Hannah Heineman
Mirror Staff Writer
Santa Monica’s new City Manager P. Lamont Ewell was the keynote speaker at the Friends of Sunset Park’s annual meeting.
Ewell, who started as City Manager in January, stressed that he has launched three initiatives. The first is to “look at all the City’s business practices” so the City can become “more user friendly and less bureaucratic.” The second initiative is to “raise customer service standards to the highest level to raise the quality of life in our community.” The final initiative is to “look at all our human resource functions in order to hire the best and the brightest in as short a time as possible.” These initiatives are being working on by a “cross section of the entire City organization” and by a City task force.
Ewell’s personal goals as City Manager include “getting out and learning to make sure I get a clear understanding where this community wants to go…otherwise, it’s difficult to achieve anything.”
In the short time Ewell has been City Manager he has observed that the community input given as part of the ongoing Land Use and Circulation Element update of the General Plan has emphasized people want to “limit the amount of City growth, get away from the massive scale of buildings and to try to keep the uniqueness of” Santa Monica.
He also mentioned that the City Council and the City’s new homeless czar, Ed Edelman, are “putting together a more comprehensive strategy for the region” to deal with homelessness.
Ewell is making an effort to come to all the neighborhood groups’ annual meetings.
