Late in the evening of the 4/24 Santa Monica City Council meeting, Council member Kevin McKeown asked his colleagues to endorse the peace education activities of Veterans for Peace Los Angeles, the organizers of the Arlington West memorial at Santa Monica Pier and an upcoming “Americans for Peace 2007” West Coast tour.

Council member Bobby Shriver had been called out of town earlier in the week and Council member Herb Katz had left the meeting. Mayor Bloom said he did not think it appropriate that the City take a stand on non-local issues. Council member Pam O’Connor agreed with him. Members Bob Holbrook and Ken Genser voted with McKeown, but the motion failed as it did not have the requisite four votes.

Bloom and O’Connor should be ashamed of themselves.

As everyone knows by now, City Hall’s favorite word is “vibrant.” Virtually everything it does is “vibrant” or will be when the City is done with it.

But what does it mean?

It means “moving to and fro rapidly; vibrating; vibrating so as to produce sound, as a string; sounds characterized by perceptible vibration; resonant; resounding.”

And ”pulsating with vigor and energy vigorous; energetic; vital; exciting; stimulating; lively.”

And “Phonetics. made with tonal vibration of the vocal cords; voiced.”

And “characterized by rapid, rhythmic movement back and forth or to and fro; vibrating.”

And “vigorous and animated; ‘a vibrant group that challenged the system;’ ‘charming and vivacious hostess;’ ‘a vivacious folk dance.’”

Origin: c.1550, "agitated," from L. vibrantem (nom. vibrans) "swaying," prp. of vibrare "move to and fro" (see vibrate). Meaning "vigorous, full of life" is first recorded 1860.

But what does the City mean?

Downtown Santa Monica and what we call the Civic Center were divided by an arroyo until 1922, when the Main Street bridge was built across said arroyo.

The gorgeous Streamline Moderne City Hall was built in 1938. About the same time, the Evening Outlook and the Santa Monica Realty Board sponsored a Civic Center design competition. There were many entries, but nothing came of it.

In 1951, the City sold eight-plus acres across Main Street from City Hall to the RAND Corporation for $250,000. Using the land as collateral, RAND promptly borrowed $1.4 million from a San Francisco bank and built the first of its two buildings.

In 1956, the City built the Civic Auditorium on the southern end of the Civic Center. Designed by Welton Beckett, the fanciful ‘50s structure was the site of the Academy Awards ceremonies for a number of years, as well as some memorable rock concerts. The L.A. County courthouse was also built in 1956. Next to City Hall, it exemplified another sort of ‘50s modernist architecture.

The more Environmental Impact Reports we read, the more convinced we are that the people who write them live in some sort of rose-colored bubble.

Whoever wrote the draft EIR on the California Incline cited in the preceding article cannot have spent any time here or he/she/they could not have stated so emphatically and cheerfully that shutting down the California Incline for 10 months (real time = 14 to 18 months) would cause only minor traffic disruptions.

According to these descendants of Dr. Pangloss, City Hall will develop a “traffic plan,” and traffic will be “monitored,” and Lincoln and Ocean Street will be clearly designated detours, and northbound drivers will be advised to leave the 10 Freeway at Lincoln or Fourth…

AND it will be a bloody nightmare! For Santa Monica and Santa Monica Canyon residents and any unfortunate driver who finds himself in this latest traffic snarl.

At the outset, then-Director of Planning and Community Development Suzanne Frick said that the state-mandated revision of the General Plan was our Constitution, as it would determine our destiny for the next 20 years. It sounded more like a threat than a promise.

Frick’s successor, Eileen Fogarty has been demonstrably more interested in listening to and incorporating residents’ views in the revisions than Frick was, but she recently said that there would have to be “trade-offs” and “deal-making,” and that “we will not succeed if we have winners and losers.”

City Staff dubbed the revisions of the land use and circulation elements “Shape the Future 2025” and “Motion by the Ocean,” but more than two years have passed and the future remains unshaped and there is, if anything, even less motion by the ocean than there was two years ago.

"The Village" Site from Palisades Garden Walk (from www.santa-monica.org; The Village staff report)

At the initial workshops, meetings, hearings, in staff reports, in the two voluminous reports on the revision, and the recent round of “placemaking” community workshops, what seems to us to be crucial facts have been virtually ignored.

The Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission will vote on the designation of the Barry Building as an Historic Cultural Monument at a final hearing on Thursday. July 12.

The Barry Building at 11975 San Vicente Boulevard in Brentwood is an architectural landmark that has been home to a cultural landmark and icon, Dutton’s Brentwood Books, for nearly three decades.

The graceful two-story building and its distinguished tenant are as integral to Brentwood as the Case Study houses on Hanley and the Archer School for Girls’ historic Main building on Sunset.

Dutton’s is arguably the best bookstore in Los Angeles, and one of the best bookstores in America. In the last several decades, virtually every writer of note has appeared at Dutton’s to read and sign books. It’s also noted for its children’s programs.

Pam O’Connor began her fourth term as a Santa Monica City Council member in December.

Since 2001, she has also been a member of the Metropolitan Transit Authority Board of Directors, representing Westside and South Bay cities, In addition, she represents Santa Monica on the Exposition Light Rail Construction Authority Board, which is in charge of the development of a light rail system from downtown Los Angeles to Santa Monica.

On July 1, O’Connor became MTA board Chair, succeeding Los Angeles County Supervisor Gloria Molina.

The 13-member board is comprised of the five Los Angeles County Supervisors, four members appointed by the Los Angeles County/City Selection Committee, the Mayor of Los Angeles and three members appointed by him.

The Board recently adopted a $3.1 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2007-08 that began July 1.

Some people, particularly City Hall insiders, have seen O’Connor’s stint on the MTA board as an asset, presuming that her presence gives Santa Monica some sort of advantage. Thus far, there is no tangible evidence to support that presumption.

As MTA chair, she has more power and more authority, and she also has a major dilemma.

Santa Monica’s interests and MTA’s interests are not, can’t be and shouldn’t be synonymous. If there’s a conflict between Santa Monica interests and MTA interests, which side will O’Connor take?

The State of California mandates that cities revise their General Plans every 20 years. As Santa Monica’s last revision was done in 1983, it is now four years out of compliance with the law, and, by the time the current revision is completed and approved, in 2009, it will have been out of compliance for six years.

In a rare show of wisdom, the state offers a clean, smart way out of this dilemma. With the state’s blessing, the City can declare a moratorium on all new projects. But, to date, it hasn’t even put it on the City Council
agenda.

We have called for the moratorium countless times since work on the General Plan revision began in 2004, as have numbers of other residents, Several weeks ago, representatives from the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City and all of the active neighborhood groups met with City Manager Lamont Ewell and CityAttorney Marcia Moutrie to propose a moratorium.

The same group then asked the Planning Commission to recommend the moratorium to the City Council. Several commissioners favored it, but the others didn’t, and so the question was continued.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky recently proposed making Olympic and Pico Boulevards “one-way paired streets between downtown Los Angeles and Santa Monica” as a means of decongesting Westside traffic. A study done by transportation planner Allen Rifkin found that the change would reduce congestion,
A July 10 press release from Santa Monica’s so-called Traffic Management Division asked, “Would the conversion of Olympic and Pico Boulevards to one-way streets solve Westside traffic congestion?”

No
.
It wouldn’t reduce Westside traffic congestion, much less “solve” it, but it would add a layer of confusion to the congestion.

As the 1983 iteration of Santa Monica’s state-mandated 20-year General Plan became obsolete in 2003 and the revision will not be finished until 2009, Santa Monica is out of compliance, and in limbo.

In this no-plan land we now inhabit, unprecedented problems proliferate, along with the same old problems.

Most cities of this size have no hospitals. Santa Monica has two first-rate major hospitals, and both are currently in the midst of multi-million-dollar expansions. At the same time, the number of local extended care facilities is in decline. But the City doesn’t know how many such facilities exist, much less how many are needed. As a result, though we have a surfeit of luxury condo complexes, another one, which would displace an extended care facility, is now making its way through the review process.

Surely, City Hall should know precisely what Santa Monica has in the way of vital services and what it needs.

Billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife really didn’t like Bill Clinton and spent most of the 1990s and quite a lot of dough, relatively speaking, financing far right wing think tanks’ assaults on President Clinton’s polices, as well as subsidizing a series of so-called exposes of his Arkansas years that proved to be more shrill than factual.

Now, to the surprise of nearly everyone, the ultra-conservative Scaife has savaged the ultra-conservative George W. Bush in print.

Council members Bobby Shriver and Ken Genser’s frustration at Tuesday night’s Council meeting was almost palpable as they each tried, and failed, to engage their fellow Council members and City staff in a serious discussion of whether the City should declare a city-wide moratorium that would put proposed projects on hold until the revision of the General Plan is complete.

Planning Director Eileen Fogarty’s report to the Council had summarized some of the possibilities for development in the industrial lands that would be considered during the drafting of the revision of the General Plan. In addition, she had outlined ways of dealing with the large number of potential projects that City Hall has received. The alternatives are a moratorium on all development, a moratorium with exceptions for projects undertaken via a development agreement, revised development standards and maintenance of the status quo.

City Attorney Marcia Moutrie and Deputy City Attorney Barry Rosenbaun had evaluated the efficacy of the alternative means of dealing with current projects – from a legal point of view. Their preference was an interim ordinance that would cover only the industrial lands.

Several residents had spoken in favor of a city-wide moratorium.

When questioned by Genser and then Shriver, the attorneys continued to focus on the legal aspects, alleging that a city-wide moratorium would be hard to craft and defend.

“Every solution implemented over the past 125 years has failed to make a dent [in L.A. traffic congestion]…The good news is that reducing traffic by only 5 to 10 percent would make driving across the nation’s second-largest city a smooth ride, according to the panelists at ‘Gridlock in Los Angeles: Getting Past the Standstill,’ a forum sponsored by RAND on Thursday,” SurfSantaMonica reported Tuesday,

But, the story went on to say, “…the only real solutions -- changing the behavior of motorists voluntarily or through coercion or punitive measures -- will be difficult, if not politically suicidal, the experts warned…

“ ‘The question of what we do about congestion is a political question,’ said Martin Wachs, director of RAND’s Transportation, Space and Technology Program.”

There are several sorts of boondoggles. Our favorites are the plaited leather cords that’re usually made by campers or scouts and the government projects that are of no real value to the communities in which they’re located.

There’s a boondoggle on the Tuesday Night City Council meeting agenda, and unfortunately it’s not a leather cord, but a $8.2 million government project of no real value.

The City calls it ’“The 2nd and 4th Streets Pedestrian and Streetscape Improvements Project,” but it will not improve anything, and we don’t need it, which is probably why it’s on the Council’s Consent Calendar, so it can be approved with all the other items without any discussion.

A town as small as Santa Monica (eight square miles) and as densely populated (10,000 people per square mile) can only sustain a few body blows before it begins to, literally, disintegrate,

City Hall has made some bad calls in the last several years, but now it seems bent on making a mistake that would dwarf all the others – literally as well as figuratively.

Though it has acted to delay some large projects until the General Plan revision is finished, it’s rushing its own mega-project, “the Civic Center Village,” forward, though it would irreparably alter the character of this legendary beach town, and render the revision irrelevant before it’s done.

When the City staff put the “Alternative Concept Plan for the Civic Center Village” on the City Council agenda twice and pulled it twice, we thought perhaps sanity had finally prevailed and the staff had realized, however tardily, that the project was simply unworkable.

But we should have known better. Once set on a course, City Hall never changes its course or its mind, perhaps fearing that any flexibility would be seen as weakness, or perhaps it just doesn’t know what it’s doing. In any event, the item is on Tuesday night’s Council agenda, and, as we write, has not been pulled.

City Hall’s rationalizations trumped reason at the Tuesday, August 14, City
Council meeting.

The City’s $8.2 million “Second and Fourth Streets Improvement Project”
was on the Consent Calendar, which includes items that can be approved
without discussion. But a dozen members of the public were there to protest that portion of the project that is devoted to the trees on the two streets.

The project’s $700,000 tree treatment program calls for removing 24 palm trees, 54 mature ficus trees, most of which are healthy, replacing them with young ginkgo trees, and installing “decorative uplighting” at the base of the remaining ficus trees. The healthy ficus trees will be replanted in other places while “diseased” trees will be destroyed.

