It took about a minute for the Council to approve the commencement of phase II of an agreement with Morley Construction Company for the Big Blue Bus maintenance building and site improvements and the allocation of $63,482,236, including contingencies, for the work.

When it was done, Mayor Richard Bloom expressed awe and pleasure at how quickly and easily he and his colleagues spent over $62 million. Shock and disgust were expressed here at the Dispatch at the idiocy of spending an estimated total of $80 million on a “new” bus yard in downtown Santa Monica. The bus yard should have been moved to the Santa Monica Airport and equipped with a park-and-ride lot, which would not only materially reduce traffic in downtown Santa Monica, but would make the two square blocks now occupied by the bus yards available for housing and/or parking and/or a park – all of which are in short supply in the downtown area.

Opinion

Some of the region’s leading wishful thinkers work in Santa Monica City Hall.

It’s quite touching actually – this continuing effort to put a happy face on everything.
For instance, as any sentient being knows, our town has been overtaken by gridlock, but the City’s wishful thinkers have dubbed the revision of the circulation element of the General Plan “Motion by the Ocean.”

“No Motion by the Ocean,” or "Motionless by the Ocean,” would be truer, and might inspire City planners to actually devise some effective means of eliminating gridlock, but the truth, in this instance and so many others, is depressing.

The problems generated by Santa Monica’s development surge have extended beyond our borders and alienated virtually all of our neighbors.

Venice residents frequently deplore Santa Monica’s “commercialism.” Our traffic regularly chokes otherwise serene streets in Santa Monica Canyon. And Mar Vista residents have been bothered for years by the noise and pollution at our airport.

Our City Hall gang and its ubiquitous consultants didn’t mean to tie all the streets in the area in knots or, in concert with the FAA, make Santa Monica airport ground zero for private jets. They simply set out to fatten City Hall coffers. The negative impacts were inadvertent.

But there’s nothing inadvertent about the City of Santa Monica’s recent decree that the dog run at our new Airport Park is off-limits to non-resident canines.

Santa Monica has shared its airport noise, air pollution and traffic with Mar Vista residents for years. To refuse to share its new dog run, though many Mar Vista residents live closer to it than most Santa Monica residents, is thoughtless, arrogant and wrong.

And unacceptable.

The state of California’s requirement that cities revise elements in their General Plan every 20 years gives residents an opportunity to reset their municipal compasses in order to preserve their towns’ character and integrity.

As the 2005 Santa Monica revision got underway, Planning and Community Development Director Suzanne Frick said it was our Constitution as it would determine Santa Monica’s destiny for a generation.

The timing was perfect, as, in the view of an increasing number of residents, City Hall’s aggressive economic development policies was turning this 137-year old beach town – small-scale, low-key, easy-going, butifully located on the storied Southern California coast – into a frazzled boom town that was simultaneously generating lots of revenue for City Hall and lots of problems for residents.

An exchange from James L. Brooks’ brilliant 1987 film, Broadcast News, is more relevant today than it was when it was made 20 years ago.

The characters:
Aaron (played by Albert Brooks) is a first-rate, but expendable TV newsman. Tom (played by William Hurt), whom Aaron refers to, has virtually no experience as a newsman, but is already a network news star simply because he’s good-looking and charming. Both men are interested in Jane (played by Holly Hunter), a talented, driven news producer.

The exchange:
Aaron...I believe that Tom, while a very
nice guy, is the devil.

Jane…You’re crazy….

Aaron: What do you think the Devil is going to look like if he’s around? No one’s going to be taken in by a guy with a long, red, pointy tail. Come on. What’s he gonna sound like? ( Aaron GROWLS). No. I’m semi-serious here. He will be attractive. He’ll be nice and helpful. He’ll get a job where he influences a great God-fearing nation, he’ll never do an evil thing. He’ll never deliberately hurt a living thing. He’ll just bit by bit lower our standards where they’re important. Just coax along flash over substance.. Just a tiny little bit And he’ll talk about all of us really being salesmen…And he’ll get all the great women.

James L. Brooks:
One of Hollywood’s most talented and prolific producer/director/writers, he was an MTM stalwart, creating and working on some of television’s classic sitcoms, and went on to produce, direct and write some of the best movies of the last two decades, including Terms of Endearment, As Good As It Gets and I’ll Do Anything. He is currently wrapping The Simpson Movie.

