any political way, but more just in taking a stand on certain things. When I was 28, I was given sort of a little bit of information about myself that I should look into it, and it was an old friend of mine called me up and said hey, have you ever considered trying to get a diagnosis for autism, which you know at 28 seems kind of a shock that late, late, but let's talk about that a little.
Speaker 2:So you come out and let people know that you are now, you know, diagnosed and confirmed with autism. It's not a we don't hide it in the corner anymore, you know. We talk openly about it. So talk about you know. I believe you were the first mayor in the United States that diagnosed with it. That was the mayor. So why don't you discuss that a little and your experiences with that?
Speaker 3:yeah, you know, even at 28 I was um, sort of hesitant to even take it on because I didn't. It was new, right, so I didn't want to overstep or say the wrong thing or maybe it was a misdiagnosis. So it actually took me a couple years to really accept it for myself. So, you know, right around 30, 31 years old especially, you know, right when my son was born, I really wanted to own it and take ownership of it and understand what it is. And so, you know, I did a lot of reading and did a deep dive and research and tried to understand who I was. And research and tried to understand who I was, and it was a good thing, I think, at the time, because, you know, after about six months of my son being born, he ended up getting a diagnosis. And I think the only reason we were able to get him such an early diagnosis because I was aware of it for myself.
Speaker 3:So is autism hereditary? So it's not exactly hereditary. It's they call it mostly hereditary. So it's not exactly hereditary. They call it mostly hereditary. So you have a very high chance of getting it if one of your parents has it. But it also is what is known as a de novo mutation, meaning two parents who don't have it could suddenly have a kid who does have it. So it does happen at random, but inherited traits do lead to a higher possibility of getting it. And so because I, you know, was looking at who I was and my diagnosis, we were able to catch his very early on. Now he was officially diagnosed because he had all the battery of treatments and doctors and all of that and they were looking for it.
Speaker 3:It's much harder as an adult to get the diagnosis, and this is one of the things I found in my disability advocacy.
Speaker 3:And so, after I was elected in 2020, I had a number of people in the disability community come up to me and talk to me about the problems of getting a diagnosis as an adult.
Speaker 3:And so, just as a personal journey for myself, I wanted to see how difficult it was, so I took the time and the fact that I, you know, and the fact that I, you know, for the first time ever, had good insurance through the city I am grateful for that. Government paid health care, one of the benefits of being elected I was able to get actual insurance coverage for the first time in my life. I got a doctor and worked my way through to getting a diagnosis and it was expensive because a lot of it you had to pay out of pocket fees and you know the minimums weren't covered and all of that stuff. But it took me just over, I would say about two years to finally get the diagnosis and it happened maybe a couple months before I got rotated in as the mayor. And yeah, like you said, when I became mayor, when they swore me in, I was the first ever diagnosed autistic mayor in the United States.
Speaker 2:So does that give you now peace of mind that you've had the diagnosis and confirmed it and everything?
Speaker 3:Yeah, it does. You know a lot of people. When I was running four years ago for the first time and talking about my diagnosis, there were people who would say it wasn't a true diagnosis. They were saying I was being fraudulent or presenting myself with something. I don't have some kind of stolen valor, so to speak, with this, and so I think for me it was not just to have safety and security for myself to know, but also to be able to say look, I'm not joking around, this is a real thing. I mean, anybody who knows me, anybody who spent more than five minutes with me, knows that my brain does not work like everybody else. The way I think and the things I say it's very different, and the way I go through my life is very different. So it's super obvious to anyone who knows me. But having the official diagnosis helps with strangers or people who've never met me and have a passing interest in who I am. So it does help in that regard.
Speaker 2:Well, I think you've handled it very well and if you wouldn't have said something about it I probably would never have known it. So I mean it's, but it's still an issue and I think it's great to bring it out in the play, because I'm sure people out there were kind of hiding it or something and that you know and don't want to deal with it.
Speaker 3:And, and so for me you know a lot of the the deep dive I did when I was 28 was to understand how it works, and so now, at 43, I have an understanding of who I am and how I present myself, the accommodations I need, um, the the way I interact with people is very different now, when I was younger, because I know where my strengths and weaknesses lie, and so I, you know, I can handle it better. I can manage it better, and so it doesn't present itself. So, um, um, you know, obviously to everybody else, like maybe if you had known me 15 years ago you'd be like all right, this guy, he's a little different.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm I'm very happy for you and I'm happy, how you know, you've dealt with it and and you know the response, you've gotten to it. But you are here as a candidate, yes, yes, and you're also here as an incumbent, and people listen to these, these podcasts. I'm pretty kind of toughly in comments at times. You've been there, you've lived it, compared to others who just want to talk about it until they get into that position. So, okay, so, number one, we're going to talk issues here. Recently, the council voted to oppose the BRT, which is the Bus Rapid Transit, in its current form. You went to the Metro Board meeting to express support, so I'd like you to clarify why you went to the meeting and how you feel about the BRT in Burbank and on Olive.
