Santa Monica Dispatch

On May 22, we raged at NBC-TV for canceling Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip,” adding that it was no wonder that the once-proud network trailed the other three broadcast networks, as it habitually canceled good series and persisted in running really bad series.

Elaborating, we said that the network’s fall began when those great showmen, Brandon Tartikoff and Grant Tinker, were succeeded by gamesnen.

A few days after our story ran, NBC announced that it was firing its programming chief and replacing him with Ben Silverman, an agent-turned-producer whose current shows are “The Office” and “Ugly Betty,” and Mark Graboff, a lawyer and “deal maker.”

Reporting on the change, the drastically diminished L.A. Times reported today that the ascension of Silverman and Graboff signaled the end of the Tartikoff era. Wrong! The Tartikoff era began and ended with Tartikoff.

The most relevant question now is whether Silverman and Graboff are showmen or gamesmen. We’ll let you know.
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LITERATURE

Readings at
Dutton’s Brentwood Books
Sunday, June 3
The Alliance of Los Angeles Playwrights: selections from seven new plays
Monday, June 4
Diane Lefer, “California Transit”
Tuesday, June 5
Ron Carlson, “Five Skies”
Thursday, June 6
Robert Anthony Siegel, “All Will Be Revealed”

PAINTINGS & SCULPTURE

L.A. Louver Gallery, Venice.. Don Suggs, “Concentric,” recent
works. Through June 16.

William Turner Gallery, Bergamot Station. “Off the Grid,” recent works by Arron Sturgeon, John M. Lyon and Alex Couwenberg. Through June 16.

Terrence Rogers Fine Art, Santa Monica. New Paintings, Michael Chapman. Through June 16.

Arena 1 Gallery, Santa Monica Art Studios, Santa Monica Airport “Art Squeak,” an exhibition of works by 2007 SMC Art Mentor Program. Through June 23.

Track 16 Gallery, Bergamot Station. “Women Artists of Southern California: then and Now” through June 30. Reading and performance, June 16, 7 to 9 pm. Closing event and roundtable, June 30, 7 to 9 pm.

Lois Lambe rt Gallery, Bergamot Station. Peter Winter, Sculpture. Through July 8.

THEATER

Eugene O’Neill’s “Desire Under the Elms” with Charlie Robinson and Dig Wayne. Directed by Jeffrey Hayden. Odyssey Theater, West LA. Through July 29.

Santa Monica made the Sunday papers on both coasts.

The Los Angeles Times’ WEST Magazine devoted a page to the delights of shopping on Montana, with detours to Bay
Cities Deli and Palisades Park.

The story on the front page of the New York Times Sunday Style section, headlined “Surf’s Up, But the Water is Brown,” was not nearly as cheerful..

Written by Mireya Navarro, the story focused on the sorry state of L.A. county beaches in general, but paid particular attention to Surfrider in Malibu and the beach adjacent to Santa Monica Pier.

I’ve always been crazy about palm trees. I love looking at them, thinking about them when I’m not looking at them, and roaming around L.A.
looking for them.

Five years ago, I wrote “…most species of palm aren’t native to Southern California, but they have been here much longer than most of us have. They are perfect because they are unlike any other tree, or anything else for that matter, and…they are both gallant and goofy, and they are the only trees that don’t look foolish on the beach…During the 1992 civil disturbance, many palm trees were torched, but only 40 were killed. As L.A.’s street tree supervisor said, ‘Palm trees will survive fires. You can burn almost the whole tree and it will grow back.’ “

Three years ago, Los Angeles Times staff writer Emily Green reported that there were ”75,000 palm trees in L.A. – just on city property, 6,000 in Santa Monica, and 3,300 in Beverly Hills…[and] they’re in jeopardy.”