Tonight, CBS News inadvertently demonstrated how far it has fallen by following a 90th birthday tribute to Walter Cronkite, a great newsman, its longtime anchor, and, in his time, “the most trusted man in America,” with “Dr. Phil: A Primetime Special: Caged.”

And if further proof of CBS News’ decline were needed, Katie Couric, CBS Evening News’ current anchor, was among the people paying tribute to the great old newsman. The contrast between Cronkite, and Couric, whose resemblance to a Barbie doll is remarkable -- and scary, was quite simply unbearable.

EDITORIAL

At last Thursday night’s Santa Monica City Council meeting (see Council Delays SMMUSD Allocation), Council members spent several hours debating whether it’s within the Council’s purview to ask the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education to rescind the gag orders that have been imposed on parents of children with special needs who have made agreements with the District separate from Federally-protected Individualized Education Plans.

Mayor Pro Tem Herb Katz and Council member Bobby Shriver believe that the gag orders should be rescinded before the Council approves the full $7.2 million allocation that City staff has recommended be paid to the District.

Other Council members disagreed, apparently siding with Ken Genser’s assertion that the Council has neither the authority nor the right to set or change District policy.

We agree with Katz and Shriver.

On May 22, we raged at NBC-TV for canceling Aaron Sorkin’s “Studio 60 On the Sunset Strip,” adding that it was no wonder that the once-proud network trailed the other three broadcast networks, as it habitually canceled good series and persisted in running really bad series.

Elaborating, we said that the network’s fall began when those great showmen, Brandon Tartikoff and Grant Tinker, were succeeded by gamesnen.

A few days after our story ran, NBC announced that it was firing its programming chief and replacing him with Ben Silverman, an agent-turned-producer whose current shows are “The Office” and “Ugly Betty,” and Mark Graboff, a lawyer and “deal maker.”

Reporting on the change, the drastically diminished L.A. Times reported today that the ascension of Silverman and Graboff signaled the end of the Tartikoff era. Wrong! The Tartikoff era began and ended with Tartikoff.

The most relevant question now is whether Silverman and Graboff are showmen or gamesmen. We’ll let you know.
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As nearly everyone knows by now, late last November, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District’s Chief Financial Officer Winston Braham refused to certify a proposed District pay raise, resigned, and agreed to accept a $189.000 contract settlement with the proviso that he go mum.

Santa Monica City Councilman Bobby Shriver saw the District’s muzzling of Braham as a serious breach of both trust and common sense, and asked that Braham appear before the Council to discuss the circumstances that led to his departure.

Neither the District nor Braham responded, but other people, including some Council members, said that the Council had no right to question District policy. However, Shriver, Mayor Pro Tem Herb Katz and Councilman Bob Holbrook, once a member of the School Board himself, pressed on, saying they might propose withholding $530.000 of the scheduled $7.2 million City allocation to the District until they heard Braham’s story.

The District then eased its hold on Braham, But, in several rather arch emails to the Lookout website (www.surfsantamonica.com), Braham suggested he didn’t really have anything to say, and, to date, he hasn’t said anything.

Lookout columnist Frank Gruber has devoted three columns in the last two weeks to this unusual town-gown rumpus, and he is mighty vexed.

But he’s vexed for all the wrong reasons.

It was architect Mies van der Rohe who famously said “Less is more” and “God is in the details” decades ago, and every time we read another staff report on the revision of the land use and circulation elements of the General Plan, we wish he were here.

Over the last several months, the City planners have held a number of community workshops on the revision of the land use and circulation elements of the General Plan.

The good news is that Planning and Community Development Director Eileen Fogarty who came to Santa Monica last fall, seems genuinely interested in residents’ views. The bad news is that City Hall’s preference for more over less still dominates.

Santa Monica has long been an exemplary beach town. The ocean and the beach are the main thing. the shaping force, and the town compliments them brilliantly, being low-rise and small scale, easy-going, thoroughly idiosyncratic, and intricate.

Mies would have been crazy about Santa Monica because it demonstrates that less is not just more, it’s everything.

Monday morning, Senator Patrick Leahy, chair of the Judiciary Committee, said the panel might be force d to charge President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and some of their henchmen with contempt of Congress, a criminal offense, for refusing to respond to committee subpoenas.

Several hours later, Bush announced that he was commutin g the jail sentence of former Cheney Chief of Staff, Scooter Libby. Subsequently, he suggested that he might give Libby a full pardon later.

The only surprising thing about it is that anyone was surprised.

The commutation was simply further proof, if any were needed, that Bush has always held the rule of law, due process, the Constitution, the notion of equal justice, and the American people, as well as Congress in contempt.

