Santa Monica Dispatch

“Every solution implemented over the past 125 years has failed to make a dent [in L.A. traffic congestion]…The good news is that reducing traffic by only 5 to 10 percent would make driving across the nation’s second-largest city a smooth ride, according to the panelists at ‘Gridlock in Los Angeles: Getting Past the Standstill,’ a forum sponsored by RAND on Thursday,” SurfSantaMonica reported Tuesday,

But, the story went on to say, “…the only real solutions -- changing the behavior of motorists voluntarily or through coercion or punitive measures -- will be difficult, if not politically suicidal, the experts warned…

“ ‘The question of what we do about congestion is a political question,’ said Martin Wachs, director of RAND’s Transportation, Space and Technology Program.”

By Ava Tramer

Beaches
Warm and mostly sunny
Highs: 70-73; Lows: 61-64

Inland
Clear and sunny
Highs: 87-94; Lows: 53-64

Deserts
Sunny and hot
Highs: 100-109; Lows: 76-83

E! True Hollywood Story: Dinosaur Extinction

Millions and millions of years ago, dinosaurs roamed our planet. They had a life much like ours, except with bad cell phone reception and no microwaves: they ate, they slept, they enjoyed the good times and rued the bad, and they faced day-to-day conflict with their enemies. Sunnosaurus Rex was one of these dinosaurs, a heartless and power-hungry dinosaur who wanted to rule the land. Sunnosaurus Rex devised an evil plan: he would remove all other dinosaurs from the land, and he would be the only one left to rule over the other lesser and silly species, such as wooly mammoths. Then he would be king.

So Sunnosaurus Rex began executing his plan. He picked a fight with Rainodocus and bit off his head. When Hailceratops and Sleetodon came by to say hello, he pushed them into some molten lava. He saw Thunderopteryx and Snowosaurus drowning in tar pits, but he did not try to save them. Windiraptor and Cloudodactyl, hearing that Sunnosaurus Rex was in a bad mood, baked him some cookies and brought them to him, hoping to cheer him up. Sunnosaurus Rex appreciated their thoughtfulness, so he decided to let them live, but only in caves, which they were allowed to leave only on rare occasions.

After many happy years of ruling lesser species, Sunnosaurus Rex retired to Santa Monica, California, where he continues to thrive, unbeknownst to virtually all of the world’s paleontologists. Windiraptor and Cloudodactyl evolved into lesser species, and have been known to visit Sunnosaurus Rex in Santa Monica every now and then for a cup of tea.

T.S. Eliot declared that “April is the cruelest month,” but August is the cruelest month in Santa Monica, because it’s the traditional start of the annual battle between City Hall and residents for this venerable beach town’s soul.

Early every August, City Hall goes silent and residents go quietly nuts. Experience has taught them that the City staff will emerge from its self-imposed silence in mid-month armed with bundles of invariably preposterous plans and projects, which residents will be forced to oppose.

Experience has also taught them that the ensuing rumble will be long, heated, turbulent, and occasionally toxic.

There are several sorts of boondoggles. Our favorites are the plaited leather cords that’re usually made by campers or scouts and the government projects that are of no real value to the communities in which they’re located.

There’s a boondoggle on the Tuesday Night City Council meeting agenda, and unfortunately it’s not a leather cord, but a $8.2 million government project of no real value.

The City calls it ’“The 2nd and 4th Streets Pedestrian and Streetscape Improvements Project,” but it will not improve anything, and we don’t need it, which is probably why it’s on the Council’s Consent Calendar, so it can be approved with all the other items without any discussion.

By Ava Tramer

Beaches
Clear and growing gradually warmer
Highs: 75-78; Lows: 64-68

Inland
Sunny and hot
Highs: 94-102; Lows: 63-71

Deserts
Sunny and scorching
Highs: 107-115; Lows: 81-89

And Santa Monica…

Little Miss Sunfet
Sat above a townfet
Shining her beams down all day.

Along came a clouder
Who tried to shine over
But Miss Sunfet scared it away!