Speaker 3:Yes, absolutely so. About two and a half years ago we finalized the letter to the BRT. This is still the letter we have to date at the city. It says that the city council is opposed to dedicated bus lanes for the BRT along Olive unless, unless the Metro board can show us a ridership of 17 and a half thousand, 17 and a half thousand, that's the number they need to hit. Ridership of 17 and a half thousand, 17 and a half thousand, that's the number they need to hit, and then at that point the city would be open to what's called the dedicated lane. So right now we like mixed flow where the bus and cars are all in the same traffic lane. Metro wants us to take out a full lane of traffic and put in bus only, and so our argument was look, we want to start with mixed flow, but if you can show us that ridership is through the roof and there's enough people riding it, we'll be open to having that conversation.
Speaker 3:A couple of months ago there were a number of line items in the Metro budget that had nothing to do with BRT. They were a number of other Metro projects that were going to help Burbank facilitate bus routes in general, not just the BRT but also our routes, metrolink stations, elevators here and there, like different accommodations, that we need changes for. One of the biggest line item budgets in that report just a couple months ago was funding to help us redo the Olive Street Bridge. For those of you who remember, we just did the Burbank Boulevard Bridge a while back and that took such a long time because we were looking at funding from Caltrans, from some federal grant policies, from some county policies and we thought, look, if the BRT, if Metro wants to run a bus line across the Olive Bridge and we were already looking at redoing Burbank, magnolia and Olive Bridge we finished Burbank. We were going to do Magnolia next. You know we had this conversation at the city. Magnolia was going to be the next bridge we wanted to redo and make it like Burbank.
Speaker 3:But if Metro wants to do this thing on Olive, okay, let's flip the order. We'll do Olive next. We'll redo the whole bridge. We'll get it done. You guys can run a bus through. We get our bridge, we get a second elevator. It helps with the stop downstairs, the MetroLink station right downstairs, below the bridge. All of that gets done. But you guys got to pitch in, give us a payment on this because you're getting something, we're getting something. Let's work together. You know they have such a huge budget over there at Metro, so that grant was sitting there and it was pulled at the last second by one of the Metro board members, the one from Glendale. Yeah, council member Arnazarian.
Speaker 3:Interesting huh, our neighbor. Our neighbor who, by the way and I will remind this to all the viewers in Burbank and in Glendale Glendale has not signed their agreement with Metro yet, so they haven't even signed the BRT agreement yet. So I don't know why there's a council member in Glendale telling us what to do when they haven't even signed their own thing yet. That funding for the bridge, which was the biggest piece of the budget, was being held up specifically for the complaint that Burbank hadn't signed on to the BRT yet, even though this was not directly tied to the BRT. In fact, the bridge could stay exactly as it is and we can still run a bus rapid transit across there. It won't work as well, but we can still do it. So this is not dependent on the BRT passing or failing. And yet the argument was made hey, you guys haven't signed your deal, so we're going to hold this funding. And to me that feels like gamesmanship. That feels so hypocritical that the person pulling that has also not signed the deal in his own home city. And yet he's asking to hold funding back for us because we haven't done what he hasn't even done yet, holding us as hostage. Exactly, exactly. And so I felt compelled to go down there and plead my case. And I went down there as an individual. The city didn't vote for this. The other council members didn't give me authority to go down there. I'm simply one person who lives in Burbank, who understands what's happening in Glendale and at Metro, and I said what can I do? I'm here, tell me what you need me to do to make this work. I'll pull some levers. I'll talk to my council members. Please don't pull this funding. This seems almost vindictive. Um, they ended up pulling the funding anyways. So you know my argument.
Speaker 3:I guess didn't work, but at least I went down there and I tried to do something. Um, so many of us and I've talked to, uh, the council members afterwards we were all caught unawares. We had no idea that this was being pulled. It was a last second thing. I was the only person who was free at the time to be able to get down there. Some of my other council members were busy, they were at work, they were out of town, they didn't know what was happening and they were all caught unawares. I happened to catch it because I was reviewing the budget of that morning and I saw it and I'm like, oh my gosh, what has happened. And so I ran down there. And now you know, sometimes I can, I can jump the gun on things. I've done that in the past. Um, but for me I always have the, the edict of well, at least I tried something. I never want to be able to say I didn't do anything.
Speaker 2:So you're fully behind the mixed flow until you can prove proof of concept I am.