The principal threat to Santa Monica’s 6,000palm trees is, of course, City Hall, which touts our “urban forest” even as it decimates it. Not long ago, it ripped out 11 mature Eucalyptus trees, and it’s about to spend $700,000 to take out gangs of healthy mature trees on Second and Fourth Streets, and replace some of them with young trees. And it’s never liked our palm trees.

As nearly everyone knows by now, late last November, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s Chief Financial Officer Winston Braham refused to certify a proposed District pay raise, resigned, and agreed to accept a $189.000 contract settlement with the proviso that he go mum.

Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver saw the District’s muzzling of Braham as a serious breach of both trust and common sense, and asked that Braham appear before the Council to discuss the circumstances that led to his departure.

Neither the District nor Braham responded, but other people, including some Council members, said that the Council had no right to question District policy. However, Shriver, Mayor Pro Tem Herb Katz and Councilman Bob Holbrook, once a member of the School Board himself, pressed on, saying they might propose withholding $530.000 of the scheduled $7.2 million City allocation to the District until they heard Braham’s story.

The District then eased its hold on Braham, But, in several rather arch emails to the Lookout website (www.surfsantamonica.com), Braham suggested he didn’t really have anything to say, and, to date, he hasn’t said anything.

Lookout columnist Frank Gruber has devoted three columns in the last two weeks to this unusual town-gown rumpus, and he is mighty vexed.

But he’s vexed for all the wrong reasons.

At the outset, then-Director of Planning and Community Development Suzanne Frick said that the state-mandated revision of the General Plan was our Constitution, as it would determine our destiny for the next 20 years. It sounded more like a threat than a promise.

Frick’s successor, Eileen Fogarty has been demonstrably more interested in listening to and incorporating residents’ views in the revisions than Frick was, but she recently said that there would have to be “trade-offs” and “deal-making,” and that “we will not succeed if we have winners and losers.”

City Staff dubbed the revisions of the land use and circulation elements “Shape the Future 2025” and “Motion by the Ocean,” but more than two years have passed and the future remains unshaped and there is, if anything, even less motion by the ocean than there was two years ago.

"The Village" Site from Palisades Garden Walk (from www.santa-monica.org; The Village staff report)

At the initial workshops, meetings, hearings, in staff reports, in the two voluminous reports on the revision, and the recent round of “placemaking” community workshops, what seems to us to be crucial facts have been virtually ignored.

Tuesday night, climaxing a marathon meeting, the City Council approved a $437 million budget for the next fiscal year, but it was the disposition of a $530,000 allocation that dominated the evening.

It began late last fall, when the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s Chief Financial Officer Winston Braham refused to certify a District pay raise that he contended was not financially viable and resigned. Council member Bobby Shriver believed the Council should talk with Braham before it decided how much money to allocate to the District in the new budget. But, as part of his exit contract with the District, Braham had been required to sign a confidentiality agreement that mandated his silence on all topics related to the District.

Viewing the District’s imposition of the gag order as a breach of trust and common sense, Shriver, Mayor Pro Tem Herb Katz and Council member Bob Holbrook suggested they might withhold $530,000 of the proposed District allocation unless they heard from Braham.

During a hearing on the proposed new budget at the last Council meeting, three parents of children with special needs described the difficulties they encountered, including mandatory gag orders in private "settlement" contracts, in their efforts to procure the courses of instructions their children needed from the District.

At the conclusion of the hearing, Katz made and Shriver seconded a motion to withhold $530,000 of the District’s allocation until the gag orders were discontinued. Neither that nor a counter motion won the requisite four votes and so the question was continued to last night.

One of America’s most talented, original and acclaimed comedians, Paula Poundstone would surely be Santa Monica’s most amusing resident -- if it weren’t for certain officials.

You can see for yourself when she appears at the Santa Monica Public Library’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Auditorium on Thursday, June 28.