Kathleen Rawson, Executive Director of the Bayside District Corporation, and Barbara Bryan, a Bayside board member both praised the project as the third step in the “improvement” of the downtown area. Neither of them mentioned the trees.

All the other speakers deplored the removal of “healthy and beautiful trees” from downtown city streets, Several of them also accused the City, which regularly boasts of its “sustainability,” and its “urban forest,” of hypocrisy.

Policy 1.5 of the City’s adopted Community Forest Management Plan “stipulates that the Community Forest be comprised of a diversity of tree species and varied ages within each species. It is the City’s goal over time to achieve a Community Forest where no one species of tree dominates the forest and each species constitutes no more than 10% of the total forest.”

Everything is the matter with this policy.

For starts, it bears an unfortunate resemblance to those paint-by-number kits, And it’s a nightmare scenario. In order to meet the mandated “no more than 10 percent” rule, the City loggers will have to chop down acres of trees, including all the “wrong” species and all the trees in the “right” species over the 10 percent limit.

Setting quotas on tree species is almost as ugly as setting quotas on people, and who decides which species are “right” and which are “wrong?”

According to a story in the Santa Monica Daily Press, City officials continue to grapple with their own acute housing problems.

Having outgrown City Hall some time ago, City staff has been deployed all over town – in 46.000 square feet of office space at a cost of over $1 million annually. It’s inconvenient and make-do, and it’s the result of incredibly bad planning by City staff.

Several years ago, the City bought 11-plus acres and two office buildings from RAND for $53 million. The property is directly across Main Street from City Hall.

Of great historic, cultural and architectural value, the two buildings should and could have been adapted for use as City offices.

At the time, about 1500 people worked for RAND, and the City employed 2,000-plus people, so the two buildings would have met the City’s space needs for the foreseeable future, and two important buildings would have been preserved.

At its Tuesday night meeting, the City Council will be asked by City staff to approve an “emergency interim ordinance” that would make development agreements mandatory for projects with over 7,500 square feet of floor area or more than 15 residential units in the Light Manufacturing and Studio District (LMSD) and Manufacturing Conservation (M1) and for changes in land use on parcels that exceed 32,000 square feet in the LMSD and 15,000 square feet in the M1 district,

At the July 24 Council meeting, City staff made the case for an interim ordinance that applied exclusively to the industrial lands rather than the citywide moratorium that many residents have asked for.

On the advice of staff, but to the dismay of residents who argued for a city-wide moratorium, the Council opted for the industrial lands interim ordinance, but did not explain why a City-wide moratorium or interim ordinance would not be more appropriate.

Last night at the Farms, Santa Monica’s supreme grocery emporium, Jeff Bixon, the Dispatch’s man on Montana, pointed out an ominous collision of facts in the L.A. Times..

A story on page two in the California section about population density in
American cities contained a graph that ranked the cities. Santa Monica with 11,006 people per square mile was outranked by all the New York boroughs except Staten Island, but it outranks Philadelphia (10,729), Washington D.C. (9,533), and Los Angeles itself (8,208). The figures are U.S. Census Bureau 2006 estimates.

11,006 people per square mile! Seems like more than enough. But it gets better. The City estimates that our population rises daily to 300,000, or 36,144 people per square mile, which puts tiny Santa Monica ahead of all the cities on the list and all the New York boroughs but Manhattan. Wow! City Hall must be very proud.

August 28, 2007


RE: City Council Agenda Item: 7-A (Emergency Interim Ordinance re Development Agreements for Projects Exceeding 7500 square feet/15 housing units in LMSD/M1)

Dear City Council,

The Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC) cannot support the staff's recommendation as to the establishment of a "Development Agreement process for changes in land use on parcels that exceed 32,000 square feet in the LMSD and 15,000 square feet in the M1 districts."

We believe it goes in exactly the wrong direction, at the wrong time, that it is at odds with the LUCE process and that you should not support it for these reasons:

The following item appeared on the Consent Calendar at Tuesday’s Council meeting.