Speaker 3:The issue is and here's where it gets kind of murky in the understanding if metro can come back to us and they can prove that the 17.5 can happen sooner rather than later, just personally, and and this is not any knock on what we've already done or what the city council could potentially vote on, I'd be open to modifying the letter, and I've said this multiple times. The letter is what it is today, right, and that's the vote we took. If I see some new evidence and this is true for any policy I've ever taken on the city council If I vote a certain way and new evidence presents itself, I am not so beholden to my old vote that I wouldn't change it, and I'm not saying I will.
Speaker 3:But if the evidence presents itself, you have to be able to look at evidence, and that's that's for me, if the data is there and it benefits the city.
Speaker 3:Because the last thing and here's I'll say this to close out on the metro thing the last thing I would want is for the metro to start in North Hollywood. This BRT line, the bus, rapid transit, start in North Hollywood, pick up everybody at the red line station and the orange line where they meet. Start in North Hollywood, pick up everybody at the red line station and the orange line where they meet. Come down Lancashire, come across Riverside, go through Toluca Lake and then jump on the 134 and go straight to Glendale and have no stops in Burbank, because that is one of the alternative routes that exists in the Metro books today. So I'm not saying that is going to happen, okay, but there's always a possibility that we lose out on the whole thing, and so, for me, I'm always of the mind of well, let's find a compromise, let's find the best solution that works for everybody and let's move forward, okay.
Speaker 2:I'm glad you clarified that, because people you know.
Speaker 3:I know you see a 30-second clip and you think, oh no, the sky is falling.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. Well, let's move on to another little major thing you got here. You are a major backer of measure rc. Yes, are you one of the co-authors of?
Speaker 3:it. Yeah, I was. I was a co-author.
Speaker 2:Yes, and had focused on rent control in burbank before you were elected to the council. The measure was voted down, but now the issue is front and center again. So give us your I'm sorry about that, I thought I had my phone on vibrate, in fact I did. So give us your I'm sorry, give us your views on what has changed and what you want to see. I think it's a good idea that you guys did the tenant protection for new volume evictions. That's a great thing. But aren't state regulations enough right now? How much more can really Burbank do with the state regulations and everything? So you know, my question is that you know that was kind of voted down and you kind of steered that back into the council forefront now and now you guys about ready to act on it. So what's that all about? What are we trying to do?
Speaker 3:So let me see if I can put this in a timeline that I understand it. When we started the entire Measure RC process we're talking spring of 2019. At that same time, at the state level, there was a conversation happening about statewide rent control, which ended up being AB 1482. We didn't know if that was going to get passed. We didn't know how strong it was going to be, what kind of protections there would be in it. These bills change hands so many times so we just kept moving forward with our proposed local ordinance and so when that bill was passed in August of of 2019, it wouldn't take effect until January. We still wouldn't know how effective that measure would be right. It hadn't been on the book set. We never had statewide rent control. We never had any rent control in Burbank, frankly and so we continued to move forward and in October of 2019, we applied for the Measure RC paperwork. That gives us 180 days to collect signatures, to go out and put it on the ballot. So we started that process. We continued through the winter.
Speaker 3:Measure AB 1482 came into effect in January. We started to get protections around Burbank. A lot of folks still didn't know about it. There was some education component to it. So people kept signing our petition, the local one. It ended up qualifying for the ballot and by November of 2020, Measure RC was on the ballot, but AB 1482 had been in effect for a few months, and so I kept getting conversations back from people saying, well, we already have this statewide thing, let's see how that works out. Let's see what happens.
Speaker 3:I'm not comfortable yet with a local ordinance. There's a lot of legalese in there that I don't really understand and there was one portion of it that could have been legally indefensible. The way Measure RC was written, it gave some legal power to the Landlord-Tenant Commission that our city charter didn't necessarily say it could. It didn't say explicitly it couldn't, but that was going to be a little bit of a problem. So some people said, well, you know what it's written a little poorly. I don't know if I want to get behind it, which is fine. I understand that. But I think the vast majority of people were simply saying, look, we have AB 1482 now I know I signed your thing, I wanted to get it on. Ab 1482 now I know I signed your thing, I wanted to get it on, but now we've got this statewide thing. I'd rather see how that goes, and AB 1482, for those who don't know the basics of its rent cap is 5% plus the rate of inflation, right, and inflation usually hovers between 2% and 4%, right, so you figure around 8% average.