Poundstone will read from and talk about her new memoir, "There’s Nothing In This Book I Meant To Say," which contrasts her tabloid travails and life with the lives of seven historical figures, including Martin Luther King, Jr., Joan of Arc, Helen Keller and the Wright Brothers, and the results are, by turns, heart-rending and laugh-out-loud funny. A book sale and signing will follow Poundstone’s appearance, which will begin at 7 p.m.

The event is free, but seating is limited and on a firs come basis. Tickets will be available one hour prior to the program, but there will be no advance reservations. .

Decisions will be made at three meetings here next week that could change Santa Monica in fundamental ways – for better or worse.

On Tuesday, June 19, at a special meeting of the City Council, the Council will consider the “Neighborhood Conservation and Placemaking Principles,” which the City Planning staff has called “a major component of the Land Use and Circulation Elements (LUCE).” [see “Less Is More…and Vital” coming soon to this blog}/

It was architect Mies van der Rohe who famously said “Less is more” and “God is in the details” decades ago, and every time we read another staff report on the revision of the land use and circulation elements of the General Plan, we wish he were here.

Over the last several months, the City planners have held a number of community workshops on the revision of the land use and circulation elements of the General Plan.

The good news is that Planning and Community Development Director Eileen Fogarty who came to Santa Monica last fall, seems genuinely interested in residents’ views. The bad news is that City Hall’s preference for more over less still dominates.

Santa Monica has long been an exemplary beach town. The ocean and the beach are the main thing. the shaping force, and the town compliments them brilliantly, being low-rise and small scale, easy-going, thoroughly idiosyncratic, and intricate.

Mies would have been crazy about Santa Monica because it demonstrates that less is not just more, it’s everything.

At the Tuesday night, June 19, City Council meeting, City staff will ask the Council to approve the conceptual plan for ”The Village,” a 324-unit housing complex to be built on public land in the heart of downtown Santa Monica.

If the Council approves the plan, work on a development agreement between the City and the developers will go forward.

As proposed, The Village is larger, taller, denser and more ambitious than anything the City has undertaken to date. Its impacts – immediate and long-term -- will be enormous, and irreversible.

We urge you to visit www.VoiceontheVillage.com ASAP.
Of, by and for residents, it describes the project and its impacts in detail and suggests ways in which residents can express their views to the City Council.

Our views on “The Village” appear here in “Bedlam-by-the-Bay.” To see it, simply scroll down.

Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City representatives and leaders of Friends of Sunset Park, North of Montana, Ocean Park Association, Pico Neighborhood and WilMont met with City manager Lamont Ewell, City Planning Director Eileen Fogarty, and City Attorney Marcia Moutrie to discuss a building moratorium under California Government Code Section 65858,

The moratorium would be in effect until the completion of the City’s General Plan revision. On the current schedule, it is estimated that work on the revision will require another two years.

Meanwhile, the City is approving projects based on an outdated General Plan that, as an SMCLC spokesperson said, “does not take into account all of the building that has gone on in the 23 years since its adoption, all of the current building going on throughout our city, or all of the permits which have been filed or will be filed over the next two years. Much of this development pressure simply was not anticipated under the 1984 General Plan.”

At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting. City staff asked the Council to approve two major projects that were, in fundamental ways, in direct opposition to each other and would move Santa Monica in different directions simultaneously.

In the first instance, the staff asked the Council to “endorse the Neighborhood Conservation and Placemaking Principles as a component in the Land Use and Circulation Elements” in the General Plan revision.

Planning and Community Development Director Eileen Fogarty’s elucidation of the so-called “principles” was more informative than either the principles themselves or the staff report that elaborated on them.

Fogarty said that the primary thrust of the revised land use and circulation
elements of the General Plan was to restore and preserve Santa Monica’s unique character, and to elevate “performance over process.” To those ends, residential neighborhoods would become the focal point, basis and standard for the entire revision. At the same time, the commercial boulevards would be remade and reduced to supporting roles, serving, rather than dominating the residential neighborhoods.

