The ad headline, “Meet Your City Leaders,” caught our eye, as we have wondered for some time who, if anyone, was in charge.
The ad went on to say, “The Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce Presents: The State of the City 2008.”
It will be held on Tuesday, January 12, from 12 to 2 p.m. at the Fairmont Miramar Hotel.
In addition to the CofC, the sponsors are the law firm Harding, Larmore, Mullen, Jackle, Kutcher, and Kozal, the Santa Monica Mirror, Metropolitan Pacific Commercial Real Estate Service, the Santa Monica Convention and Visitors Bureau, Bayside District Corporation, RAND, and St. John’s Health Center.
The “leaders” are Mayor Herb Katz and City Manager Lamont Ewell, lawyer Tom Larmore, who heads the Chamber board, the Executive Directors of the City’s Convention and Visitors Bureau and its Bayside Corporation, Misti kerns and Kathleen Rawson, and the new Chamber CEO Laurel Rosen.
With all due respect, these are not the sort of “leaders” we had in mind.
As Mayor, Katz is the titular head of the City Council, He presides at meetings, ribbon cuttings, grand openings and the like, and he prepares the meeting agendas with City Manager Ewell, but, like all of his recent predecessors, he doesn’t actually “lead” the Council or City staff, much less the rest of us.
The City Charter assigns more powers to the City Manager than to the Mayor and Council members, so Ewell rules in City Hall. But though he spends time out in the community, he listens far more than he talks, and, thus far, has shown no inclination to become a community leader, in the usual sense
Larmore has often opposed City Hall. He led, and lost, the battle to gut the City’s landmark ordinance, and was involved in the Chamber’s PAC in recent elections, but the Chamber announced recently that it would no longer endorse or fund Council candidates Larmore has been a leader in the “business community,” but it is not clear who and what that “community” represents. It is often at odds with residents, and there are many businesses that are not affiliated with the Chamber, which makes Larmore more lobbyist than leader.
Rawson, Kerns and Rosen’s leadership is restricted to the “business community,” and, as their principal activity is “selling” Santa Monica. and most residents deplore that activity, it is unlikely that their influence will spread into the community as a whole.
In other words, however interesting the presentation, “the State of the City: 2008,” may be, given the sponsors and participants, its focus will be the state of business in Santa Monica, and “your city leaders” will not be present, because there are no city leaders at the moment, and haven’t been any for a while.
City manager from the early 1980s to the late 1990s. John Jalili was a boss, not a leader. Once a leader in the rent control movement, Denny Zane has run Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights, and while it wins elections, it seems to have lost its way.
There are some potential leaders on the boards and commissions, in the eighborhood organizations and in Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City, but none of them has been willing to enter the larger arena.
Beach towns naturally attract bright, independent, spirited mavericks. They don’t cotton to bosses and don’t need leaders to tell them which way the wind is blowing, but City Hall overruled them on every key question last year (see “City Vetoes Residents” below).
In sum. City Hall has ruled residents out of order, is apparently Ieaderless and doesn’t even have a map. The 1984 General Plan is obsolete, and the mandated revision won’t be complete until 2009. We can’t help wondering who’s calling the shots.