A town as small as Santa Monica (eight square miles) and as densely populated (10,000 people per square mile) can only sustain a few body blows before it begins to, literally, disintegrate,

City Hall has made some bad calls in the last several years, but now it seems bent on making a mistake that would dwarf all the others – literally as well as figuratively.

Though it has acted to delay some large projects until the General Plan revision is finished, it’s rushing its own mega-project, “the Civic Center Village,” forward, though it would irreparably alter the character of this legendary beach town, and render the revision irrelevant before it’s done.

When the City staff put the “Alternative Concept Plan for the Civic Center Village” on the City Council agenda twice and pulled it twice, we thought perhaps sanity had finally prevailed and the staff had realized, however tardily, that the project was simply unworkable.

But we should have known better. Once set on a course, City Hall never changes its course or its mind, perhaps fearing that any flexibility would be seen as weakness, or perhaps it just doesn’t know what it’s doing. In any event, the item is on Tuesday night’s Council agenda, and, as we write, has not been pulled.

By Ava Tramer

Beaches
Sunny and warm
Highs: 72-80; Lows: 63-65

Inland
Clear and hot
Highs: 94-99; Lows: 62-69

Deserts
Hot and sunny
Highs: 107-110; Lows: 77-84

And Santa Monica…
Across the girth of our big planet earth,
You will find all sorts of weather.
In far away lands fierce winds do pierce,
Blowing birds to and fro losing feathers.
There is a wonder, I think it’s called thunder,
That booms through the sky with a ring.
I read a rumor of hail falling fast in a gale,
Bouncing down to the ground with a ding.
Where fireplaces glow, I’ve heard of snow,
A phenomenon I never have seen.
For shining high in our sky from July to July,
In Santa Monica the sun is our Queen!

City Hall’s rationalizations trumped reason at the Tuesday, August 14, City
Council meeting.

The City’s $8.2 million “Second and Fourth Streets Improvement Project”
was on the Consent Calendar, which includes items that can be approved
without discussion. But a dozen members of the public were there to protest that portion of the project that is devoted to the trees on the two streets.

The project’s $700,000 tree treatment program calls for removing 24 palm trees, 54 mature ficus trees, most of which are healthy, replacing them with young ginkgo trees, and installing “decorative uplighting” at the base of the remaining ficus trees. The healthy ficus trees will be replanted in other places while “diseased” trees will be destroyed.

Kathleen Rawson, Executive Director of the Bayside District Corporation, and Barbara Bryan, a Bayside board member both praised the project as the third step in the “improvement” of the downtown area. Neither of them mentioned the trees.

All the other speakers deplored the removal of “healthy and beautiful trees” from downtown city streets, Several of them also accused the City, which regularly boasts of its “sustainability,” and its “urban forest,” of hypocrisy.

From: Stephanie Barbanell

I was an original member of the Civic Center Specific Plan Advisory Committee, from 1990 to 1993, representing the resident homeowners of Sea view Terrace.

The update of the General Plan, land use element and zoning code happens only every 20 years. We are currently going through that process.

I request that the Civic Center Village project be continued until such time as the revised land use element in the General Plan has been adopted.

I further request that you not approve this project at that time, but reconsider the whole idea of housing for the few in the Civic Center that has the potential to benefit all Santa Monicans – after the new General Plan’s land use element has been adopted. That is the reasonable course.

Policy 1.5 of the City’s adopted Community Forest Management Plan “stipulates that the Community Forest be comprised of a diversity of tree species and varied ages within each species. It is the City’s goal over time to achieve a Community Forest where no one species of tree dominates the forest and each species constitutes no more than 10% of the total forest.”

Everything is the matter with this policy.

For starts, it bears an unfortunate resemblance to those paint-by-number kits, And it’s a nightmare scenario. In order to meet the mandated “no more than 10 percent” rule, the City loggers will have to chop down acres of trees, including all the “wrong” species and all the trees in the “right” species over the 10 percent limit.

Setting quotas on tree species is almost as ugly as setting quotas on people, and who decides which species are “right” and which are “wrong?”

According to a story in the Santa Monica Daily Press, City officials continue to grapple with their own acute housing problems.

