Hannah Heineman

The accelerating pace of development in Santa Monica is one of the key issues in the upcoming City Council election. A number of Council candidates, members of Mid-City Neighbors and one of the founders of Santa Monicans for Responsible Growth (SMRG) discussed the issue during a wide-ranging discussion on September 22.

SMRG co-founder Ivan Perkins, a labor and employment attorney, said that his “group came together over the summer due to concerns about the Miramar Hotel project,” but now their principal aim is to “maintain the basic atmosphere of Santa Monica and maybe enhance it.” He noted that the City goes through a lot of process when reviewing development projects but “whether it’s the best process I don’t know” in response to Mid- City member Madeline Tarfman’s comment that the City development review process seems to ignore input from the residents. He continued, “I hope the feedback from my group will be instrumental in changing the Miramar project.”

An SMRG’s development concern is “the way Development Agreements (DAs) come before general planning” as in the case of the Miramar. Another is that it is not appropriate to classify projects’ economic impacts solely in terms of bringing dollars into the city. In SMRG’s view, it’s “short-sighted and radically incomplete” because a project may have other negative impacts. Finally, they would like the City to request and consider neutral economic feasibility studies on projects.

Perkins’ group has endorsed Council candidates Richard McKinnon and Ted Winterer whose views reflect their concerns. Currently, they have seven members and are not an organization that members can join by paying dues.

Mid-City President Gregg Heacock asked what responsible growth is and how residents can achieve it. Council candidate Bob Seldon responded we “have to see where we are to see where we want to go.” He also pointed out “this is a very critical time because the Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE) is intentionally vague. The critical part is the zoning regulations that will be enacted pursuant to the LUCE.”

Another candidate John Smith stated, “DA agreements should be the exception rather the rule. Individual projects are approved without the attention to the traffic they are going to cause.” Developers should be required to pay to mitigate the traffic their projects generate.

Armen Melkonians, also a candidate, said Santa Monica is “at build-out. Creating more parking and requiring transportation impact fees won’t work. We need to rethink our systems. Development should help the quality of life. It should never detract from it. That is the only function of the City Council – to look at our quality of life.”

Former Council member Tony Vazquez who wants to return to the Council noted, “We constantly have people coming in who want to redevelop our city for a profit. The Council needs to be a watchdog about development.”

Another Council candidate Steve Duron believes Santa Monica should use its wind, solar and water resources to make the city-more self-sustainable even though the technology isn’t here yet. He also would like the City to use its wind, solar and water rather than development as a revenue generator.

Neighbors also expressed concerns about parking. Amy Aukstikalnis from the Northeast Neighborhood group was concerned about the lack of parking being proposed at the Santa Monica Expo Light Rail stations. She stated “Expo is designed to bring people into Santa Monica but not designed for the Santa Monica residents to use.”

Mayor Pro-Tem Gleam Davis who is also running for another term responded that the Big Blue Bus (BBB) is trying to have bus connectors that will help those who live in the City or visit to access areas of the city that are not close to the Expo stations. She also discussed the issue of parking in downtown Santa Monica by emphasizing there are “a lot of opportunities in downtown to build more parking. We need to obtain the right balance by asking whether we want people to drive into downtown by building more parking or do we want to build less parking and rely on alternative forms of transportation?” Heacock suggested combining parking at the Expo Bergamot station with a BBB transit pass.

City Council member Terry O’Day who is also seeking another term stated the need to “more efficiently manage the parking we have in downtown.” He also suggested unbundling private parking so it would be available for public use.

Mid City member Howie Myback called for more public transportation. Candidate Vazquez agreed by saying, “we need to build on what we currently have. We need to expand the BBB.” However, Council candidate Frank Gruber had a different view. To him, the “BBB is basically designed for the most part as an adjunct to the welfare system. It is designed for people who don’t have an alternative to cars. We’re not building a bus system that will attract people out of their cars. We should be designing a system that includes buses on the grid and a point to point bus and shuttle system” like many of the big companies like Google have for their employees.

Mid-City resident Tarfman called for better traffic light synchronization. O’Day pointed out that the city has new technology to do this and Davis added that traffic is now being monitored in real time. She also noted the need to negotiate with the City of Los Angeles to place a traffic officer at the intersection of Pico and Bundy to help to the traffic bottleneck there.