In an information item to the City Council, Robert D. Trimborn, acting airport director, reported some movement toward the restoration of the Museum of Flying.

Founded as the Donald Douglas Museum and Library in 1974, it was located south of Airport Avenue in a building now occupied by Santa Monica College. In May 1987, the City entered into an agreement with Supermarine of Santa Monica that called for Supermarine to construct space to house what became the Museum of Flying,

It operated in the Supermarine complex from April, 1989, to July, 2002, when operations were suspended, owing to lack of “funding sources for insurance, labor and other operating costs.”

City staff and Supermarine management subsequently discussed the possibility of moving the museum back to the Airport. Supermarine countered with a proposal that it reconfigure its premises so that it could continue to house the Museum at no cost In return, it would receive an operating subsidy for the Museum for the term of its sublease with Supermarine.

By Alice Ollstein

The Santa Monica Public Library was the setting Wednesday for a workshop on the planned demolition and replacement of the iconic California Incline.

Prior to the meeting, people were encouraged to visit several information booths that were set up in the library courtyard. Many people stopped by the "environmental impact" and "design" stations, but the "traffic" table drew the largest and most vocal crowd.

Traffic consultant Bob Cheung used a map of the Westside to describe the steps that the City planned to take to relieve the traffic woes an out-of-commission Incline would cause. The steps included a "residents only" route to help Santa Monicans get around during the busy summer months, detours along Palisades Beach Road, strategically placed signs urging motorists to take the 10 Freeway to Pacific Coast Highway, traffic signal coordination and a visible police presence.

"It's already gridlock on the PCH in the afternoons," one man griped. "What will happen now?"

The state of California requires that cities update their General Plans every 20 years in order to ensure that land use policies and zoning ordinances reflect, relate and respond to current needs and conditions, as well as giving residents a voice in determining the shape, form and priorities of their communities.

Santa Monica’s General Plan was last updated in 1983. City staff began work on the new update three years ago, but it is anticipated it won’t be completed until 2009.

Santa Monica is not only out of compliance with the state law, its General Plan is outdated, so it currently lacks the means, tools and measures to effectively evaluate proposed projects.

To put it another way, Santa Monica currently resides in planning limbo. The existing policies and ordinances are irrelevant and new policies and ordinances have yet to be developed. If even a portion of all projects now in the pipeline go forward, the General Plan update could be obsolete before it takes effect.

Once upon a time there was a Fourth Of July parade in Santa Monica.

Now residents from the Ocean Park Association and North of Montana Association are organizing the inaugural Fourth of July parade on Main Street, It will take place, not coincidentally, on Wednesday, July 4th.

According to organizers, “It’s going To be very small town, kid-friendly and on Main Street,” between 9:30 to 10:30 a.m..

Participants will include the Santa Monica Police and Fire Departments, the Veterans of Foreign Wars, Council Members, the Daily Press and the Chamber of Commerce.

A few months ago, I went to a meeting of The Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, where consultants reported on District finances. The talk was so muffled, I realized serious problems were being mentioned, but in a way that came to an attempted burial, rather than an open discussion.

The same matters later came before the City Council, and I atten ded two long sessions on increased City aid to SMMUSD. After much talk, the School District’s former CFO, Mr. Winston Braham, was released from a “gag order” agreement, and he spoke to the Council (on 12 June) about District fiscal difficulties. Much of this involved technical matters, and Mr. Braham gave more detail on them than most lay people could absorb. With his presentation, I think he showed both professional competence and ethical distinction. In short, he struck me as public official of a higher caliber than I’m accustomed to in many upper-level jobs in our civic bodies.

The moment the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District imposed a gag order on its departed Chief Financial Officer Winston Braham, it was out of order. But rather than admitting what was, by any measure, a serious error in judgment and correcting it, the District seemed bent on compounding it.

Through it all, District officials and the School Board have behaved as if they had special privileges because they were engaged in this community’s most vital undertaking: the education of our children.

