Dr. Sharona Nazarian is a 30-year Beverly Hills residentwith strong community ties and currently a Beverly HillsPublic Works Commissioner. A proud immigrant, anaccomplished community leader and philanthropicadvocate, Dr. Nazarian has dedicated her career to publicservice and has a deep commitment to giving back to thecommunity that has given her so many opportunities.

Dr. Nazarian has been actively involved in Beverly Hills fordecades. As a member of the Beverly Hills Public WorksCommission, she is focusing on sustainability and key cityservices. Sharona helped spearhead the DisposableFoodware Accessories Ordinance, which the Council is set to hear in Fall 2021. By asking consumers to request disposable foodwareaccessories (plastic cutlery, paper goods, and condiments), she aims to create aculture to reduce first, before having to reuse or recycle. Another initiativeSharona has supported is RethinkBHTap, which not only promotes the city’s highquality drinking water, but also helps reduce the use of plastic bottles. Dr.Nazarian was recently appointed to the Climate Action and Adaptation PlanCommunity Task Force. Her other priority is to ensure a safe and vibrant BeverlyHills that will be even more attractive for future generations to come. 

Sharona is a Co-Chair of the Beverly Hills Sister Cities Association and hasparticipated in almost every single Beverly Hills homeless count since itsinception. As a current Member and Past Chair of the Los Angeles Commission forAlcohol and Other Drugs, Dr. Nazarian re-drafted its mission statement andrestructured the Commission and its long-term goals. 

While serving as Past Chair and Member of the Beverly Hills Human RelationsCommission, Sharona launched the Civility Statement that is read at thebeginning of all thirteen Beverly Hills City Commissions, started the first culturalroundtable to bring unity to various faith based organizations in the community,and supported the anti-bullying campaign.

In addition, Dr. Nazarian has also served in numerous leadership positions inBeverly Hills clubs, organizations and non-profits. Sharona is the immediate pastPresident of the Rotary Club of Beverly Hills, Member of the Beverly Hills PoliceChief’s Advisory Board, former Board Member of the Maple Counseling Center,former National Vice President of Friends of Israeli Disabled Veterans, past BoardMember of Sinai Temple, Treasurer for the Beverly Hills Residents Association,past member of the Beverly Hills Women’s Club, Team Beverly Hills and CERTalumni, and member of several Committees for the Jewish Federation of LA.

Dr. Sharona Nazarian plans to bring a new perspective to the Beverly Hills CityCouncil. She is innovative, creative, thinks outside the box and will buildconsensus on behalf of the community. Sharona is running for Beverly Hills CityCouncil because she has a long record of delivering real results for ourcommunity. She will work to invest into the community’s long-term growth,modernizing existing systems while also preserving the culture that makesBeverly Hills the most well-known and desired ZIP code. Sharona’s three pillarplatform are to strengthen trust in public safety and security, support our smallbusinesses and make it easier to start a business in Beverly Hills, and improvequality of life by supporting young family and young professional housing, watersustainability, technology improvements and infrastructure upgrades. She plansto bring a new perspective to the Beverly Hills City Council. Her current and pastwork and life experiences have prepared her to be an effective City Councilmember. Sharona will build a solid coalition, run an effective grassrootscampaign and focus on the issues important to residents.

Dr. Nazarian earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and Sociology at theUniversity of Southern California with highest honors and earned a place on theDean’s List every year. She then obtained her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology(PsyD) with an emphasis in multicultural psychology. Sharona used hereducational background toward a career centered on deep communityinvolvement spanning decades. Dr. Nazarian and her husband, Dr. DanielNazarian, reside in Beverly Hills with their three sons, Noah, Aaron and Jonah.

I will be the residents voice on the Beverly Hills City Council. I want Beverly Hills to be a place where we can raise our children and grandchildren. I know what is important to keep our community safe and vibrant.  I will work hard and do my homework to preserve the rich culture of our iconic city by enhancing our residential quality of life but also be forward thinking. I am accessible, creative and innovative. I will bring a fresh perspective to resolve issues because I am a problem solver who gets things done!!! In a world so divided, I thrive to bring unity.

John Mirisch is a 4th generation resident of Beverly Hills. John attended Hawthorne and Beverly Hills High School from K – 12. He was active in journalism and forensics (in the days when the High School still had a forensics program).

After graduating from Yale University (magna cum laude) in 1985, John followed in his family footsteps by going to work in international film distribution with 20th Century Fox International. His grandfather and great-uncle were legendary movie producers Harold and Walter Mirisch, respectively, who won or were nominated for Oscars for such timeless movies as West Side Story, Some Like It Hot, Cast a Giant Shadow, Fiddler on the Roof, In the heat of the Night and many more.