“1-J: Community Outreach Consulting Services for Charnock Well Fields Restoration Project – recommendation to authorize the City Manager to negotiate and execute a three year professional services agreement with Harris & Company, in the amount of $250,000, for community outreach and public information services required during the planning, pre-design, environmental documentation and final design phases of the Project.”

Council member Herb Katz said he thought $250,000 was too much to pay for “community outreach and public information services.”

Responding to Katz, Craig Perkins, Director of the Environmental Programs and Public Works Department, pointed out that it was only $75,000 a year, adding that it would cost more to do it in-house.

If a simple task like this cannot be performed by a member of Perkins staff for a fraction of $250,000, then something is terribly wrong in City Hall.

The Council approved the item without any further ado.

Theplanning and community development department held a workshop on March 15, 2005 for the City Council and Planning Commission.

A staff report described the subject Of the workshop as “Presentation and Discussion of Possible Goals for the Circulation Element [in the General Plan] and Alternatives for Measuring Traffic Impacts and Goal Attainment.”

It went on to say, “…As part of the update to the Circulation Element, the City will be establishing performance goals and revising the methodology used to measure the impact development has on the City’s circulation network…”

Based on the rising tide of traffic, residents found said methodology hopelessly inadequate years before work began on the Circulation Element, and asked the City to adopt a more comprehensive methodology, but the City ignored them. Today, two years after this 2005 workshop, the City is still using the same inadequate measures.

Some City Hall documents are designed to explicitly trumpet its accomplishments – real and imagined, while implicitly chastising the rest of us for not doing more. The third annual “Sustainable City Report Card,” which was released last week, is such a document. Herewith, our First Annual Report Card on the Sustainable City Report Card.

Resource Conservation

According to the City Report Card, “Solid waste generation exceeds the Sustainable City Plan ceiling and continues to increase. Diversion dropped to 62% of generation, down from a high at 67%, thus reversing a nearly ten-year record of improvement. Water use increased 3% and remains higher than our aggressive target levels. However, water and energy conservation has kept at bay expected increases in resource usage associated with Santa Monica’s strong economy and growth in construction activity. Energy conservation measures have been successful and energy use in the city remains stable. The city government continues to purchase 100% renewable power for municipal operations…

“The grade for this area has dropped due to the increases in waste generation and water use and the drop in waste diversion rates. “

The City gives itself an A- for effort (down from last year’s A, and a C grade, down from last year’s C+.

As long as the City’s aggressive economic development policies are in direct conflict with its “aggressive” conservation policies, it should give Itself an F for effort.

At Tuesday night’s City Council meeting, the Council and City staff did not discuss any of the major issues facing Santa Monica.

The General Plan revision, the rising traffic congestion, the proposed Civic Center Village project, the removal of over 50 healthy trees from downtown streets and the continuing plight of long-time renters who make too much money to qualify for affordable housing and not enough money to buy a house or condominium were not on the agenda.

Setting the tone for the evening, the Council began the meeting in closed session, but rook no reportable action.

On Saturday, October 6, The City’s planners and consultants will finally turn their attention to the circulation element of the General Plan.

They’ve scheduled a community workshop, according to a City press release, “to integrate previous community input with new ideas and take a more in-depth look into how transportation will serve the community in the future. Community members will have an opportunity to both learn and express opinions about how the city should prioritize multiple transportation modes, such as walking, biking, automobiles and transit on city streets and other rights of way.”

The Saturday workshop, to be held from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. in the cafeteria at John Adams Middle School, is another in a series of workshops staged by the Planning & Community Development Department on the General Plan revision.

Ironies abound in this venerable beach town.

The City enjoys describing itself as an “internationally recognized leader” in
the sustainability and environmental movements, but, over the objections of a throng of residents, it wants to remove a large number of healthy, mature trees from Second and Fourth Streets in downtown Santa Monica.

Tuesday night’s City Council meeting opened with another parade of residents protesting the planned tree removal, and closed with Council members and City staff discussing the alleged environmental hazards of a five-minute fireworks display on the beach at 9:45 in the evening.

It is probably true that fireworks’ residue contains stuff that shouldn’t go into the ocean, but it is probably also true that anyone who is capable of shooting fireworks off is also capable of cleaning up the debris left on the sand by the fireworks.

