Mike Flaherty recalls a lifetime of service looking after the city’s streets, buildings and residents
by Elka Worner
For nearly four decades, if something went wrong in Hermosa Beach – sewer backups, troublesome rodents, parking disputes – former Public Works Superintendent Mike Flaherty was the guy to call.
From 1973 to 2010, Flaherty worked for the city’s Public Works Department. He and his crews enjoyed a well-earned reputation for problem solving and responsiveness. They were well known and much appreciated.
“We were popular because we had trucks, shovels and men to do things,” he recalled.
Their orange shirts and well-stocked trucks made them a familiar sight. “We were also the most visible,” he said, “outside of the police officers.”
He shared tales of those busy days with a group of history buffs at Gitana Café late last month as part of the Hermosa Museum’s “Café Stories: Voices from Hermosa.”
Flaherty told the group he moved from upstate New York to Hermosa on a whim, tagging along with a new acquaintance from a local bar who, like him, was tired of Niagara Falls winters.
And, like any two guys who met at a bar might do, once they arrived on the coast, they headed straight to a local watering hole.
“My first stop in California was “The Mermaid,” he said. “The guy I drove out with knew a waitress there and that was the reason we came to Hermosa Beach.”
He described walking into the iconic dive bar on The Strand and seeing owner Quentin “Boots” Thelen perched on his corner seat, doing a crossword puzzle. “He had a cup of coffee and had just been served his first drink of the day,” Flaherty said.
Within months of arriving, Flaherty found a second-story apartment on The Strand for $125 a month. After a stint with a construction company, he landed a maintenance job with the city, earning $660 a month.
One thing led to another.
“I was appointed to every department,” he said. “I worked in Parks, Streets, Electrical, Storm Drains, and Building Maintenance.”
When he was promoted to crew leader, his first big job was preparing for the reopening of the Community Center. The city had acquired the Art Deco building from the school district. It had sat vacant for years and became home to some undesirable wildlife.
“Our biggest job, bar none, was getting rid of the rats,” Flaherty said. “The rats were huge. They were as big as cats.”
He spent six years renovating the building, before its grand opening in 1982 in a celebration headlined by singer Mel Torme.
Years later he was a vital resource for a group of residents building a museum at the Community Center.
“Building that museum would have been a lot more expensive and a lot more difficult, if Mike hadn’t been the suit up, show up kind of guy,” former Historical Society president Rick Koenig said.
“He’d show up in a city truck with his dog Jellybean riding shotgun and a jackhammer to blast up the concrete. You didn’t even have to ask twice. It was done.”
Flaherty said when he joined the Public Works department in the 1970s about half of the city yard employees either owned homes or rented in the city. Houses went from $9,000 to $13,000. The head of Electrical bought a home for $17,000, he said.
“They ridiculed him…said it was way too much money,” Flaherty said.
When Flaherty retired only two public works employees lived in Hermosa Beach. Home prices had skyrocketed, and city workers who hadn’t already bought a home were priced out of the market, he said.
Flaherty, who spent his career looking after the city’s streets, sewers and buildings, sometimes fielded 200 phone calls a week. The city issued him one of its first two cell phones. The other went to the head of detectives.
“I was tired of spending quarters at a telephone booth calling back when they paged me on my pager,” he said.
About seventy five percent of his calls were from people who wanted their neighbor to do something. “It’s ‘get out of my parking space,’ or something like that.”
He tried his best to negotiate. His first question to the caller was, “Have you talked to your neighbor?” Most of the time, they had not, so Flaherty stepped in.
“Bottom line was I had a feel for resolving the problem, not 100% to everyone’s satisfaction, but resolving the problem.”
He found it helpful to remain in the good graces of the Woman’s Club, Garden Club, Kiwanis, and Rotary.
“I’m an honorary Woman’s Club member and honorary Garden Club member,” he said.
Over the years, Flaherty had a hand in everything from converting lower Pier Avenue into a pedestrian zone, to helping rebuild the pier and saving homes on The Strand after a massive sewage spill.
“I got down there within four or five minutes and saw a manhole cover that weighs 75 pounds floating in the air, a foot off the street,” Flaherty said.
A pump failure in Manhattan Beach caused the high-pressure backup, sending raw sewage into Hermosa streets and Strand homes.
He had to break through the doors of dozens of homes to drain the sewage that had seeped into their basements.
“It was the scariest moment I’ve ever had…because there was no end in sight.”
Flaherty said it took him weeks to get in touch with some of the homeowners, many of whom didn’t live on The Strand permanently.
“I said ‘guess what, your furniture is floating.’”
When he wasn’t handling storm drains and sewers, Flaherty had a role building and maintaining some of Hermosa’s most iconic monuments: the Vetter Windmill, the Jarvis Memorial dedicated to the astronauts who died in the Challenger disaster, and the Hermosa Beach Veterans Memorial.
“I think the closest to my heart is the Veterans Memorial,” said the former Marine who served in Vietnam.
His service to the community didn’t end with his retirement in 2010.
He was involved in the city’s murals project, served four terms as Public Works Commissioner and three as Planning Commissioner and is still the city’s go to guy when it comes to Public Works.
“I’m honored to say that I still get phone calls from city staff members,” he said.
“Do you have cards that say ‘sewer consultant?’ former Mayor Jim Rosenberger quipped.
Longtime Hermosa Beach resident Dorothy Courtney had another suggestion.
“I’m going to call Rome and talk to the Pope and see if he will canonize you as Saint Mike of Hermosa Beach,” she said. “I think we should do it.”ER