Less Red Tape, More Greenbacks
If city jobs came with monikers, Jess Romo’s might be “The Six Million Dollar Man.”
The 35-year-old senior real estate officer has quietly turned weedy, vacant lots into cash for the city by selling surplus property--single-handedly netting almost $6 million in sales and services for Los Angeles.
He works out of a small office in City Hall South, diligently deciphering city codes and cutting through red tape with an efficiency that has boggled the minds of his superiors.
In the last few years, Romo has waded through mounds of disorganized city files detailing the almost 8,000 surplus city properties and launched a program to sell off extra parcels. He cut 27 steps out of the daunting 62-step sales procedure, cutting in half the time required to sell land.
Without a staff or marketing budget, Romo has closed deals on 19 properties totaling more than $3 million, brought in more than $1 million in services and has $1.3 million in pending sales.
“I think I’ve done a pretty good job,” Romo admits when pressed on the issue.
His boss puts it a little more strongly: “Jess is a real estate phenomenon,” said Dan Rosenfeld, assets manager for the Department of General Services.
That is why he cringes at the irony of Romo’s position.
Although the Romo is bringing in millions of dollars--double the mayor’s goal for the program--Civil Service rules dictate that Rosenfeld cannot give him a single dime as a bonus--or a raise, or even a promotion.
“He’s netting the city dozens the times his salary, and I can’t do a thing,” Rosenfeld said.
Right now, Romo earns about $69,000 a year, but he could be making more than four times that as a private real estate broker, he estimates.
Not that he’s complaining.
“It’d be nice to get those things, but I don’t expect them,” Romo said. “It’s enough to know that the work is being appreciated.”
What if people started calling him “The Six Million Dollar Man”?
“That wouldn’t be so bad,” he laughed.
The seat of city government seemed distant from Romo’s world as a young boy growing up in East Los Angeles and La Puente, he said. From his grandmother’s house in Boyle Heights, he could look across the Golden State Freeway and “see City Hall rising up above the city. I never imagined I’d end up here.”
As the seventh of eight children, Romo said, the emphasis in his family was on working and keeping food on the table.
“We had a pretty simple home life,” he said. “We never had anything fancy, but we had food and clothes. The most important thing was working hard.”
Romo excelled in high school and graduated from UC Irvine with a degree in psychology, the first in his family to get a bachelor’s degree.
He was inspired, he said, by the many models of perseverance in his family. His grandfather and uncles worked in Arizona copper mines for more than 40 years. His mother went back to school after he was born and started a career as a nurse.
“I think they’ve really influenced me because of the struggles they went through,” he said. “From them, I learned whatever you do, do it well.”
Romo has done more than just a good job marketing and selling the city’s surplus property, his boss said.
“He’s tremendous,” Rosenfeld said. “What is impressive is the entrepreneurial approach he’s taken. It’s not the norm for a city employee to reform the system.
“If Jess isn’t running this department in a couple of years, he’ll be running another one.”
Before Romo started working for the department in 1995, few people knew about the thousands of extra land parcels owned by the city. Some had been purchased from the county 50 years ago for a few dollars each. Others are small slices of property left over from city projects.
Romo brought some background in real estate to his city job. He got his sales license in 1985, and sold some parcels for the city while working for the Bureau of Engineering in the Department of Public Works.
Rosenfeld paired Romo with a senior manager two years ago to launch the surplus property sales program. But that manager retired, and Romo was left alone with the fledging project.
He had to convince wary City Council members that selling off empty land would benefit their districts. By brokering a compromise that allows half of the revenue from sales to return to the council district, Romo won council support.
Romo also had to sort through various legal claims on each parcel and the maze of city regulations governing the sales. He simplified the administrative code for surplus property sales by slashing those 27 steps after garnering approval from the City Council and the mayor.
He also created an unprecedented public relations campaign for the program. With an Internet site and media coverage, there was a significant buzz about the first auction in July 1996, which brought in more than $2 million.
Twelve more properties will be auctioned off in October, and Romo has identified an additional $4 million in city parcels that could be sold in the near future.
Although he cannot get a raise in his current job, Romo recently took the exam to become a property manager, one of the highest-ranking positions in city real estate.
But even if he passes the test, no property manager positions are open in his department, Rosenfeld said. Creating one would require a City Council vote.
So Romo is considering a transfer to another department or a move to the private sector.
But he said he is not eager to leave city employment.
“Some have asked me why I’m still with the city,” he said. “But people appreciate what we’re doing here, and it’s a nice feeling to know that we’re getting the job done well.”
