Reflections & Observations

Santa Monica City Council: Fighting City Hall

   When the government is broken, the remedy is an election.
   If the Santa Monica City government is not broken, it is badly bent, but, happily, the 2004 election is only two weeks away, so change is at hand, assuming enough voters want it.
   The primary problem here and now is not traffic, or parking, or homeless people, or any of the other things that people scold City Hall for. The primary problem is that while residents strive to preserve and refine this thoroughly idiosyncratic beach town, City Hall continues to devote its considerable resources to turning it into a thoroughly conventional high gloss sort of place - because, in its view, that’s where the money is.
   Routinely now what City Hall sees as its needs and wants are elevated over residents’ needs and wishes.
   The schism was probably inevitable. Some time ago, like most institutions that achieve a certain heft and loft, City Hall elevated its own interests over the interests of the people it was created to serve.
   Residents didn’t notice this seismic shift immediately, because City officials didn’t look like the usual suspects and they spoke of high-minded programs and goals – like “sustainability,” and “greening,” and “adaptive reuse,” but, in effect, they had hijacked the residents’ town and set about to make it at once more profitable and more pliant.
   The City’s Convention and Visitors Bureau, with its $2 million annual budget, the Hotel District, the Third Street Promenade and its formula stores, the so-called “enhancements” of the Transit Mall, the proposed Civic Center Specific Plan and the remaking of Santa Monica Place are all elements in the radical remodeling.
   This natural, if unfortunate, diminution of Santa Monica has been exacerbated by Santa Monica’s City Manager form of government, which assigns more power to appointed officials than to elected officials.
   As a result, City Council members have become co-conspirators, truckling to City staff, and the relationship between elected and appointed officials has become downright incestuous. City officials - elected and appointed – enjoy saying often and fulsomely that they want to hear from the community, but they listen far more attentively to each other. Indeed, earlier this year, only a mighty outcry from members of boards and commissions and alert residents killed a City Hall effort to radically diminish the role of the public in the development review process.
   Even so, most so-called public hearings are, in fact, conversations between City staff and their consultants and Council members, while members of the public look on.
   Indeed, the City has made major changes in the city without consulting residents at all, beginning with its unilateral decision in 1982 to tart up this legendary old beach town in order to turn it into a tourist mecca.
   It was a profound change that was made without any thought to the consequences, which were equally profound and far-reaching, and it was done for the crassest of reasons: money. Residents didn’t need more money or a new industry. Then and now, a majority of residents who work do not work in the city, and if the City had known anything about tourism before it leapt into it, it would have known that the majority of jobs it creates are low-paying, dead-end menial jobs.
   Santa Monica is located on the western edge of the L.A. nation (population: 13 million people) and it has the beaches, so it attracts hundreds of thousands of people annually – without the City’s spending a dime on advertising, much less the millions the Convention and Visitors Bureau has spent in the last two decades. But, as it turns out, the City didn’t want day trippers; it was trolling for rich German and Japanese tourists, because it needed the money – for a flock of new programs, many of which were laudable.
   But, of course, City Hall is the supreme HQ of unintended consequences, so the daily population of Santa Monica is now three times its permanent population, traffic jams are a constant, finding a place to park can be a fulltime job, pretentious edifices have replaced fine old buildings, many workers cannot afford to live here, the rental stock has shrunk dramatically and, though Santa Monica is seen as the capital of rent control, a tenant’s median stay in a rental unit here is now below the state average.
   That’s the bad news.
   The good news is that, for all of City Hall’s alterations and insults to the townscape, the bones and spirit of the old beach town are still intact.
   To be sure, there have been some irreparable losses and some dreadful additions, but when a place is as old and as sturdy as Santa Monica, it can take a lot of blows without falling.
   But we are at a momentous verge. The heart and soul of Santa Monica are the prize, and this year everyone wants a piece. Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights, the Chamber of Commerce, City employees, the firefighters and the police, the teachers at Santa Monica College and in the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, Community for Excellent Public Schools, and numerous other groups have all endorsed candidates.
   Fourteen people, including all four incumbents, are running for the four open seats on the City Council.
   The three Council members who are not up for re-election are Robert Holbrook, a lifetime Santa Monica resident, and newly retired pharmacist who has called tourism “the engine that drives the Santa Monica economy,” Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown, a SMRR, a Green, and very liberal, and Pam O’Connor, a historic preservation consultant, a SMRR and the least predictable Council member.
   People who like what’s happening and want more of the same should vote for the incumbents – SMRR Ken Genser who’s seeking a fifth term, Mayor Richard Bloom, a SMRR whose campaign literature is larded with rather extravagant claims about his leadership, Michael Feinstein, a SMMR who was not endorsed by SMMR this time out and a Green, and Herb Katz, who calls himself an independent and has been endorsed by the Chamber, among others.
   Die-hard SMRR loyalists will vote for incumbents Genser and Bloom, and the other two SMRR endorsed candidates Maria Loya, a Pico Neighborhood activist, and Patricia Hoffman, a longtime SMRR leader. The City employees’ PAC has endorsed the three SMRR incumbents and Hoffman.
   If the Chamber has its way, the community will follow its lead and cast its ballots for Katz, Kathryn Morea, Dr. Matt DiNolfo and Bobby Shriver.
   But Santa Monica’s salvation does not now and never has resided in any slate, because, for one thing, all too often the slate’s priorities take precedence over the priorities of this priceless place we live in, and, inevitably, accumulating power becomes the end, rather than the means to an end.
   That seems to be what has happened to the SMRR leadership. When the SMRRs won the majority of seats on the City Council in 1982, it was possible to imagine that though the rest of America had abandoned its higher aspirations, Santa Monica was on its way to becoming a kind of utopia – in which everyone – from bus boys to the bank presidents - could live happily and well. But just as the imperatives of the Industrial Revolution overwhelmed the imperatives of the American Revolution in the 19th century, the SMRR leaders’ ambitions overtook their ideals, and the big building boom began.
   While we have great respect and affection for the SMRR rank and file and believe that they are among the town’s most valuable citizens, we have lost faith in the SMRR leaders. They have failed to do too many things that they should have done, while conspiring with City staff to do too many things that they should not have done, and City Hall has prospered, but the city has not.
   For those reasons, we cannot endorse any of SMRR’s candidates, but we can and do endorse the rogue SMRR Michael Feinstein, because he remains faithful to the SMRR ideals, while apparently annoying the leadership. We understand that many residents are annoyed by him, too. In fact, he often annoys us, but he is smart and independent, and when he gets angry, he is very effective, and he has plenty of reasons to be angry at the moment.
   But, above all, what residents need in City Hall now is a new, bright, committed and wholly independent spokesperson who can not only shake things up, but make things happen.
   Because we believe Bobby Shriver is that person, we endorse him for a seat on the City Council.
   He’s new to Santa Monica politics, but he’s lived here for 17 years, and he cherishes this old beach town and all its idiosyncrasies, speaks of it with a passion and delight that are equivalent to our own, and, like us, he believes City Hall is taking it in the wrong direction.
   Definitely one of the good guys, Shriver has described himself as “a warrior” and, here and now, a warrior is needed, a man who is prepared to fight City Hall and all the various special interests on behalf of the city and all of its residents.
   If you care as deeply about Santa Monica as we do, we urge you to vote for Feinstein and Shriver for the City Council on November 2.
  