Speaker 3:The issue I see today and this is why I think rent control is such a huge topic now are the problems and the failings that we've seen from AB 1482 that need fixing, the number one thing being the 5% plus inflation. A lot of people saw during the pandemic and post-pandemic the fact that inflation went through the roof. So now people were hitting this huge, these rent caps that were maxed out right, they were hitting 10% across the board and that's because it was 5% plus inflation and so people reconsidered okay, at this point maybe we do need some lower cap, maybe we do need some local protections. One of the biggest changes we did this last year was closing what's called a renoviction loophole, where you can renovate an apartment and evict somebody at the same time, and then what happens is, once they're out, you don't have to do the full renovation, you don't have to complete the work, or it doesn't have to be as extensive as you said it was, and there's no recourse for the person to come back and say, hey, you kicked me out. They go well, you're gone, sorry.
Speaker 3:And so one of the things that was a problem with AB 1482. We solved that locally. We passed some tenant protections. It was such a huge problem statewide that they ended up actually passing something at the state level too to close that loophole. So you know, we both took care of it. We're having now and just two weeks ago we had a vote at the city council to move forward with a 4% rent cap, which is much lower than 5% plus current inflation, which I think is 3.9. So today in Burbank your rent can go up 8.9%. Two weeks ago we voted to move forward with something more like 4%, which is half that. I don't know what the timing is on that, how soon that would be in effect, but hopefully in a couple of months people will have an opportunity to talk to their council and they'll have a vote in front of them saying, hey, I want 4 or I want 8.9.
Speaker 2:I think this issue I see both sides very clearly and to play devil's advocate, when landlords say you know what, nobody's capping my water and power, which has gone up now two years in a row, or my insurance, which has gone up 50, everything else I'm not. They're not capping my expenses, but now you're capping how much I can recoup in my rents. So what are you saying to landlords that are kind of especially your small mom and pop landlords? In the middle here.
Speaker 3:The biggest conversation I've had with, especially mom and pop landlords, is that they actually haven't been raising their rents and they're under this idea that if we cap the rent suddenly they'll be forced to raise them. And I'll tell them that that's not true them and I'll tell them that that's not true. Anytime in any jurisdiction that the rent is capped, you're not forced to raise your rent. And under the Fifth Amendment, anytime, anytime you are underwater, meaning that you have to raise rents to get back into the black. Every single local rent control ordinance in California, especially in California, every single local rent control ordinance in California, especially in California, has a release valve, as we call it, basically an ability to petition your local government to say, hey, your rent cap, when you pass, is a detriment to the return on my investment on the property I own. So if you look at, say, pasadena or Los Angeles, two cities nearby that have rent control, it's a simple process of going to the rent board or going to the city council and saying I need to raise my rents up above the cap for X, y and Z reasons. Okay, great, and so we just pass those through and it's a one-time petition, right? You can't keep raising rents and keep raising rents, but just for the viewers at home.
Speaker 3:Know that there has always been that property rights protection in our constitution, that a price cap, no matter what the goods or services are. No price cap can take away your Fifth Amendment protection. That's been true for decades because we started price caps, probably around in the 70s, on specific goods, gas, water, even. Like during a hurricane, when we say, oh, you can't price gouge the cost of water, that actually doesn't limit you on raising the prices, it's just you can't gouge it because at a certain point you have to understand that people who are buying water are getting it through, especially if there's a natural disaster. They're getting it through difficult supply chains, they're getting it through scarcity, so their prices are going up too. So when we talk about price caps we always have to remember that there is nothing that prevents a property rights return on investment under the fifth amendment for anyone who owns real property, anyone who's selling a good or service, any of that stuff in this country.
Speaker 2:Okay, very well explained too. I did not know about that. That uh, fifth amendment thing. And uh, I think not know about that Fifth Amendment thing.
Speaker 3:Oh yeah, I think it needs to be brought out a little more in the meetings that that is available to people, and you know, I know about it because I had to write it into the bill of Measure RC right. So I had to go through all this legal stuff. I had to learn a lot, Okay.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to move on to another issue that seems you have. You've been in critical times with police department expenditures, equipment, things like that, not in the department itself, not the people in the department, not a police, but just what they buy, the equipment they use, things like that. What vision would you like to see the department adopt and how can you support that?
Speaker 3:So I think the vision I have is more of what the average Burbanker sees of their police department the standard patrol unit, the people who show up to our parades and our rallies and to events and functions where police are keeping people safe and coordinating things off, and that kind of stuff. That's the typical view that a Burbanker has of their police department. My position on the council allows me to peek behind the curtain a little bit more than the average person. I get to see the line item budgets for riot gear, for military equipment, for crowd control equipment, a lot of the non-lethal devices or semi-lethal or things that are it's not a gun but it can hurt you kind of equipment. Right. And so for me, when I see all of that stuff, when I see all of those expenditures and they're big ticket items and then I look at what the average person sees of our police department. Where they're out there, they're helping people. They're engaging with unhoused individuals. They're engaging with folks who are, you know, having trouble with their neighbors or having thefts on their porch or catalytic converters being stolen, and they're having this wonderful interaction with people simply doing the job of police work. To me those two visions don't jive.