And the bad news just keeps on coming.

According to a story in the Daily Press, plans are now underway to turn the fine old movie theater, the NuWilshire, into retail space.

Senior planner Paul foley told the Daily Press that as the change isn’t “that radical,” and retail stores are a permitted use on that stretch of Wilshire, the change isn’t subject to public review.

Obviously, the City uses a different dictionary than we do. It’s hard to imagine a more radical change than the conversion of a 1930s art deco movie theater that features independent and foreign films to “retail,” specifically, again according to the Daily Press, Anchor Blue and Lucky Dungaree chain stores.

Santa Monica is drowning in “retail.” Not essential, useful, locally owned hardware stores and bookstores and office supply stores and the like – all of which have been forced out by the City’s aggressive economic policies, but chain stores.

It was George Santayana who said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Soon after California became a state, and before Santa Monica was founded, this locale was a port of sorts. Cargo ships came and went from jerrybuilt
docks.

Senator John P. Jones, who’d made a fortune in silver in Nevada, bought land here with an eye to building a railroad from the beach to Los Angeles.

About the same time, Collis P. Huntington, one of the so-called Big Four (the other three were Charles Crocker, Mark Hopkins and Leland Stanford), who had built the transcontinental Central Pacific Railtoad, founded a coastal line, Southern Pacific Railroad.

The City will hold a workshop Saturday (see Dispatch story, “Future of Mixed Up Area”) on what it calls “The Industrial Lands.
”
“The Industrial Lands.” It sounds like something out of a 10th century English novel: primitive gloomy factories, black smoke curling out of their smoke stacks, a ruined landscape choking on soot.

But Santa Monica’s a Southern California beach town and it’s the 21st century, and the only real factories that were ever here were part of Douglas Aircraft and they were as clean as operating rooms, and they were demolished decades ago.

This is a banner night for millions of people all over the world, for as clocks
strike 12 midnight in city after city, the seventh and final volume in the saga of Harry Potter, “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows,” by J.K. Rowling goes on sale.

As we write, Harry Potter’s most avid English devotees are deep into the seventh volume, their counterparts in New Yorkers are already three or four chapters in, and all the Angelenos who lined up outside bookstores all over Los Angeles many hours ago finally have the books in their hands.
And we’ll warrant that none of them has so much as peeked the final pages.

300 million copies of the first six volumes are in print. Three million advance sale copies of the seventh volume will arrive in people’s mailboxes today. And that’s just the beginning of the latest chapter in this literary phenomenon.

I would like to reassure any of our community members who are following the drama that has been unfolding about the City Council's concerns about secret deals issue in SMMUSD Special Education, specifically the "clarifications" proposed by the school district staff at the July 12 meeting of the Board of Education.

The legalese used in this "clarification" can only be intended to confuse and redirect attention away from the secret deals, the off-IEP contracts that are the concern of the City Council and the reason the council voted to hold $530,000 in abeyance until the practice is scrutinized.

It is important to notice that the "clarifications" generated by school district staff reference Dispute Resolution Agreements, NOT the secret contracts that are at issue. Dispute Resolution Agreements are part of a legal pathway proscribed by federal law after parents have declared that they want to pursue legal action against the district.

T.S. Eliot declared that “April is the cruelest month,” but August is the cruelest month in Santa Monica, because it’s the traditional start of the annual battle between City Hall and residents for this venerable beach town’s soul.

Early every August, City Hall goes silent and residents go quietly nuts. Experience has taught them that the City staff will emerge from its self-imposed silence in mid-month armed with bundles of invariably preposterous plans and projects, which residents will be forced to oppose.

Experience has also taught them that the ensuing rumble will be long, heated, turbulent, and occasionally toxic.

From: Stephanie Barbanell

I was an original member of the Civic Center Specific Plan Advisory Committee, from 1990 to 1993, representing the resident homeowners of Sea view Terrace.

The update of the General Plan, land use element and zoning code happens only every 20 years. We are currently going through that process.

I request that the Civic Center Village project be continued until such time as the revised land use element in the General Plan has been adopted.

I further request that you not approve this project at that time, but reconsider the whole idea of housing for the few in the Civic Center that has the potential to benefit all Santa Monicans – after the new General Plan’s land use element has been adopted. That is the reasonable course.

For almost 20 years, I have attended meetings where residents have begged elected officials to do something about safety enhancements at Santa Monica Airport. It is not a matter of IF a catastrophic accident will occur …it is a matter of WHEN that catastrophic accident DOES occur.

