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Santa Monica is not only out of compliance with the state law, its General Plan is outdated, so it currently lacks the means, tools and measures to effectively evaluate proposed projects.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

A state law permits cities to declare a building moratorium for up to two years while it revises its General Plan, so that inappropriate projects that could not be built under the update are not approved in the meantime.

Members of the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City and the neighborhood organizations met recently with the City Manager, Planning Director and City Attorney to ask that the City declare a moratorium.

The officials said they would look into it.

Last Wednesday night, representatives from the Coalition and the neighborhood groups asked the Planning Commission to recommend to the City Coincil that it order a building moratorium until the revision of the land use and circulation elements of the General Plan are completed and approved by the council.

In discussing the moratorium, SMCLC co-chair Diana Gordon suggested that the City could enact such a measure, but exclude single family houses and affordable housing projects of a certain size.

Representing the Ocean Park Association, Jacob Samuel also spoke in favor of a moratorium. He said that Santa Monica had re ached the “tipping point,” with more and more streets clogged by traffic more and more of the time.

After some discussion, it was clear that the Commission was divided on the question, and Commissioners asked the staff to present a range of options at its next meeting.

The Commission’s attorney said that a moratorium is possible under GC 65858, but difficult to craft and the City Attorney’s office is looking into it.

City staff is looking at other options, such as giving the Planning Department more latitude to reject projects that don’t meet the general principles and objectives of the revision.

What are they waiting for? According to the Coalition. “ the city’s 6/07 current projects list [includes] 27 condo projects, three large SRO projects totaling 896 units, and a commercial project exceeding 25,000 square feet on Wilshire.”

Other projects are already going forward. The Commission took action on three new condo projects before hearing from the Coalition and neighborhood Groups Wednesday night.

Simple. clean and effective, a moratorium would give Santa Monica time to catch up with itself, and help us make order out of the enlarging chaos, and the state has virtually invited us to do it.

We have a problem. And we have a solution at hand. Why, then, is City Hall dragging its feet, stalling, and looking for “options?”