A Conversation with Ojai's New Manager, Ben Harvey

Including: Harvey's experience in similar cities, "disturbances" at City Hall, harassment in Pacific Grove, his $400K separation agreement, time with Southern California Edison, and more.

Greetings readers! Forgive me for quoting myself, but I want to draw your attention to a footnote from my recent story about homelessness:

“Newly hired Ojai City Manager Ben Harvey’s first day on the job was Jan. 29th. He was preceded in the job by Interim Manager Carl Alameda, who took over after Interim Manager Mark Scott resigned in November. Scott got the job after former City Manager James Vega hit the road for Port Hueneme in July 2023. Yes, Ojai has had four managers in the space of one year.”

That’s why I’ve been so keen to interview Ben Harvey. The following interview, conducted on February 20th, includes lessons from Harvey’s time in the Cities of Avalon (Catalina Island) and Pacific Grove (Monterey County), the changes he has already implemented at Ojai City Council meetings, his thoughts on recent “disturbances” at City Hall, his former employer Southern California Edison, city finances, and more.

Harvey addresses the Ojai City Council on January 23rd.

In preparing this interview for publication, I followed the style of David Marchese’s Talk column for the New York Times Magazine. (I have a deep love for the NYT Mag.)

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity. All brackets and parentheses were added in the editing process.

I also want to say that Harvey was generous with his time, “bullish” about the future, and at no time asked to go off the record. I joked that he is very well “media-trained” — a skill that no doubt comes from his time in public affairs.

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Andra Belknap: I saw that you've moved from the private sector to public sector. You don't necessarily have a typical profile of a city manager, especially going from spokesperson role to city manager role. So just kind of broadly, can you tell me the story of your career?

Ben Harvey: I started in the public sector right out of school and worked for the City of Bellflower (1992-97), worked for the City of Newport Beach (1997-99). And then right around that time, this is before your time,¹ but this is during the dotcom era when everybody was working for software development. And at that time — in my unformed brain — I think it seemed like the world was passing me by. I was doing boring local government stuff. 

So I went to go work for a software development company (vTek Systems), and then I continued in that field for a while (Toyota North America and American Honda Motor Company, Inc.) and it was a good experience. I learned a lot, but I realized I really missed working in local government and public engagement and being a part of what I call ‘the quality of life business.’

It was hard to get back into local government. And [then] I found an opportunity working for Southern California Edison (SCE), which was like working for a local government, but not, and I enjoyed that, got to do a lot of media work, but then I also got to work closely with city managers and the city councils in my area. One of the areas I covered was Catalina Island and Avalon. So I knew all the council members there, and I knew all of the senior city staff. And so when that position became open, I just realized this was probably the only way I was ever going to get to be a city manager without starting all the way over again. So I jumped at it and I was successful. And I haven't looked back since.

AB: Tell me about the issue portfolio that you had at SCE.

BH: Again, this is a long time ago. So this [was when] community choice aggregation, CCAs were just coming online. (Ojai is part of a CCA called Clean Power Alliance, it delivers 100% renewable energy via SCE infrastructure). That was a big issue at that time. 

Edison was starting the process to decommission San Onofre (a San Diego nuclear power plant).² That was a big issue. And then this is just so boring, but… 

AB: It’s not. I’m unborable.³

BH: The coolest thing I worked on was for Catalina Island. It is the only place in SCE territory where they do electricity, they do water, and they also do gas. It's the only place they do all three. And so I got to be involved with them.

AB: SCE delivers the water?

BH: And the gas through Catalina Island. All three. The only place they do it in the whole territory. And at that time, the island was trying to take over the water from SCE, and so I got to learn about that as well.

AB: Did you do any lobbying on behalf of SCE? Can you tell me what issues? 

BH: It was boring local stuff. I would lobby city council members. 

AB: About joining a community choice aggregator?

BH: Right…  [stuff like] here's what SCE wants you to know about the following topic, like solar incentives. Whatever. You're really just a company mouthpiece. You're given your message to deliver, so hopefully you have relationships to deliver that message. Right? That's your whole value is that if you make a phone call, somebody picks up. 

AB: I'm curious about specific programs or priorities that SCE was pushing at that time.

BH: Yeah, and you have to forgive me because memory's a little bit foggy. The main thing that I was really tasked with was making sure the Port of Long Beach was satisfied with the rate that they had from SCE. Because the fear was that the Port of Long Beach was going to move over to the City of Los Angeles. 

And then also stopping — that's the wrong word to use — making sure the community understood that taking over the water from Southern California Edison on Catalina Island was not in their interest.⁴ 

AB: That's really, really interesting. Maybe, or, probably you've learned about Ojai taking back its water system from Golden State Water?

BH: Little bit, yeah

AB: Big, long fight. So the thing with SCE, well, we're part of a community choice aggregator, but what SCE is mostly known for is lighting the valley on fire. I'm curious about your thoughts with regard to SCE and culpability in wildfires.

BH: Well, I mean, a couple thoughts on that. I mean, one is humans increasingly have pushed out further and further away from the community center out into the wildlands area. Utilities have a right to serve, a requirement to serve depending on where you are if you're in the service territory. So people don't want to pay usually for the expense of undergrounding. So it's kind like a perfect storm. I can't speak to whether SCE — I don't want to speak to whether they should or should not have done things as far as the maintenance. 

So coming here to Ojai, yeah, we're surrounded by wildlands area. Fire is not a matter of if, it's a matter of when. So it's a matter of us being prepared. 

AB: Okay. Let me ask you one more question about SCE. As a spokesperson, did you have to argue for anything that you didn't feel good about personally? 

BH: The company was a really good company to work for. The nice thing about being in the role that I was in was I was able to bring the perspective of the community to them for their evaluation and action. So I always felt that I was doing good work because I was trying to balance what the community that I was serving wanted versus what the company wanted, and trying to figure out a way to make that work.