Speaker 3:I say this all the time I'm very critical of policing in general. Just as a person I'm very critical of policing. I have very little to be critical of with the Burbank Police Department. Very little to be critical of with the burbank police department. I think they are the model department that everyone in the country should be looking towards. I've said that a hundred times. I'll say it a hundred times more. I'm proud of the work they do, I'm proud of how we run our police department, but I'm always looking for better right. I'm always looking for better right, I'm always looking for better.
Speaker 3:And for me, the fact that there is a number of items sitting on a shelf somewhere that we may or may not ever use, but the fact that they're there, the fact that we as a city say, okay, I'm okay with this riot gear, I'm okay with this military surplus sitting there, I'm okay with us having the Bearcat, which is that small version of a tank that you see sometimes with the city police department, We've never needed those devices, or let me rephrase that, On occasion we have used these devices. I don't think, at the end of the day, they have changed the outcome of how our police department works, and so the fact that we have a stockpile of this kind of equipment and that we've spent a lot of money on these procedures and policies and having them in place. I don't think it makes us more safe. If anything, it creates an air of suspicion around our police department of why are we presenting ourselves with such a great face to the public but at the same time, we're keeping something behind closed doors that we all know is there and could be used in a very negative way there and could be used in a very negative way.
Speaker 3:I don't vote on the city council based on who is in the seat. Today. When I look at an ordinance, when I look at a policy, when I look at a line item budget, I don't think to myself who's the head of the department that's going to use that? Oh, I like them. I'll vote to give them that.
Speaker 3:That's not how I make judgments. I think who could possibly be in that seat five years from now, 10 years from now, regardless of that person's position, personality, ego, whatever their politics are, that doesn't matter to me. I want to be able to vote on something today that I know that person can't use nefariously or can't use out of order or unconstitutionally in any way, and so I may be very resistant to giving these kinds of budget items to our police department, even though I love what the chief's been doing. I think Mike Albanese has been an exemplary leader in this city, but if I give him that equipment, I don't know who the next police chief is going to be. What's, what does that signal to that person? I don't know who the next three or four police chiefs are going to be, so I will always vote thinking well, we may not always have a Mike Albanese, so I'm not going to vote in a way today that would benefit somebody who is not like Mike Albanese in the future. So that that's, that's my position, that's my stance.
Speaker 2:Albanese in the future. So that's my position, that's my stance and that's how I move forward. Well, I think it's important that people understand that, you know, and that's why we're doing this. So people, you get a chance to really speak to people and let them know exactly how you feel. And you're right, mike Albanese will be gone as of next year, so he's retiring, right? So, okay, now we're going to. I got a question that we're going to get out of a little more controversy and get into something that I think is going to really pique your interest a little bit and I'd like to hear your perspective on. So you walked the picket lines during the actor strike. Yeah, you spoke up for the actors, of course, being one. Now, with the strike over and a serious decline in production in the area, according to Film LA, the governor has proposed a sweeping change for tax incentives. But what can Burbank do besides, besides that, to encourage more production in our city, considering that we have two major studios here that call Burbank home?
Speaker 3:I do want to give a quick shout out to our state senator, anthony Portantino. He was at the press conference announcement when the governor said he was um at the press conference announcement, um, when the governor said he was moving forward and looking for those big tax credits, um, I think it's going to take a lot of the state um money um to come back and bring production back, but locally here in Burbank.
Speaker 3:I'm very interested in doing our own local tax credit, focus more on small, independent features. Something less than a million dollars A typical video game would actually fall into that category. So for me, looking at independent features video games, animation, giving tax credits to come back and film in Burbank, you know we have a lot of studio space that's not Warner Brothers or Disney, right, there's a lot of other studio space and sound stages that are not on either of those two lots and we have small independent productions every single day. I was just at the employee gym. I walked out at McCambridge Park and they're shooting a film and I'm like, oh, what's going on here? Like, oh, we're doing an independent feature. So it happens all the time. And so for me, how do we bring back those small scale productions?
Speaker 3:When I was working on film and television, you have these I mean, they're not really seasons anymore, but you have sort of these production schedules. It gets a little dry during December and January. It also dries up again towards August and September, and so you have these, you know, television productions, and then you have the big film productions, but everybody who was working both in front and behind the camera, they would always look for those small projects in between the bigger projects, and that's how they kept themselves above water, that's how they put food on the table with those smaller independent project, the little things here, to get you to the next big project. And so Burbank, I feel, can be the hub of those smaller independent projects again, especially when we're talking about animation and video games and small scale indie features and small scale television shows that shoot five or six or 10 episodes. So that's what I want to look at how do we bring those tax credits back? How can we incentivize those to be shot in Burbank?