John was elected to Beverly Hills City Council in 2009 and has served as mayor three times.

Local government is all about you. During my time on Beverly Hills City Council, I have maintained an independent voice even when it may not be popular around City Hall.

Whether it’s unjustifiable higher water and trash rates, overdevelopment or unsustainable public employee pensions, I have always remained faithful to my commitment to put the residents first.

To be sure, my independent-minded votes haven’t always endeared me to the Insiders Club — the special interests, paid lobbyists and developers looking to cash-in on the Beverly Hills brand. But for you and for me, Beverly Hills is not a brand. Beverly Hills is our home.

My background and experience in public service, as an economic consultant, and as a scientist all contribute to my decision-making on the Beverly Hills City Council.

I have served on City Council for five years and was Mayor for the last year.  Before serving on City Council, I represented Beverly Hills for 10 years on the Board of the Metropolitan Water District, the government entity charged with supplying a reliable source of water for Southern California.  I am well versed in public governance, the issues that come before City Council, decision making on behalf of public stakeholders, and the need for open and transparent government.

Professionally, I have been an economic and business consultant for 30 years.  My clients include many prominent firms from the entertainment, healthcare, fashion, hospitality and other industries.  I have been hired by other public agencies to advise them on the types of issues that come before us on City Council.  I understand the economic issues affecting the City.  I am also a small business owner.  I know what it means to make payroll and pay the rent.  The economic aspect of my background makes me unusual, if not unique, on City Council and among the candidates.

Earlier in my career I was a scientist. I have a B.A. in chemistry from Columbia University, and an M.A in physics and a Ph.D. in chemical physics from Harvard University.  I am also a registered professional chemical engineer in the State of California.  It was after working as a research scientist for about 10 years, that I earned an MBA with emphasis in finance from the UCLA Anderson Graduate School of Management and transitioned to consulting regarding economic issues.  My training as a scientist has resulted in, or perhaps what drew me to become a scientist is, a logical, fact-based approach to decision making that has served me well on City Council.

I also was shaped by my upbringing.  I grew up in New York.  My dad was an electrician.  My mom was a teacher.  The electrician’s union provided scholarships to both my sister and me to attend Columbia University.  That was a life changing experience for me.  During the summers, I worked my way through college as an electrical construction worker on two of the buildings in Rockefeller Center.  I also worked as a waiter/busboy in the “Borscht Belt” hotels in the Catskills in New York State, as a bartender evenings and weekends during the college year, and as a janitor in a summer camp.

My wife Andrea Spatz and I were married in 1986 and moved to Beverly Hills in 1999.  Out two children, Matthew and Michele, graduated from BHUSD schools.

I’m running for re-election to continue the progress that I am proud to have been able to achieve over the past five years.  We have responded strongly to the challenges that we, like our region, have faced over the last few years.  I am running to continue on the path toward my vision for Beverly Hills – one in which we preserve what we love about Beverly Hills, while positioning it for the future.

For the future of our city, I envision a safe, sustainable city with an exceptional residential quality of life.  I see a city in which, building on our advantages, we maintain a strong commercial base, supported by the appeal of our world class hotels, shopping and restaurants, and small businesses supporting the needs of our residents.  I see quiet residential neighborhoods, providing a high quality of life and attracting cross-generational residents.  I see our continued commercial vibrancy providing the resources that enable the high quality of our police, fire, and other city services.

It has been an honor to serve on City Council for the last five years and as Mayor for this last year.  The decisions we make affect people in their daily lives.  I treat that responsibility seriously.  It is the sense of community that is a large part of what makes Beverly Hills special.  To foster that sense of community was my guiding light in my first term on City Council and would be my guiding light in a second term. Helping others and working with our community to improve the lives of everyone who calls our city home has been an honor and responsibility I would like to continue.

We have been through a tough period.  We had two years of pandemics, demonstrations of many types, and a regional increase in the crimes that affect you viscerally.  

Many residents, businesses, and the City were affected by the pandemic deeply. I advocated for measures to keep our population healthy.  As an economist, I played an instrumental role in the City’s financial recovery.  We reduced operating expenses, provided incentives for early resignations, and reduced capital expenditures such that we continued to provide exceptional services and are emerging strong from the pandemic. 

We were proactive in seeking new businesses that fit Beverly Hills and retaining our existing businesses.  The results are apparent.  Our property values have increased.  Retail sales are back to pre-pandemic levels.   Our hotel occupancy is returning.  Our streets are more vibrant than they were pre-pandemic. 