The fact that California’s public schools in general and this District in particular have been woefully under-funded for years has added a kind of martyr’s aura to District officials. They have so little money, yet they soldier on, against all odds, and keep the schools going and manage to sustain some dazzling programs.

Over the years, this community has given the schools extraordinary support, contributing time and money, staging fund-raisers, approving parcel taxes and bond issues, and creating an arts endowment, among other things. And, with the support of the community, the City of Santa Monica, has annually allocated millions of dollars to the schools.

As if to secure its position at the bottom of the broadcast TV networks’ heap. NBC aired the last episode of Aaron Sorkin’s brilliant “Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip” Thursday.

As ever, it was funny and sad and savagely true, which, as any good screenwriter knows, is bloody hard to do in 120 minuses, and damn near impossible to do the 40 minutes that are left in an hour-long show after the commercials are loaded in.

NBC’s new programming guys better act fast or they’ll lose the two or three good sitcoms they still have, and be left with nothing but endless iterations of “Law and Order,” “Dateline” anda slew of really dumb “reality shows.”

Sorkin’s flourishing, of course. His new movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” starring Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and directed by Mike Nichols, is in post-production and will be released later this year.

Meanwhile, an extraordinary new film, “The Fever,” has turned up – without any fanfare at all – on HBO. It will be screened on Saturday at 1 p.m. on HBO’s Signature Channel (507 or 508 in Santa Monica), and can be seen “on demand” through July 15.

Based on a play by writer/actor Wallace Shawn, adapted for the screen by Sha wn and Carlo Nero and directed by Nero, it stars his mother, Vanessa Redgrave. It is devastatingly honest and it will either ruin your day, or weekend, or electrify
you.

We lost track of how many City Council meetings we’ve covered some time ago, but, without question, this week’s meeting was the oddest of the lot.

Mayor Richard Bloom was scheduled to be out of town. Council member Bobby Shriver had been out of the country and expected to be back in time for the meeting, but word came late Tuesday afternoon that he’d been delayed.

And then there were five.

Mayor Pro Tem Herb Katz presided. Council members Ken Genser, Bob Holbrook. Kevin McKeown and Pam O’Connor were present.

The first item on the evening’s agenda was an appeal of a Landmark Commission designation of a beach cottage at 2219 Ocean Avenue.

Under Council rules, at least four votes are required to approve or deny any measure. Council member Holbrook favored continuing the appeal, noting that with only five members present, two members could actually swing the vote any way they wished, which would be unfair to the appellant. Genser disagreed, saying that as the appellant had previously continued the item, the hearing should be held. Mckeown and Katz apparently agreed.

Chris Harding, attorney for the appellant, also believed the appeal should be continued, and objected strenuously at having to proceed.

PAINTINGS & SCULPTURE

Rogue Wave ‘07
12 Artists from Los Angeles

Works in all visual media demonstrating the spirit and vitality of the art that’s being made in Los Angeles now. Through August 18. at LA Louver Gallery in Venice.

Michael Tabori, New Work

Born in Paris, raised in New York, Tabore spent most of his life working in film. Now he lives in Venice and makes mixed media works. At William Turner Gallery, Bergamot Station, through September 1.

Danny Heller, Suburbia

Absolutely straight forward, and bsolutely subversive. At Terrence Rogers Fine Arts, Fifth Street in Santa Monica, through July 31.

Wexler, Joyce and Randall

Glen Wexler, The Secret Life of Cows, Paul Joyce’s Hollywoodland, curated by Dennis Hopper, and Gail Greenfield Randall’s Case Histories, Assemblages, curated by Kristine McK enna. Opening July 7 at Track 16 Gallery, Bergamot Station, Reception, 7 to 10 p.m. Through August 1.

CONCERT

David Lindley with John Cruz and Brandi Shearer. Twilight Dance Series at the Santa Monica Pier. Thursday, July 5. 6:30 p.m.