Speaker 3:One of the ideas I actually had was we could offer tax credits if they shoot 50% of the film in one of our sister cities. So we have a lot of small features that want to shoot overseas. Okay, great, we get to pick where you go shoot in one of our sister cities and we'll help you out and we'll cover a tax credit. And that sort of creates sort of this dual economy between us and another location that knows they're coming right. So, like even Arezzo, italy has a small scale production facility and that's one of the reasons why they're our sister city.
Speaker 3:So how can we incentivize those kinds of productions, where we get small independent rom-coms who want to shoot in Italy and then come back and do production and post-production here in Burbank. So all of this stuff is happening. All this conversation is happening. The mayor, nick Schultz, has been very active on starting those conversations so I'm grateful that he is involved in that. Hopefully he'll be going to the state next year and we can lean on him to continue pushing for that. And so all of that stuff I think combined can create a better and more localized economy here in Burbank for production.
Speaker 2:That's great. Well, I think you have a unique point of view on it, since you've lived a life. And I think you have a unique point of view on it since you know you've lived a life, and so I thought you didn't, and I think that's a great idea. It would be nice to have a film office here in Burbank too.
Speaker 3:Yes, I'm in favor of having our own film commission. So you know, we have a arts and entertainment commission. We have a, you know, water and power commission infrastructure. You know, water and Power Commission Infrastructure Oversight Board, all of these independent you know, volunteer boards. I'm in favor of putting together an independent citizens film commission three or five members who just work on what's going on locally. How can we help that kind of thing?
Speaker 2:So I'd be in favor of that too. I think it's a good idea. Let's talk about your experience on city council. What experiences did you not expect and what perceptions changed once you were elected? So what happened? You walk in day one and okay, here I go, and then all of a sudden, wow, I didn't expect this or that or anybody else. And now I've learned how to deal with this. So talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 3:So we'll go back in time a little bit. You know, I worked on that presidential campaign and I had no interest in being a politician, right? I was just helping somebody else out on their campaign, somebody else out on their campaign. After the November 2016 election, I realized I had to do something. I didn't know what, but I had to do something. And I remember the day after the election I pulled out my phone and I googled three words Burbank City Elections. And, wouldn't you know it, that week they started pulling papers for the local election.
Speaker 2:Hopefully my Burbank story was pouted on time. I did see a lot of my.
Speaker 3:Burbank news I did. That was my first foyer into your lovely website and I started reading up on what was going on and what people were talking about. I mean, if you remember, at the time, the hottest thing happening at city council was the single family housing design, uh, the IDCO and all of that um, the interim design, um, ordinance, and it was just. It was so interesting to me to see all of that stuff happening and getting involved at the local level. Um, so you know, I ran for office in 2017.
Speaker 3:The election was, you know, february and April, primary and general, and obviously I didn't win then but I got very involved and I stayed involved and I got on a commission and I said to myself you know what, if I'm going to do this, if I'm going to run again, I really have to get my knowledge under me. So the stuff I learned about the Brown Act and how meetings are held, what you can say publicly as an elected official versus what you can't, because you know there's a vote coming, who you can talk to, a lot of rules around keeping your vote public, right, about what you do on the dais has to be the first time you do a number of things like say how you're going to vote on a position or talk about certain issues, and so I really started to learn about oh, your job as an elected is not to come in with a preconceived notion or a bias, but to do all the research necessary leading up to that vote. That's really where I started to understand that and, honestly, at the end of the day, I think a lot of the problems we have in politics not just locally, but across the country is you have politicians who don't do that. They come into the room already knowing how they're going to vote. They already have a bias. They've been lobbied by wealthy interests bought and paid for oh, I know what I'm going to do. Don't even talk to me, I'm going to vote this way. And they don't listen to the debate, they don't hear each other out, they don't find compromise on the dais or in the room, and I think that is such a huge, huge problem in this country. So I always, always go into that council chamber with an open mind.
