Not only are the top two slots in City Hall empty, and the biggest project on hold, but we are now engaged in revising the land use and circulation elements in the General Plan, which Frick described as our Constitution.
The possibilities for significant change are boundless.
For more than 20 years, City Hall has had its way with us, adding, in its words, “improvements” and “enhancements” that have led, in our words, to traffic nightmares, parking wars, a serious loss of reasonably priced housing, the replacement of local, independent stores with chain stores, a $2 million annual bill for promotion, and more and more draconian taxes, such as the 10 percent utility tax.
And every year Santa Monica looks a little less like the legendary beach town it is, with a long, storied past and a promising future, and more and more like Blandsville, USA.
But now, suddenly, everything’s in motion. The two top slots are empty. Macerich has backed off and we are engaged in revising our “Constitution.”
In the proverbial one fell swoop, we could conceivably change everything. We can’t undo everything that’s been done, but we can stop doing it and begin to do those things that need doing.It’s called government of, by and for the people and it has been absent too long from this old beach town.