Local residents near the airport do not want to see our elected officials in front of TV cameras saying how sorry they are WHEN the catastrophic accident happens. Local residents want their elected officials to do something NOW. Please act on airport safety enhancements NOW.

Our neighborhood should not have to live on a wing and a prayer.

Jane Dempsey

Area residents will rally Tuesday, August 28, at 5:30 p.m. outside City Hall to demand that the FAA end the danger from jet aircraft overruns at the Santa Monica Airport by enforcing its own rules.

Congressional help in forcing the FAA to follow its own safety rule is also being sought.

Following the rally, the FAA will present its plans to the City Council on Tuesday at 7 p.m.

Officials with the City’s Community Corporation, which develops “affordable housing” in Santa Monica, have said that it costs, on average, $450,000 per unit to buy and “rehab” existing apartment buildings.

At the Tuesday, October 14, City Council meeting, in response ti a question, a Related Companies of California executive estimated that, including the cost of the land, a unit in the proposed Civic Center Village development would cost $550,000 to to construct.

Ar the same meeting, resident Greg Brogger distributed data to the
Council based on the sale of apartment buildings in the city in the last year that showed that 166 units were purchased for less than $35 million or, on average, $209,000 for each apartment.

There are to be 163 "affordable" units in the Village.

Brogger went on to say, ”It’s extremely frustrating to hear Community Corp and Planning Department represent that the average cost of an apartment building unit after renovation is about $450,000. It means they’re either incompetent or ‘shading’ the truth. I don’t know which is more frightening.

“Given that (i) the reason for giving away $85 million of public land and allowing the Village its buffet of variances was to get the affordable housing units, and (ii) these units could be obtained sooner, for half the cost and for people who already live here, I can not for the life of me see why this project is only picking up speed.”

The Old Village Mind Reader (TOVMR), aka SurfSantaMonica columnist Frank Gruber, is at it again.

He failed the last time out, when he assigned crass political motives to City Council members who were actually engaged in righting a wrong, but, undaunted, he’s now divined that certain residents are plotting to sandbag the General Plan revision.

He calls them “Santa Monicans Fearful of Change (SMFC),” and credits the prescience of Council member Pam O’Connor with sparking his divination when, at the October 26, 2004 joint meeting of the City Council and the Planning Commission “that kicked off what was supposed to be a two-year process, [when she said,} “‘We need more time’ is a code phrase for people to use to hijack the process."

Well, okay, but, more often than not, the people who say “We need more time,” are on the City payroll.

During the discussion of airport safety at last week’s City Council meeting, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) spokesman , Kirk Shaffer, said,
“In the real world…the world of regulating a nationwide system of airports, of which Santa Monica Airport is an important part, we get the best safety outcome we can consistent with the airport serving its purpose in that system.”

In other words, “in the real world,” efficient airport system operation trumps safety. While we find Shaffer’s views thoroughly Orwellian, his candor is refreshing. Here and mow, bureaucrats at all levels routinely rank their own imperatives over the needs and wishes of the people they allegedly serve, but they seldom admit it.
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On the question of airport safety, our local bureaucrats naturally stand with City Council members and residents, in seeing “the real world” as the airport’s location in the midst of a densely populated neighborhood.

But, most of the time, on most issues, City Hall’s “real world” has very little to do with the actual town residents Inhabit. For instance, City Hall has traffic plans, while the town has traffic jams.

Yesterday, like many thousands of parents in Santa Monica and Malibu, I was busy at my children’s schools, helping them settle in for their new year, and making sure I had done my job to ensure that all the details were in place to ensure a smooth start for all.

As I walked through the schools, reconnecting with old friends and watching my sons navigate between nervousness and excitement, I was once again, overwhelmed by what has now become an annual revelation – that of gratitude and respect for the army of PTA volunteers who contribute not only to opening day at our schools, but to every day. PTAs contribution cannot be underestimated and makes the difference between adequacy and excellence for our schools, our parents and students, our teachers and staff, and indeed for our communities. From the extraordinary leadership generated by our PTA Unit Presidents, to the support and guidance coming from Executive Board members and committee chairs both at PTA Council and at units, to the thousands of PTA volunteers who perform innumerable tasks to help provide resources and assistance for our parents, teachers, and administration – our Santa Monica Malibu Council of PTAs, each and every one of us joined together this opening day to provide World Class Support to our World Class Schools.

