Brenden wants to be a full-time councilman

Patrick Brenden says the people of Huntington Beach can count on him 24/7. If elected to city council, he plans to take up the job full-time.

Brenden, who has served on the Planning Commission for the last year-and-a-half, said he believes a full-time council member is something the city needs.

Earlier this year, he “semi-retired” from his 23-year job as the owner of Home Run Media Group, a printing business, when the company merged with another, giving Brenden more free time.

The timing was perfect to seriously try his hand at City Council, he thought. He began spreading the word about his intent to run last year when he first learned about his company’s merger.

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“Once I started serving on commissions, I learned there was nothing that would stand in the way of me offering my services as an elected official,” said Brenden, who has also served on the Public Works Commission, Chamber of Commerce, General Plan Advisory Committee, Charter Review Commission and various other city organizations.

“I didn’t want to try to do this unless I knew I could do it full-time. I think that’s really important because some of the issues we have in the city are very complicated. I think it’s very difficult to do the job of a City Council member adequately on a part-time basis.”

Brenden, 57, who has lived in the city since 1994, sees high-density development and affordable housing as issues he can help weigh in on because of his time on the Planning Commission.

In April 2015, he voted against reducing the number of residential units that would be allowed in the amendments for the Beach and Edinger Corridors Specific Plan.

The original plan, allowing 4,500 residential units in the area, is tied to Huntington Beach’s state-mandated housing element, general guidelines for addressing housing needs for all economic segments as the community grows.

Brenden argued the number should remain at 4,500 so the city could follow the state’s regulations.

When the Planning Commission couldn’t come to an agreement, the City Council later ultimately voted to lower the number of units to 2,100 and imposed stricter height and setback requirements after many residents complained about the high rate at which high-density residential projects were popping up.

That change led to lawsuits, including one by the Kennedy Commission which argued the housing element was noncompliant with state directives on what constitutes adequate housing for people with low incomes.

The state also told the city that it had a shortfall of units.

“It’s been interesting to see everything that’s happened with the Beach Edinger plan and all the development that happened so quickly,” he said. “There were some building standards that probably could have been refined a little bit before the plan was adopted. When we saw some of these projects going up, a lot of people were obviously upset. ... I think people are very worried about the future of the city. They don’t want it to look like Santa Monica. They don’t want it to be a concrete jungle.”

Brenden also said homelessness needs more attention.

While he commended Huntington Beach’s efforts by installing two homeless task forces — one appointed by the city and one led by the police department — Brenden said more can be done, but it’s a complex issue that doesn’t have a simple resolution.

“It’s not just a Huntington Beach problem,” he said. “It’s a regional and even nationwide problem. ... What we have to do is make sure that whatever we’re doing for the homeless population, we are creating a path to self-sufficiency and not a path to dependency.”

As a businessman, Brenden believes small businesses are “the key to our economic engine” and more needs to be done to attract them to Huntington Beach.

“We need them for jobs,” he said. “We need them for creating sales tax revenues that the city depends on. Through my experience at the Chamber of Commerce, I could see that they needed a voice and, having come from that world, I know their needs and I know that there are ways we can help business thrive in the city.”

Brenden has so far picked up a slew of endorsements, including Council members Barbara Delgleize and Mike Posey, Costa Mesa Mayor Steve Mensinger, Westminster Mayor Tri Ta and Orange County Supervisor Michelle Steel.

“I think he has a tremendous amount of integrity and would do the right thing,” Delgleize said. “He has served the city very well. He really investigates and studies the issues seriously to make sure that he’s on the right track.”

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Brittany Woolsey, brittany.woolsey@latimes.com

Twitter: @BrittanyWoolsey