  
   SMC Board of Trustees:
   New Voices Needed
  
   In recent years, the Santa Monica College board of trustees has been content to play a supporting role to President Piedad Robertson, dutifully ratifying her decisions.
   Given the turmoil that has shaken the college recently and the increasing friction between the college and its neighbors, new and independent voices are needed at the head table.
   The Mirror endorses Rob Rader, Susan Aminoff and Doug Willis for the three open seats on the Board of Trustees, because we believe they will not only be those voices, but will be able to mitigate, if not end, the turmoil.
   Rader, whose experience as a professor at Pepperdine and an executive at MGM will serve SMC well, knows the community, and has proven himself to be as creative as he is able and dedicated.
   Doug Willis, an accountant at UCLA, not only understands and values the college’s mission, but his financial acumen will be invaluable on the board and to the community.
   Finally, Susan Aminoff, herself a community college professor and a skilled mediator, seems tailor-made for the board at this critical juncture – when so many issues remain unresolved.
  
   Board of Education:
   Advocates Needed
  
   As with City Hall and SMC, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District has been dominated by its staff , with the tacit support of the Board of Education, and this has led to some major gaffes, including the highly controversial gift policy and the seeming inability of the District to implement a comprehensive special education program.
   There are four candidates for the three open seats on the board – two incumbents, Jose Escarce and Maria Leon-Vasquez, and two newcomers, Ana Jara and Kathy Wisnicki.
   The Mirror endorses Leon-Vasquez, who has been consistently responsive to issues raised by parents on behalf of their children, Jara, a community activist, who is willing and able to take on anyone on behalf of the kids, and Wisnicki, who has a PhD in education, has been active in the PTA and lives in Malibu.
   Escarce has been a good board member, but his focus has been on balancing competing interests, while Leon-Vasquez, Jara and Wisnicki have focused on what they see as the District’s primary interest and responsibility: the academic performance and social well-being of the students, and, in our view, that should be the primary interest and responsibility of the board.
  
   Just in Time
  
   As the Presidential race reaches its crescendo, the candidates should pause for a look at a real President, and, if they can, emulate him.
   We are speaking, of course, of President Jed Bartlett, who presides over “The West Wing” on NBC-TV, which begins its new season tonight after too long a hiatus.
   Bartlett (as played by Martin Sheen) is, by turns, brilliant, original, passionate, eloquent, funny, outraged and melancholy. In other words, he is fully human, as well as wholly engaged in the endless effort to fulfill the promises our founding fathers made.
   Like all great past presidents, Bartlett is authentic, idiosyncratic, and, though he is a devout Catholic who once planned to be a priest, America is his religion. He not only believes in it, he insists that it be good as well as strong, fair as well as powerful and just as well as rich and, above all, he believes in equality, liberty and justice for all.
   Welcome back, President Bartlett.