As former City Planning Director Suzanne Frick said when we embarked on the state-mandated revision of the land use and circulation elements of the General Plan (LUCE) four years ago , it’s our Constitution, for it determines our priorities and our destiny for the next two decades.

The City Council is now reviewing the “Strategic Framework” for the LUCE. It’s big, about 350 pages, and very dense, and it’s the basis for the revision.

For the record, the United States Constitution, on which an entire nation, man’s last best hope, Lincoln called it, is based, is 30 pages, including the amendments.

I have long believed that America would be a much truer democracy if the founding fathers had included an amendment requiring that no law – federal, state and local – be longer than the Constitution.

Very few residents attended the first two Council sessions. A third will be held Tuesday. Where are the residents? Why aren’t they turning out in the proverbial droves to critique, parse, praise and damn the LUCE draft.

Santa Monica’s primary fact, shaping element, and greatest asset is the beach. Its other great asset is its residents. Collectively, they are smart, savvy, knowledgeable and articulate. They speak in complete sentences, and are devoted to this iconic beach town.

And, most significantly, they are not happy with the way things are going. I can’t remember the last time anyone said he or she was really pleased with the state of the city. Residents’ affection for Santa Monica is as fierce as ever, but so is their dislike of the course City Hall has charted for the city, and its growing disinterest in residents’ views.

The most disturbing aspect of the recent tree wars was the refusal of City Council members to talk with their constituents, and explain why it was absolutely necessary to remove the trees.

The closest the Treesavers got to an explanation was Mayor Pro Tem Richard Bloom’s, “When a decision is made, it must be respected,” which sounds as if it came right out of the G.W. Bush playbook.

In fact, City Hall has done very few things in recent years that were absolutely necessary, and has done a lot of things that were absolutely unnecessary.

In this instance, the $8.2 million “pedestrian and streetscape improvement project” that includes the tree removal is absolutely unnecessary. The only actual improvements” in the project are some more accessible crosswalks.

We can only assume that the Council members refused to talk as they approved the project because the staff told them to, or because it’s funded by federal-state grants and City Hall never says NO to grants, or because they have come to believe that they are our bosses, not our representatives, and therefore are not required to explain themselves to us.

Given this sad, sordid situation, and the multiple impacts the LUCE will have on this iconic beach town, why are so few residents reviewing the Council review?

A couple of activists told me that they had ”given up” on the LUCE and were counting on Residents’ Initiative t o Fight Traffic (RIFT).

It’s a vital measure. It would limit commercial development to 75,000 square feet a year for 15 years. Well over 10,000 signed the petitions that qualified it for placement on the November ballot.

Neither City Hall nor the Chamber of Commerce board likes it, and all sorts of outfits will spend a lot of money to defeat it. But it will probably survive the assault and be approved by voters, because it’s sensible, simple and necessary.

Left to its own devices, the City oversaw the construction of 9 million square feet of new commercial development between 1980 and today.

But the City Attorney is probably already sussing out counter-measures to RIFT, as happened with residents’ 2000 “clean money” initiative. In that instance, the City went to court and blocked the implementation of the measure for years. When the courts finally threw the City’s case out, it offered voters its own modified measure in the 2006, which they rejected.

It’s worth noting that both San Francisco and Pasadena votrrs passed virtually the same measure – and it became law without incident.

Of course, if new Council members were elected in November who supported EIFT, then all the legal fandango might be avoided.

But, clearly, betting everything on RIFT is insufficient.

Everyone who wants to put City Hall back in its place, as the people’s servant rather than their master, must back RIFT, a slate of the best, brightest and fiercest candidates, and have at the LUCE, which is, in the classic City Hall tradition, so overwrought and under-thought that, if it’s not radically trimmed, tamed and fine-tuned by residents will tie this old beach town in knots. .

Here and now, it’s not easy being a Santa Monica resident, but, as Jake Samuel has said, Santa Monica is at the “tipping point” now, and if we don’t pay attention now, it’ll get worse.