The rise and fall of American places is as much a staple of American literature and film as the rise and fall of heroes.

Just as mindless greed, a uniquely American affliction, brings heroes to their knees, it leeches the integrity out of places, reducing them to mere
merchandise.

As Americans rolled west across this vast and gorgeous continent in the 19th century and took whatever they could turn into money, John Muir, a Scot, warned that this land was as fragile as it was vast and gorgeous, and irreplaceable, The plunderers were unmoved, but Muir managed to save Yosemite Valley from them, and went on to found The Sierra Club, the first organized defender of wilderness.

Since then the environmental movement has grown exponentially in size, scope and influence. But we have always found it curious, and unfortunate, that there has never been an equivalent urban environmental movement – especially since the plunderers moved into the cities when they had worn out the wilderness.

The City staff and City Council have devoted more time and attention on the Civic Center than to any other project in Santa Monica.

It’s the largest, costliest and most ambitious project the City has ever undertaken and, from the beginning, City officials clearly saw it as Santa Monica’s centerpiece.

Bur they didn’t initiate it, the RAND Corporation did --- for purely pragmatic reasons.

Project RABD (Research and Development) was founded in Santa Monica in 1948 at the behest of U.S. Air Force General Hap Arnold “to prepare for World War III.” Its principal client had always been the Defense Department and its various agencies. When the Cold War ended in 1989, RAND, anticipating a sudden decline in its income, decided to ensure its solvency by building what would be the largest commercial development in the city’s history on its acreage across Main Street from City Hall.

People had been thinking about the Civic Center and what it should be for decades, but no one had ever envisioned it as the site of an immense commercial complex complete rising like a wall between City Hall and the ocean.

According to a story in SurfSanta Monica, “The Big Blue Bus will break ground next week on a new eco-friendly maintenance facility that will service a growing fleet and features solar panels, reclaimed water and recycled materials.

“The 66,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility…will feature 5,000 square feet of offices…20 new repair bays, including two chassis wash bays, The new maintenance facility will feature locker rooms, a training room, library, parts storage and other specialized areas. The upgrades will utilize the most advanced and sustainable building systems, construction materials and landscaping available today…

“Some of the new “green” technologies that will be used in the project include: Photovoltaic panels that collect power from the sun and supply energy to the buildings. Construction materials made of recycled content such as concrete, steel, insulation, and gypsum board to reduce landfill waste. A reclaimed water irrigation system for landscaping and water efficient landscaping plants and materials. Storm water management and site infiltration to ensure water entering the bay will be clean. Carpeting and other interior building materials containing recycled content.
Light colored concrete in the bus yard to cool the air temperature and reduce the ‘heat island’ effect. Light colored single-ply roofing called ‘Cool roof’ to reflect solar energy away from the buildings and prevent heat buildup in the facilities. Construction waste management to reduce the amount of material going into landfills. Dual glazed, low-e glazing for interior office spaces to keep the buildings cool in summer and warm in winter. No VOC off-gassing materials, to help keep the interior air fresh and free of toxins.

“The three-year construction project is expected to begin in February 2008, with completion expected in early 2010.”

As everybody knows by now, a great many residents are opposed to City Hall’s plan to remove about 50 healthy ficus and palm trees from Second and Fourth Streets in downtown Santa Monica as part of an $8.2 million downtown “beautification” plan.

Some of the opponents recently staged a protest, posting “Save This Tree” placards on the targeted trees, and they have vowed to chain themselves to the trees on the appointed day to prevent their removal.

In the beginning, it was said that merchants on those streets wanted the trees removed as they prevented people driving by from seeing their signs and window displays and/or they were angry at the City for lavishing time and money on the Third Street Promenade while ignoring the adjacent streets. But the merchants denied the claims. Vigorously.

The City then alleged that the ficus trees are too dense and dark (i.e., too healthy) and cast solid shadows, rather than “dappled shade.” It also claimed that if changed its plans, it would lose the big MTA grant, thus making the MTA sound as dopey as the City.

According to a story in the Santa Monica Daily Press, the second annual Convention and Visitors Bureau beach summit was held Tuesday, as part of a continuing effort to create “a new identity for Santa Monica that can be marketed to tourists around the world and to those right here at home…
[as well as} a brand for Santa Monica that conveys a powerful message to consumers, enticing them to come back time and time again. ..