Speaker 3:I listen to my colleagues. We have such a wonderful city council up there. I have been going to city council meetings since 2016, and I've seen shouting matches, I've seen things thrown at each other. I've seen some very unfortunate language be used from the dais. I am so proud to say that with this current council, the five of that are up there now. It has never devolved to that. It has never been a shouting match, it has never been an attack on each other. Um, I'm so um proud of the way we've conducted ourselves, even with some very, very difficult things on the dais um, there seems to be a very good mutual respect for each other up there.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that is absolutely true and you know there's a lot of differing political ideologies up there. But the fact that we all leave it at the door and we come down and we sit and we're a body of five, I think that shows a great deal of respect for each other and I think that has trickled down not just through the city departments but to the city itself. I think we have seen a change in our city leadership. Justin Hess has been such a great steward of the city, but everybody else below him has also seen how his respect for us and our respect for him and our city attorney and the way we talk to each other has created less of a divide, less division. It's a unified front. We weathered the pandemic, we've been dealing with homelessness, we've been building affordable housing. All of this stuff is hugely transformative in the city and we've done it with a single, unifying voice. And that's just. It's incredible to watch.
Speaker 2:Well, let's talk about what are you most proud of in your four years of council. What do you feel is your largest accomplishment so?
Speaker 3:I, when I ran for office in you know, december of 2016, january 2017, the biggest issue that people told me about was the fact that Burbank doesn't have their own homeless shelter. Everyone was talking about homelessness and nobody wanted to solve it. They continued to say it was somebody else's problem Coming here from North Hollywood or Glendale's pushing them over the border into Burbank. It's not us. We didn't do it, we shouldn't do anything. And when I look around, I see that there's a homeless shelter in North Hollywood. There's a really good homeless shelter in Glendale. Why aren't we doing our part? Yeah, we're a smaller city, but there are a handful of people who I meet. Every couple of weeks, I'll bump into somebody in the park or at the library and on occasion, I ask them where they are, and they'll even show me their driver's license and it has a a Burbank address. They said this is the last place. I live right down the street, and so I know that there are Burbankers living on the street, and so for almost eight years now, I have campaigned on building a 24-7, year-round homeless shelter in Burbank.
Speaker 3:In 2009, 2010, we had a winter shelter because of the crash. You know, we had the housing crash and all of that and the economy stalled, and it was a big success. So for two years in a row, we had a winter shelter. It was the Burbank Armory Yep, that's right. Yeah, and it did really well. And it it? It catered mostly to veterans, but not just veterans, but it helped a lot of people and I said, okay, if that was successful, why did it ever close down? Why did we never expand it?
Speaker 3:And so this year was the first year where we actually put behind real dollars community development, block grant. We put in a couple hundred thousand dollars to redesign the piano store on Front Street, the big brick building right next to the Metrolink station. We said, okay, that's going to be the spot Safe parking, safe storage, overnight accommodations, immediate emergency temporary shelter with all the wraparound services. And when we finally cut the ribbon on that project, I think that alone will be my greatest accomplishment. In 2017, when I ran, there were eight people running and I was the only one talking about homelessness. On all of my campaign literature, all of the debates, when I was knocking doors, I was the only one saying what about the homeless? And this was, you know, 2017. We weren't really tackling it, but it was important to me then.
Speaker 2:It's interesting that we all voted for Measure H thinking that was going to help. It's interesting that we all voted for Measure H thinking that was going to help and they've actually just screwed Burbank over, where we have to now pull our own money out to pay for things we shouldn't be paying for. That was a new county measure, and I've asked over and over again well, if we vote for this, will Burbank be in the same situation again and not be getting the money we put into it? And I can't get an answer from anybody.
Speaker 2:So it's concerning that we all want to help. We have no problem paying that extra little sales tax, but we want to see the result of our money coming back to Burbank. So we're not paying tax money for what we've already paid taxes for.
Speaker 3:So measure A I am supportive of measure A, but it doesn't fix the problem that we've seen with the guaranteed return. I will say, however, we have been much more vocal about the fact that we haven't been getting money, and so this year, actually, we've gotten the most money back from any previous year. For Measure H, I think we cleared almost $300,000 this year, which is, you know, it's still a drop in the bucket 5% of what we put in, exactly exactly.
Speaker 3:So I think we just really at the city level need to keep advocating for our fair share. I won't go into why I ran for county supervisor, but that was a big part of it, because that's basically who is determining if we get that money or not, but that's a whole nother conversation. But I think we're starting to understand how to ask for that money in better ways and hopefully with this new shelter we can get more of that money.
Speaker 2:Okay. So lastly, if elected I should say reelected what goals do you have for the next four years and how do you feel you?
