Committed To Helping Neighbors Improve Their Neighborhood

Dear Friends and Members of Mid-City Neighbors,

Tuesday night, City Council will be considering St. John’s Health Center’s request to be released from its 13-year-old promise to build an on-site subterranean parking structure for its staff, patients, and visitors who need easy parking near the hospital.

• Instead, St. John’s proposes to fill almost every available parking space in the Mid-City area, saying that it is helping the Santa Monica achieve its “Shared-Parking” goals.

• Despite increased emissions of greenhouse gases as cars back up along the already crowded Santa Monica Blvd. to let out passengers so that valets can drive them even further to all the available parking lots in that area, St. John’s says it is helping Santa Monica achieve its “Traffic Demand Management” goals.

• Overestimating the cost of building adequate on-site parking, St. John’s asks Santa Monica’s citizens for a “Bailout” as they continue to funnel millions back into their “non-profit corporation” making money while denying the public the services they promised.

• Presenting a plan that is hardly the functional equivalent of the one first agreed to, St. John’s lawyer presents City Council members with a false choice between
(1) an old plan with fewer conditions and guarantees but with a real parking structure and
(2) a new plan with more conditions and guarantees with the possibility of an even larger parking structure in the future.
Actually, the City Council could choose
(3) its own plan with conditions, guarantees, and a commitment to build a real parking lot and expand it in the future.

Please come to speak and to ask City Council members the following questions:

• “How is it ethical to force people in wheelchairs to seek free handicap parking several blocks away instead of providing the on-site parking that was promised?”

• “How is it ethical to have nurses pay for parking that is not available to them so that they must drive around to pay more and then walk several blocks to work?”

• “How is it ethical to increase the greenhouse gas emission around the hospital entrance while cars idle as pregnant mothers and people with walkers or wheelchairs or strollers struggle to get out so valets can drive their cars away?”

• “How is it ethical to create a traffic jam that goes on for several blocks down one of the busiest streets of Santa Monica?”

• “How is it ethical to take up all the available parking spaces in the Mid-City area, calling it “shared-parking” when it leave no other parking to share?”

• “How is it ethical to ask our residents to “Bailout” a “non-profit corporation” that has failed to live up to its promises not to increase traffic problems with their hospital?”

• “How is it ethical to ask our residents to be the first to allow a major hospital in Los Angeles County not to build an on-site parking lot for all the people who use it?”

Say “No!” to Bailouts!

See you there,

Gregg Heacock
President of Mid-City Neighbors
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