“The current brand promise is as follows: ‘Santa Monica ... the best way to discover L.A.; an unforgettable beach city experience filled with eye-catching people, cutting-edge culture and bold innovations. It is the essence of the California Lifestyle.’”

The Daily Press also reported that Duane Knapp, president of BrandStrategy Inc., a CVB consultant and one of the creators of the brand promise, which was introduced at the first annual CVB beach summit last year, “has been monitoring the branding process, and (he) said Santa Monica is making progress and is continuing to show interest in enhancing itself. He said it is important to remember that the process is continuous and must evolve along with the city.

“’You must involve the stakeholders on a regular basis,’ Knapp said.’ You have to constantly replace, renew and enhance ... This is a lifelong process.’”

And, not incidentally, a great gig for Mr., BrandStrategy, Inc.

As longtime “stakeholders,” we protest. All of it.

In February, 2005, Friends of Sunset Park circulated a questionnaire and
gave the results to the City.

The general consensus from the questionnaire is that the residents are looking for the City and its leaders to begin paying more attention to the concerns of its citizens. That the focus needs to be less on the City’s image as an influential business center within the Los Angeles Basin and more on it as a community of residents. The residents want you to refocus your energies on the small-town atmosphere that we were known for years ago, reminiscent of Santa Monica’s days as a beach community.

Yes, we want to be an urban community that makes a difference in Southern California and the country, but we do not want to give in to the pressures of growth and an expanding population and become like everywhere else in Southern California and the nation. We want a Santa Monica that is unique because it has stood against these pressures and not turned into yet another indistinguishable gentrified community on the sea.

Density -- We want our densities to remain largely the same as we have today (#26). A substantial number (47%) of the respondents want the old industrial core of the city to be down zoned. This is likely in response to the gridlock traffic that Sunset Park experiences during rush hour from the special office district, the college and other parts of the Westside.

Two of our largest issues in Sunset Park involve large public facilities located in our community, the airport and the college.

A Chinese curse – may you live in interesting times – is relevant. These are very interesting times in SantaMonica.

Yesterday, a superior Court judge issued a restraining order forbidding the City of Santa Monica from removing about 70 ficus and palm trees from Second and Fourth Streets temporarily.

The tree removal was scheduled to begin Monday.

Santa Monica attorney Thomas Nitti appeared on behalf of Tree Savers, a group of residents who organized in the wake of the City Council’s recent approval of an $8.2 million “improvement” project that includes $600,000-plus for the removal of some 70 palm and ficus trees from Second and Fourth Streets in downtown Santa Monica.

Beach towns naturally breed, attract and encourage bright, contrary, spirited people, and Santa Monica is an exemplary beach town.

Bureaucracies thrive on procedures, plans, rules, regulations and, above all, order. Over the years, Santa Monica City Hall has become an exemplary bureaucracy.

It’s an awkward pairing at best.

A majority of the Council members thinks and acts more like bureaucrats than representatives of the people. They have not simply stopped representing us, they have stopped listening to us. Today, City “procedures” count for more and have more weight than residents’ views and wishes.

by Ruthann Lehrer
Landmarks Commissioner

There is no more important issue before the Landmarks Commission than the future of the Santa Monica Pier. The Landmarks Commission reviewed an EIR Environmental Impact Report) last fall that proposed major alterations to the entryway of the Santa Monica Pier, involving significant changes to its historic character and to the pedestrian experience. The iconic pier is not only a signature feature of our city’s history, it was the grass-roots movement to save the pier from demolition in the 1970s that led to the creation of the city's landmarks ordinance to protect our irreplaceable historic assets.

The concept for the project grew from the need to seismically strengthen the pier bridge as mandated by state law, and from the desire of the pier business association (Pier Restoration Corporation) to facilitate access to the beach parking lot from Ocean Avenue.

The EIR introduced four alternative proposals for pier access alterations. Four of them call for a widened roadway and wider sidewalks, nearly doubling the width of the bridge. Two of them add a new roadway ramp descending from the wider bridge down to the parking lot on the beach north of the pier. One alternative places the new ramp through the pier deck. All four involve moving the neon pier sign to the north, from six feet to fourteen feet.

To the editor:

This Wednesday, October 24, 2007, marks the 60th anniversary of United
Nations Day. In the spring of 1945, representatives of 50 nations gathered in San Francisco to put the final touches to the Charter of the United Nations, which went into effect on October 24, 1945. Two years later, the United Nations General Assembly adopted a United States sponsored resolution declaring October 24 United Nations Day, to be commemorated annually by all members of the United Nations.