Speaker 3:can make a difference. Sure, let's see. I talked a little bit about the film tax credit, the film commission. The biggest thing I want to work on in this next year is housing affordability for sale. That has sort of been my white whale the last four years. We've talked about affordable rents, we've talked about Section 8 and senior housing. How do we get people to the front of the line for Burbank Housing Corporation and Home Again LA? And that's all fine and good, but at the end of the day, if we are not creating a populace that builds wealth, then we're always going to be in this vicious cycle of what's my rent, what's my rent, what's my rent? So, for me, home equity, me home equity the purchase of of your own house, is the best way for a burbanker to build their legacy to, to build a safety net, to build security for their family. Um, I am happy that the pickwick project, although an absolute debacle the way it made its way through the city process, did finally end up being condos. So at least somebody somewhere. I mean they're going to have to have a lot of money, but at least they're buying and they're investing locally, and so that's more of what I would like to see our next growth of housing be.
Speaker 3:We're mandated by the state. We got to build 12,000 new units. I want those to be for sale. I want to look at condos. I want to look at townhomes. I want to look at duplexes and triplexes and have people purchase. The biggest thing I'm going to be pushing for at the state is trying to get our legislators to help convert apartments into condos. How do you get an apartment building into an HOA? The state of New York has had processes there for 30 years and it's a very simple conversion and you get some grants depending on your income level, and they help you through it.
Speaker 3:We are super resistant in this state to build condos and to build for sale housing unless it's a giant McMansion on the hill. Oh, you can build those all day, all day long. Sure, no problem. But the average person going from you know a $3,000 a month rental. How do I go from that to buying a home worth $2 million? That's impossible. There has to be transitionary housing. We need condos in the $600,000, $700,000 range. That's what we need to be building. Yeah, your mortgage and insurance is going to be upwards of maybe $4,000, $4,500, but I'll tell you this I'll work an extra shift or two for a $4,500 mortgage than a $3,000 apartment that I know. I'm burning that money every month and there's a lot of people out there in that same boat, and so that is really where I want to see the city go and that's going to be a huge lift and it's going to take a majority of that second term. But also there's a bunch of other things that may come along the way and I'm happy to tackle those issues.
Speaker 3:The pandemic was not something I originally wanted to campaign on. The strike was not something I originally wanted to campaign on. So many things have come through our docket. That was just the districting that. It was a huge conversation. It ate up so much of our time. I never campaigned on districts, but to have to sit there and go through this entire lawsuit, um, and look out for the best interest of the citizenry that that's, that's my job Um, so we'll, we'll take it as it comes and, uh, we'll see what happens.
Speaker 2:Well, as far as this constituent goes, I'm glad you guys are fighting that district thing. That's a a shakedown, yeah, Um. And if, if you do get reelected, I'd love to come in and just do a full podcast just on on housing and how to do those kinds of things. I think it'd be a fascinating subject because it's a huge subject, so I'd love to do a sit down and do a podcast on it. So, yeah, absolutely, I think it'd be a good hour of of information just in itself.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we've come to the end. And, as I always do, at the end I always let the candidates look into their camera and take whatever time you want and tell people why, on their ballot, they check next to your name. So your time is yours.
Speaker 3:Well, I appreciate you. Having me on this forum has been really great, I think, for the citizens to cut through a lot of the rhetoric. First and foremost, I want to say that don't listen to the rhetoric that's out there. There's a lot of things said about me, said around me. My record stands on itself. We have seen a balanced budget every single year I've been in office. We have seen homelessness drop every single year I've been in office. We have seen homelessness drop every single year I've been in office. We have built more affordable housing in my first term than the prior 20 years in this city.
Speaker 3:The issues we've tackled, whether it's tenant protections, rent control, whether it's weathering the strike coming out of the pandemic, weathering the strike coming out of the pandemic, dealing with international issues, from Artsakh to Gaza, the stances I've taken, the positions I hold I hope that it resonates with the voters the fact that I show up to all of the really important events that have nothing to do with local politics but are important for elected officials to be present at when I attend Holocaust speaker events at our local schools, when I go to Juneteenth events or pride festivals.
Speaker 3:Those kinds of issues are important for me to know that you see me there as a representative of the city to be present at functions that are transformative and create understanding and create connections for our citizens and for our residents and people who are just visiting. That's important to me as well. So when you go through your ballot you'll see my name second on the list. It's Constantine Spell with a K and I don't know. I'm just hoping I do the right thing at the right time and if I do make a mistake, I'll be the first one to be right here on this podcast talking about it, I'm sure, covering all the issues. So thank you.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, council Member Constantine Anthony, thank you for coming on. We appreciate it. I love these podcasts because I get to know the person and we get to know the issues, in your terminology, and how you feel about things. So, as I say, though, any candidate, if your name appears in the ballot in Burbank, just send me an email news at myburbankcom. Let me know you want to be on the show, and we will put you on the show. Also, you've only got about a week left in the election, though, so let's get on it right away. So thank you very much for coming in. We appreciate it. Once again, this is Craig Sherwood saying thank you very much for watching and we will talk to you next time. Bye, thanks, craig.