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The City of Santa Monica  regularly allows developers

to violate zoning and other regulations in return for the  inclusion of what the City calls “community benefits” in their  projects.

The so-called community benefits have included some affordable housing—often located off-site –  and open space that’s accessible to the public.

It’s a bad bargain. The developers increases in the maximum allowable height, mass and overall  size fracture the  town’s prevailing low scale  that has made it possible for residential neighborhoods to co-exist compatibly with boulevard businesses.

“Community benefits” is a misnomer. The community

doesn’t “benefit” from these outsized edifices. City Hall does. Developers do. They both make

more  money. We don’t.

The City budget now tops half-a-billion dollars a year, but residents haven’t  enjoyed a comparable expansion of City services. In fact, the only increases residents have seen have been in the utility tax, water rates, bus fares, and so on.

In sum, as currently constituted,  “community benefits” is a scam, perpetrated by the City and the developers on the rest of us.

Ironically,  if City Hall were motivated by more than simple

greed, new commercial  projects could actually compliment the townscape rather than disrupting

It.

Developers from all over the  place  want to build here.   But, given its extreme age and small size, it can’t afford any more blunders of the sort that made the last several decades so grueling.

The revised land use and

Circulation elements of the

General Plan(LUCE)

should state that no commercial

projects will be considered  that will not benefit the community in  substantial ways, They must be  architecturally distinctive, useful, needed, and compatible. No

trade offs. No tricks. No compromises  Just first–rate   projects that  meet our standards address our needs and generally improve the prospect.

It is worth noting that none of the City’s own projects would pass the

the test.