As residents have repeatedly and eloquently said, the removal of the healthy, mature trees from traffic-clogged downtown streets will have profound, multiple and long-range negative impacts on the environment. In contrast, the negative impacts of a brief fireworks’ display, if any, on the environment will be temporary and minor.

During the 2006 election campaign, incumbent City Council member Kevin McKeown who was running for re-election was the target of a costly negative campaign that was largely financed by the non-resident owners of Casa del Mae and Shutters hotels.

Residents demonstrated at the hotels to express their objections to the attacks and McKeown was the top vote getter in the election.

At McKeown’s behest, the City Council held a study session at last night’s City Council meeting to explore “Public Financing of Election Campaigns” as a means of curtailing “attack campaigns” and reducing the infusion of “outside money” in local elections, To that end, City Clerk Maria Stewart presented a report on campaign financing options, as well as summaries of services currently provided by the city and recent legislative changes in campaign finance laws,

Tom Larmore, chairman of the board of the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce, was quoted in the Santa Monica Daily Press this week as saying, “Given the substantially improved working relationship between the chamber and City Hall, we believe that endorsing candidates is not a good use of valuable volunteer time and effort and is potentially counter-productive in terms of promoting the chamber’s mission.”

If this doesn’t give you pause, nothing will.

Some years ago, after what was left of Marion Davies' estate at 415 Pacific Coast Highway, had been red-tagged, wrapped in chain link fencing and left to molder in the sun, one of Santa Monica’s savviest residents. Jeff Bixon, said, “All they have to do is open it up, We know what to do with it.”

Thanks to a $21 million-plus grant from the Annenberg Foundation, it is new being remade. Though it won’t open until early 2009, the City will hold a community workshop Saturday to discuss “operational and program plans” for what is now called the Annenberg Community Beach Club.

City staff will open the workshop with “site details and operating parameters,” after which workshop participants will, as the City put it, “be given the opportunity to envision their perfect day at the Annenberg Community Beach Club.”

The major item on tonight’s City Council agenda is a discussion of the planners’ recommendations for the so-called “industrial lands.”

The staff report suggests that the staff wants to turn what is now the loosest and most open area of the city into the most tightly packed. What’s there now ranges from formidable to small and simple, from large, pretentious office buildings to quiet residential neighborhoods, from Bergamot Station to the City Yards, from several private schools to small manufacturers, from artists’ studios to our own gasoline alley. And, except for a traffic mess that rivals downtown, it all works pretty well.

Now, among other things, the City wants to add affordable and/or workforce housing and install a proper grid, meaning more streets, sidewalks, utilities, neighborhood-serving stores and so on, as well as what sounds like nothing so much as a whole new community adjacent to the proposed Expo light rail line.

At Tuesday night’s Planning Commission meeting, the planning staff is scheduled to ask the Commission on “to consider amending” the Municipal Code’s definitions of “Hedge,” “Yard, Front,” “Fence, Wall, Hedge, Flagpole” and “to modify fence, wall, and hedge standards…to establish criteria for the repair and alteration of existing nonconforming hedges, walls, hedges; to establish administrative and discretionary height modification procedures; to clarify the criteria for assessing objections to nonconforming fences, walls, and hedges; to require the maintenance of hedges; and to specify a self-help remedy for overhanging hedges.”

As any sentient resident knows by now, City Hall is bent on controlling and regulating everything – except the things that really matter – such as growth and development and traffic.

The symbolism is devastating, and depressing. Our perfectly rendered City Hall has become a pawn in the City’s continuing planning muddle.

The stunning Streamline Moderne building opened in 1939. In 1958, it was enlarged to make room for the Police Department. The addition was artfully done so as not to diminish the original building.

Fast forward to the near-present. After the Police Department moved out of City Hall and into the new Public Safety building, the City decided to combine the seismic retrofit of City Hall with its complete restoration.

Then, though the City was renting an ever-increasing number of offices around Santa Monica, it ordered the demolition of the addition, rather than using the office space until it was ready to to begin the restoration.

It also chose to demolish the two RAND buildings, which it then owned, rather than converting them into City offices.

Eccentric topography notwithstanding, Santa Monica is a linear town – broad bands of houses and apartment buildings punctuated at remarkably regular interval