Having outgrown City Hall some time ago, City staff has been deployed all over town – in 46.000 square feet of office space at a cost of over $1 million annually. It’s inconvenient and make-do, and it’s the result of incredibly bad planning by City staff.

Several years ago, the City bought 11-plus acres and two office buildings from RAND for $53 million. The property is directly across Main Street from City Hall.

Of great historic, cultural and architectural value, the two buildings should and could have been adapted for use as City offices.

At the time, about 1500 people worked for RAND, and the City employed 2,000-plus people, so the two buildings would have met the City’s space needs for the foreseeable future, and two important buildings would have been preserved.

By Ava Tramer

Beaches
Partly cloudy and warm
Highs: 72-70; Lows: 64-68

Inland
Clear and hot
Highs: 94-101; Lows: 66-69

Deserts
Sunny and hot
Highs: 101-110; Lows: 83-88

And Santa Monica…

Friday will bring warmth, but with clouds overhead.
Saturday will be bright, so sunscreen you should spread.
Sunday, too, will be sunny and warm,
On Monday, I promise, there will be no storms.
Tuesday will be warmer with sun in the sky.
Wednesday will be so hot you feel like a cry.
Thursday will be hotter, with warmth all around you,
And that is our weather: will you cheer it or boo?

The irony was enormous. There were an estimated 17,000 veterans living on the streets of Los Angeles County, many disabled by substance abuse and mental illness, and there were 11 large, handsome empty buildings on the grounds of the large Veterans Administration complex in West L.A.

Despite sporadic efforts spanning nearly two decades, the buildings remained empty. and the vets remained homeless

Many jurisdictions might have intervened on behalf of the homeless vets -- the VA itself, the state, the County of Los Angeles, the City of L.A. but they didn’t. Nor did California’s senior Senator, Dianne Feinstein, though she was a member of both the Senate’s Veterans Affairs and Appropriations Committees. influential Congressman, Henry Waxman, who represents West Los Angeles, also remained on the sidelines.

For almost 20 years, I have attended meetings where residents have begged elected officials to do something about safety enhancements at Santa Monica Airport. It is not a matter of IF a catastrophic accident will occur …it is a matter of WHEN that catastrophic accident DOES occur.

Local residents near the airport do not want to see our elected officials in front of TV cameras saying how sorry they are WHEN the catastrophic accident happens. Local residents want their elected officials to do something NOW. Please act on airport safety enhancements NOW.

Our neighborhood should not have to live on a wing and a prayer.

Jane Dempsey

Area residents will rally Tuesday, August 28, at 5:30 p.m. outside City Hall to demand that the FAA end the danger from jet aircraft overruns at the Santa Monica Airport by enforcing its own rules.

Congressional help in forcing the FAA to follow its own safety rule is also being sought.

Following the rally, the FAA will present its plans to the City Council on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Officials with the City’s Community Corporation, which develops “affordable housing” in Santa Monica, have said that it costs, on average, $450,000 per unit to buy and “rehab” existing apartment buildings.

At the Tuesday, October 14, City Council meeting, in response ti a question, a Related Companies of California executive estimated that, including the cost of the land, a unit in the proposed Civic Center Village development would cost $550,000 to to construct.

Ar the same meeting, resident Greg Brogger distributed data to the
Council based on the sale of apartment buildings in the city in the last year that showed that 166 units were purchased for less than $35 million or, on average, $209,000 for each apartment.

There are to be 163 "affordable" units in the Village.

Brogger went on to say, ”It’s extremely frustrating to hear Community Corp and Planning Department represent that the average cost of an apartment building unit after renovation is about $450,000. It means they’re either incompetent or ‘shading’ the truth. I don’t know which is more frightening.

“Given that (i) the reason for giving away $85 million of public land and allowing the Village its buffet of variances was to get the affordable housing units, and (ii) these units could be obtained sooner, for half the cost and for people who already live here, I can not for the life of me see why this project is only picking up speed.”

Dear all,

Sometimes it feels as if we must attend a thousand meetings and send a thousand emails to get public officials to hear our pleas. This week is one of those times when we must do those things if we want to protect residents and homes in our neighborhood.

