By John Woolard
Fran Cohen has succeeded in life by overcoming obstacles and concentrating on the task at hand.
In 1979, in her late teens, she left her native Iran and her family to come on her own to Los Angeles and attend the rigorous Southern California Institute of Architecture.
Securing her degree at SCI- Arc, she then went to Cambridge, Mass., to study at the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology. At MIT, she received a master’s degree in architecture and urban planning.
Then, after getting married and with a young family, Cohen obtained a second master’s degree—this time in Business and Management—from highly regarded Purdue University in West Lafayette, Ind., where her husband, Menashi Cohen, was a civil engineering professor.
She then embarked on a rewarding architectural, consulting and retailing career.
So when Cohen decided several months ago to consider running for Beverly Hills City Council, she undoubtedly did some studying on the matter. Her conclusion? She has the qualifications to be a success in the job.
“My job experience fits the challenges that will face Beverly Hills,” Cohen said. “I love this city and I have much to contribute.”
Cohen’s community service is notable. She is the current chairwoman of Beverly Hills’Architectural Commission, having been a commission member since 2005. She sits on the City’s Mayor’s Cabinet.
Cohen has served as a member of Hadassah Los Angeles Chapter since 2006, after being part of Lafayette, Ind.’s Hadassah chapter from 1987 to 2001.
Also during that 14-year period, she was active in Lafayette’s Sisterhood Sons of Abraham, a group for which she was president in 1991-92.
In addition, Cohen organized DNAand blood drives in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles and New York and led a community effort to stop a cell-phone tower from being placed in a Beverly Hills residential area.
Although proud of what she has done to this point in her life, Cohen has derived the most satisfaction out of her relationship with those closest to her.
“My family is my greatest accomplishment,” said Cohen, 48.
A major source of pride are her two children. Her son David, 21, is a junior at UCLA. Her daughter Sandra, 19, is a freshman at Cal-Berkeley.
Both are engineering students and graduates of Beverly Hills High School.
The Cohens moved to Beverly Hills in 2001, “because of the outstanding quality of life it has to offer,” Fran Cohen said. “Beverly Hills is my adopted home,” she said. “I’ve learned a great deal about the city and this exposure prompted me to run for City Council. I believe I have the vision and capabilities to help take our city through its next crucial years.
“We are curently facing unprecedented economic obstacles with shrinking resources and escalating expenses,” Cohen said. “We can no longer afford 20th Century thinking to solve 21st Century challenges.
“In order to find solutions to these challenges, it is essential to identify and attract new and innovative funding resources and opportunities from outside,” she said. “The (funding) competition from other cities should not be under-estimated.”
Primary among Cohen’s goals would be to work with a financially sound and balanced budget, a budget, Cohen points out, that provides Beverly Hills residents with quality services not seen in most other cities.
“Our city has a budget of $409 million a year,” she said, noting that dividing the number of Beverly Hills’33,000 residents into the budget total means that each Beverly Hills resident will have an average of about $12,400 spent on them in the 2008-09 fiscal year.
“This is a staggering figure,” Cohen said. According to Cohen, by comparison Santa Monica will spend an average of about $4,400 per resident this year.
“We conclude that we have a standard of living to maintain,” she said. “Council members have to work together to make sure it happens.”
To do that, Cohen would put focus on making sure that education, city services, public safety, parks, recreation and other environmental services and traffic issues got enough attention and budgetary support.
Public safety takes on an added importance in a struggling economy, with a heightened potential for burglaries, robberies and home invasions in an affluent locale like Beverly Hills, Cohen believes.
“So our police force must be on a higher alert,” she said.
Cohen said the idea is to be innovative in the attempt to find solutions by “recognizing causes and effects and to be ahead of the curve. “The answers are not always conventional,” she said. “We can achieve these objectives with a sound fiscal policy and a balanced budget.”
To help maintain budgetary constraint, Cohen proposes the creation of a City Economic Commission similar to its architectural, planning, health and safety commissions as a means “to ensure that our city government is sound and fiscally responsible.”
Members would be Beverly Hills residents with expertise in business, finance and economics, Cohen said.
“They would be mandated to identify and discuss economic issues of importance to the city and to analyze the economic impacts of proposed projects and new developments going before the City Council, such as return on investments,” Cohen said.
The commission and the council would continually have a goal of finding new sources of revenue, be they state, federal, international or private, so as to “maintain a healthy rainy-day reserve,” she said.
Cohen also proposes what she terms a “Triple-R” infrastructure program.
The three R’s stand for repair, restore and rehabilitate.
The goal is to “improve and expand our underground and above-ground infrastructure,” Cohen said.
Cohen’s campaign kickoff party will be Sunday, 1 to 3p.m., at 519 N. Linden, Beverly Hills.
Cohen’s campaign Web site is www.francohen.com.
Her campaign can be reached at 310-285-0795
Beverly Hills Courier
Volume XXXXIV, Number 02, January 9, 2009 pp. 1, 28