Mayor Takes His Coffee with Cream and Criticism

Tuesdays are long days for Mayor Mitch Ward.

Early-morning risers may glimpse him setting up shop at 7 a.m. in the downtown Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, sipping coffee with sugar, half-and-half and a dollop of Cool Whip. If it's the same day as a City Council meeting, Ward's work hours can stretch as late as midnight.

Ward began holding weekly coffee sessions after he heard about the idea from other mayors. The casual, more intimate setting gives residents greater time to talk than City Council public hearings, which allot only three minutes per speaker, he said.

Ward usually spends one to two hours at the coffee shop, working on his part-time IT home business until someone stops by to say hi or share a grievance. When there's a controversial topic on the table, such as Sand Dune Park, as many as 15 people may show up.

On this particular Tuesday, one man took issue with the placement of trees in public parking lots. And one woman, a real estate agent, questioned the alleged business license fee she may have to start paying in addition to her other taxes (stay tuned for related story).

Something needs to change, she told Ward with an air of frustration, or "you're going to have to start looking under the table for money."

"No, no one's going to have to look under the table," Ward said, reassuring the woman that the city would clarify the matter. While residents talked, Ward jotted notes and doodled little diagrams in cursive script. Later, a couple sat down to talk about the mayor officiating over their future wedding.

"They should just put you in a box and call you the 'answer man,'" joked Boots Lebaron, a longtime Manhattan Beach resident and Ward supporter, on his way out of the coffee shop.

Ward said these informal conversations are an important part of his public service, and he plans to continue them until the end of his mayoral term on October 5.

By then, Ward hopes he will have finished another chapter of his autobiography, which bears the working title, Get Away From My Horses.

The book digs into Ward's experiences as a student at the University of Arkansas, where he and his roommate, who was white, became good friends. During one trip together in the woods, the pair encountered a man who shouted racial epithets at them.

That incident moved Ward to pursue a career in public service, he said. Ward volunteered on city commissions and later ran for City Council in Manhattan Beach.

"It was incumbent upon me to try to go out and do things in society, because that was what my roommate was all about," Ward said. "All my friends were about making sure that all races got along together."

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is located at 321 Manhattan Beach Boulevard in Manhattan Beach. Mayor Ward makes himself available at the store beginning at 7 a.m. each Tuesday.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly listed March 2011 as the end of Ward's mayoral term, which is up in October 2010. Ward's City Council term ends in March 2011.