For our residents, we provided protections from the pandemic and from challenges that exist unrelated to the pandemic.  We put into place a moratorium on evictions and rent increases, from which we are now emerging.  I was a leader in establishing a rent assistance program to pay landlords directly on behalf of renters.  We protected our residential neighborhoods from the increased development made possible by SB 9, in which two duplexes would be allowed to be built on a single-family lot, by adopting quantitative criteria allowed under SB 9.  I led in outlawing fractional ownership to preserve the community feel of our neighborhoods, adopting ordinances to protect our hillsides, implementing slow streets and other measures to help keep our neighborhoods quiet, and collaborating with our schools to excel at early childhood education.

As regards the demonstrations and civil unrest in particular, we passed a series of ordinances and adopted additional protective policing practices to mitigate the demonstrations while preserving required First Amendment rights and avoiding escalation.

I am proud of what we have done, but we have to and are doing more.  Here are my priorities:

Ensuring public safety - The immediate challenge is safety.  We are experiencing a regional increase in egregious crimes.  Safer is not sufficient.  We must be safe on an absolute scale.   We have done a lot and have to do more.  We increased officers, added private security, planned for Metro substations, added 1000s of cameras and drones, and called for the recall of DA Gascon. In a second term, I will prioritize adding officers – for current needs, to replace retirees, and for the coming of Metro – and increasingly being proactive to prevent crimes before they happen – considering alternative deployment strategies, increasing real-time monitoring, and increasing use of artificial intelligence.  With many new officers, I will also emphasize training to ensure that we police in the Beverly Hills way.

Fostering a vibrant economy while preserving our quality of life – Why do I want to foster a vibrant economy? Ultimately, this must be for the benefit of our residents.  A vibrant economy provides resources we need for our superior services.  However, vibrancy cannot come at the expense of our quality of life.  We want only the right development in the right place.  We must be careful that as we provide for a strong commercial base, we protect our residential neighborhoods.  During the Vietnam war, an officer famously said: “We had to destroy the village to save the village.”  That is the opposite of what we have to do.  We have to strike the balance to ensure the commercial vibrancy of our City and preserve its character.

Ensuring a sustainable city: economic, community, and environmental – We need the vitality of a generationally diverse population – what I refer to as community sustainability.  We have to provide safe, quiet neighborhoods for residents from kids to seniors and for multi-family housing to offset the cost of living in Beverly Hills.  I championed early childhood education, an important attractor for families and formed an ad hoc for senior affordable housing.  Climate change is a global crisis.  We are in a severe drought which will be increasingly common in the future.  I was a champion of joining the Clean Power Alliance such that residents by default now receive their electricity from 100% renewable sources.  I have been closely involved with increasing to 25% our water that comes from local sources, a substantial increase.  In a second term, I will lead to mitigate climate change and ensure reliable resources.

Vera Markowitz exemplifies the American Dream. Born in the Czech Republic and raised by a loving extended family, Vera is proud to have lived in Beverly Hills for nearly 50 years and now she is ready to give back to the community that has provided her so many opportunities.

Vera’s civic involvement goes back to her days at Concordia University in Montreal where she directed a friend’s successful campaign for school president. Upon moving to California, Vera earned her Bachelor’s of Arts at Immaculate Heart College and later played a key role in Governor Jerry Brown’s triumphant gubernatorial campaign. She brought those experiences to former Beverly Hills Mayor MeraLee Goldman’s mayoral campaign where Vera served as Campaign Chair.

Vera understands that educating our youth goes beyond the four walls of a classroom. That is why while managing her husband’s medical office, she implemented a year-round internship program for Beverly Hills High School students, providing invaluable real-life work experience and professional development opportunities for tomorrow’s leaders.

Vera’s participation in Team Beverly Hills has given her a keen understanding of the City's interworkings and she has become an active member of the Beverly Hills Chamber of Commerce. 

Vera continues to be active in various charities and non-profit organizations. She is the former president of the Amy Karen Cancer Fund and a founding member of the Zimmer Children’s Museum.  She has been an active member of Beverly Hills Synagogue for over 15 years and sits on the Board of Sisterhood.

Vera is a proud mother of three and grandmother of seven. She and her late husband, Dr. Harold Markowitz, were happily married for nearly 50 years. Vera is an avid chef and loves swimming and traveling in her spare time.

I'm an unapologetic Christian, single mom, a small business owner called, Shiva's Dance & Fitness (dance & fitness instructor, personal trainer, and dog walker), and the fonder of the Beverly Hills Freedom Rally.

I'm a conservative.  I believe in God, Family, & Country.  I belive in less government and if the government is not working for WE THE PEOPLE then we need to reform it.