Meet Ms. Mayor Barbara Ferraro By Author and Contributor Kari H. Sayers
At 5’8”, Barbara Ferraro, the mayor of Rancho Palos Verdes since last December, cuts an imposing figure, but her winning smile and cheerful personality soon put people around her at ease. She won the election on December 6 with 8345 votes. “The most votes I’ve ever received,” Ferraro said in a recent interview. She’s currently the only woman on the city council but by no means the first female mayor. “I’m the fifth, I think, and I was mayor pro tem last year and on the city council for eight years from 1995 to 2003 and mayor pro tem and mayor in the 25th anniversary year.”
And what does the Mayor’s daily schedule look like?
“There’s no typical day,” Ferraro said. “The council meetings are the first and third Tuesday of every month, and the mayor presides over these meetings and any closed sessions we might have. The mayor also represents the city in various community activities events like the Fourth of July, and we’ll be having our 50th anniversary celebration gala dinner in September.”
The mayor also represents the city on the sanitation board, which covers the entire LA County. While the city manager is in charge of the day-to-day operations, the mayor and the city council make decisions on hiring people. Together they make decisions on the codes, the law of the city and set goals for the city. “We have initiated purchases of open land for conservation, and the city has now conserved 1500 acres which the Land Conservancy manages for the city. It’s a great partnership.”
Other than being a council member, a citizen and 18 years old, there are no absolute requirements for being a mayor, according to Ferraro. “Of course, a long-time resident has knowledge that is really needed,” she said. “And It also helps if council members have served on city committees before they’re elected. I served on the planning commission for two years. It helps to have more of a working knowledge of the city government, and that’s basically how you do it. You volunteer for some of the city committees and participate in a lot of community activities.”
The mayor and council members often meet with other mayors and council members in the South Bay, and right now they’re attending a conference in Sacramento. “It’s important to have representation in Sacramento to follow legislation that’s coming down from the state.” Not surprisingly, the state has been trying to take away local control from small cities for quite a while.
Ferraro started her political career in Memphis, Tennessee, where she grew up. “I was a preacher’s daughter,” she said.” I used to stand with my father at the church door after church services and talk to all the people as they left, which was a great experience for politics.”
In 10th grade, she ran for secretary of the student government. “I remember standing in front of the school handing out flyers, and I won, but then my family moved to Virginia and I never got to serve.”
She graduated from high school in Hopewell, Virginia, president of the French Circle and president of Future Teachers of America. At Randolph Mecon Woman’s College in Lynchburg Virginia, she majored in political Science and Spanish. “I had plans to major in French but switched to Spanish. . . and, no, I’m a “gringa,” Irish, English and German, but I was always interested in places far away and people,” she said. “After I graduated, I went to Mexico and studied at UNAM (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico) in Mexico City. She married a man she met there and adopted a daughter, but the marriage didn’t last and she and her daughter returned to Virginia, where she taught elementary school and then worked for the courts while also perfecting her French . “By the time I went to France, I was pretty fluent,” Ferraro said. She met her husband Charlie on the steps of Notre Dame. He was from California, but they traveled back and forth and soon married and adopted two more children. “Our daughter lives with us now, and works as an interior designer for a closet company; our son works in real estate in Fort Worth, Texas.” A grandson just graduated from Palos Verdes High School. Another granddaughter is in 8th grade and wants to attend PV High as well.
When Barbara and Charlie had been married a year and a half, they took in an exchange student from Serbia, who graduated from then Rolling Hills High School, and when Charlie, an accountant for Northrup, had a chance to work in Spain, the Ferraros sold their house and moved to Europe, spending Christmases and summers in Serbia, attending their former exchange student’s wedding and other family events. Seventeen years later, the student’s daughter also came to Palos Verdes as an exchange student, staying with the Ferraros and attending the same school as her mother. “She was featured in the yearbook that year because of her story,” Ferraro said. “I really consider them my family too, so really I have four. I don’t dare lose my phone because it has my schedule,” she said.
Although they receive a stipend to cover gas and incidentals, the mayor and council members are not paid a salary so, in addition to being a full-time mayor, Ferraro teaches Spanish full time at Palos Verdes High School.
She loves her students and her work as a council member and mayor. She especially enjoys seeing the community come together for events. “We recently had the Christmas tree lighting, and some of the kids helped me turn on the lights. Some of the older kids went skating. We try and do a lot of these community events just to have people get together,” she said.
However, the city faces problems.
The landslide in Portuguese Bend is one. “We can’t entirely stop it, but we hope to be able to slow it way down. We spend over one million dollars a year just to repave the small strip of road between the two sides on PV Drive South.”
The loss of local control may be an even bigger issue. “The state has really made a push to take over and micromanage each city. One size does not fit all. We focus on open space and low density. Low-income housing doesn’t make sense in Palos Verdes where the lots are over a million dollars . . . We have been able to keep the coastline from having highrise condos because we formed a city 50 years ago.”
Even so, Ferraro is optimistic. “The last three years, we’ve had a cohesive council We’ve worked well together, and I think we’re going to continue.”
Kari H. Sayers BIO
With a BA in English and an MA in linguistics from California State University, Long Beach, Kari Sayers went with her husband to Saudi Arabia, where she first worked as a music teacher at Riyadh International Community School and then as a journalist for the English newspapers the Saudi Gazette and the Arab News as well as in-flight magazines. When she returned to Southern California, she taught literature, college composition, and English as a Second Language at Marymount California University in Rancho Palos Verdes, while freelancing as a theater, classical concert, and opera reviewer for local newspapers and magazines in the Los Angeles area.. In addition to authoring the novels Roses Where Thorns Grow, Under the Linden Tree, and the soon-to-be-released Justice for Lizzie, all published by Melange Books in Minnesota, she is the developer and editor of the anthology Views and Values, published by Cengage. Now widowed,. Kari lives in the Los Angeles area.
