Desperate for money while fighting a massive landslide, Rancho Palos Verdes plans to make its case in Washington

Sometimes you have to spend money to make money — an expression Rancho Palos Verdes is betting on as it continues to hemorrhage millions of dollars in its fight to contain a massive and destructive landslide.

Accelerated by historic rains in recent winters, the historic landslide has been ripping the Portuguese Bend neighborhood apart, forcing residents from their red-tagged homes, bending roads and changing the area’s topography.

Trying to minimize the damage hasn’t been cheap — the city is close to spending as much as it takes to run the entire government for a year just on efforts to shore up the land movement. The city has already spent around $29 million of the $36.3 million allocated for the landslide complex this fiscal year. The city’s entire annual budget is around $39 million.

Local officials have been lobbying for state emergency funding to supplement the spending, but they say they need more. So this week, the City Council approved a $48,000 annual contract with a consulting firm to amp up lobbying efforts beyond California and key in on Washington, D.C.

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“ The whole point of us retaining you is to see if we can strengthen our ties with the federal government, more than just our one representative or our two senators, and see if we can help get beneficial legislation that would support the city's endeavors, certainly around the landslide,” Mayor David Bradley told the new group, Kiley and Associates, at the council meeting Tuesday night.

The city ended its contract with a lobbying group in February as it did advocacy work only with the state government. In an interview with LAist, Bradley added that through working with state agencies, “we found out that FEMA is really the source of most of the funds. So the fact that we didn't have direct connection into the federal agencies was hampering us.”

Bradley said the city had “very little success” working with the state and getting resources from the California Governor's Office of Emergency Services.

“ CalOES is the entree to the federal government in FEMA,” he said. “Working directly with FEMA, we think is gonna pay dividends in helping short circuit that as opposed to going from one bureaucracy to another bureaucracy to another bureaucracy, to kind of go directly to the source of funding and make sure that we have the most compelling case possible to the federal government.”

According to a staff report, the stakes are rising as city resources and the “ability to balance routine municipal operations” have been stretched after the land movement began accelerating in October 2023.

What the agreement will entail

The agreement with Kiley and Associates will get Rancho Palos Verdes a dedicated lobbyist in Washington, D.C. The firm will also be tasked with legislative analysis, creating a funding plan for city projects, monthly updates, drafting letters on pending legislation and meeting with lawmakers.

 ”As the landslide and other major priorities and issues have come up, we've realized that we need more of a presence in the federal level as well,” Catherine Jun, deputy city manager, said. “Especially because the landslide often involves federal agencies like FEMA, and so we realized that we needed to have more of that presence in D.C.”

Bradley told LAist the organization will look at applying for federal grants to help with the landslide mitigation efforts.

How we got here

Accelerated land movement has left homes without gas and power and dozens more have been red- or yellow-tagged.

The city recently received $42 million in federal funding that was funneled toward a property buyout program for residents affected by the land movement. Through the buyout program, the city and the CalOES will purchase homes with funding from FEMA with the goal of turning the land into open space. Home prices will be determined using a formula based on how much they were valued on Dec. 1, 2022, before land movement accelerated — up to 1 foot a week at one point.

With city resources stretched, officials are also in the very preliminary stages of exploring a toll road on Palos Verdes Drive South — the main thoroughfare through the landslide complex.