According to the S.M. Airport staff report, 14 acres of homes in Sunset Park seem to be at risk from a jet or other large, fast airplane overrunning the west end of the runway (landing too fast to stop, or failing to lift off). The July 31, 2007 Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) safety proposal is totally unacceptable and would actually reduce safety for residents by extending the ends of the runway closer to homes!

At its Tuesday night meeting, the City Council will be asked by City staff to approve an “emergency interim ordinance” that would make development agreements mandatory for projects with over 7,500 square feet of floor area or more than 15 residential units in the Light Manufacturing and Studio District (LMSD) and Manufacturing Conservation (M1) and for changes in land use on parcels that exceed 32,000 square feet in the LMSD and 15,000 square feet in the M1 district,

At the July 24 Council meeting, City staff made the case for an interim ordinance that applied exclusively to the industrial lands rather than the citywide moratorium that many residents have asked for.

On the advice of staff, but to the dismay of residents who argued for a city-wide moratorium, the Council opted for the industrial lands interim ordinance, but did not explain why a City-wide moratorium or interim ordinance would not be more appropriate.

Last night at the Farms, Santa Monica’s supreme grocery emporium, Jeff Bixon, the Dispatch’s man on Montana, pointed out an ominous collision of facts in the L.A. Times..

A story on page two in the California section about population density in
American cities contained a graph that ranked the cities. Santa Monica with 11,006 people per square mile was outranked by all the New York boroughs except Staten Island, but it outranks Philadelphia (10,729), Washington D.C. (9,533), and Los Angeles itself (8,208). The figures are U.S. Census Bureau 2006 estimates.

11,006 people per square mile! Seems like more than enough. But it gets better. The City estimates that our population rises daily to 300,000, or 36,144 people per square mile, which puts tiny Santa Monica ahead of all the cities on the list and all the New York boroughs but Manhattan. Wow! City Hall must be very proud.

A crowd of residents rallied on the lawn in front of City Hall before the Tuesday night City Council meeting to demand that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) take the necessary steps to make the Santa Monica airport safe.

Many of the same people spoke during the subsequent Council study session. Most of the speakers live near the airport – in Santa Monica and LA -- and their list of complaints included the enormous increase in corporate jet traffic, the possibility of planes running off the runway and into houses, jet noise, toxic fumes, as well as the FAA’s alleged lack of interest in the airport’s hazards over the years.

In addition, representatives read statements from Congressman Henry Waxman and Congresswoman Jane Harman and L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl, all of whom expressed their displeasure with the FAA’s passive posture, as well as assuring residents of their concern.

By Ava Tramer

Beaches
Warm and sunny
Highs: 76-83; Lows: 65-68

Inland
Sunny and gradually cooler
Highs: 92-103; Lows: 65-75

Deserts
Clear and sunny
Highs: 103-113; Lows: 83-91

And Santa Monica…
As the weekend draws near, expect warm temperatures and clear skies, with highs in the low 80s. Nights should be mild, with lows in the high 60s. After the weekend is behind us and a new week has dawned, expect warm temperatures and clear skies, with highs in the low 80s. Nights should be mild, with lows in the high 60s. Midweek will bring warm temperatures and clear skies, with highs in the low 80s. Nights should be mild, with lows in the high 60s.

SEVERE WEATHER FORECAST:
Expect LOW TEMPERATURES next Wednesday and Thursday, with
highs in the HIGH 70s and lows in the MID 60s.

The Old Village Mind Reader (TOVMR), aka SurfSantaMonica columnist Frank Gruber, is at it again.

He failed the last time out, when he assigned crass political motives to City Council members who were actually engaged in righting a wrong, but, undaunted, he’s now divined that certain residents are plotting to sandbag the General Plan revision.

He calls them “Santa Monicans Fearful of Change (SMFC),” and credits the prescience of Council member Pam O’Connor with sparking his divination when, at the October 26, 2004 joint meeting of the City Council and the Planning Commission “that kicked off what was supposed to be a two-year process, [when she said,} “‘We need more time’ is a code phrase for people to use to hijack the process."

Well, okay, but, more often than not, the people who say “We need more time,” are on the City payroll.