Monica City Manager David White Announces February 2025 Departure
Lana Negrete Named Mayor as Santa Monica
Swears in New City Council Members
Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell, Natalya Zernitskaya
Begin Their FourYear Terms
Newly-elected Santa Monica City Councilmembers Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell, and Natalya Zernitskaya were sworn in Tuesday during an installation ceremony led by City Clerk Nikima Newsome. The ceremony marked the start of their four-year terms.
The newly constituted City Council appointed Lana Negrete as mayor for a oneyear term. Caroline Torosis will serve as mayor pro tem for 2025, followed by Jesse Zwick in 2026. Negrete, who was appointed to the council in 2021 and elected in 2022, brings deep ties to Santa Monica, where she was born and raised. She owns the Santa Monica Music Center and Culver City Music Center, founded Outreach Through the Arts, and serves on the National Association of Music Merchants board.
“I am overwhelmed with gratitude and a deep sense of responsibility,” Negrete said.
“As a small business owner, I understand the unique challenges we face. I’m committed to fostering an environment where businesses can thrive and families can flourish, and it is truly an honor to serve as mayor.”
The ceremony followed the December 3 certification of the 2024 General Election results by Los Angeles County RegistrarRecorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan.
In addition to the council swearing-in, the results for local races were certified, including the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board, Santa Monica Rent Control Board, and several local measures:
• Measure F: Updates the business license tax ordinance, exempting small businesses, reducing tax rates for retailers and restaurants, and increasing rates for corporate headquarters. The measure is expected to generate $3 million annually for essential city services.
• Measure K: Increases the Parking Facility Tax from 10% to 18%, applying only to private parking structures and lots. It is projected to raise $6.7 million annually to address traffic congestion and public safety.
• Measure PSK: An advisory measure directing at least half of Measure K revenue toward public safety and homelessness
initiatives.
Newsome also administered the oaths of office for Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board Members Jennifer Smith, Jon Kean, and Maria Leon-Vazquez, as well as Rent Control Board Members Kay Ambriz and Phillis Dudick.
The council and community honored outgoing Mayor Phil Brock and Councilmembers Gleam Davis, Oscar de la Torre, and Christine Parra for their service. Davis served 15 years on the council, while
Reflecting on his tenure, Brock highlighted his focus on public safety, homelessness, and the city’s parks and green spaces. “It has been the highlight of my life’s work to serve the residents of Santa Monica as their mayor,” he said. “And my work is not done. I will always champion the needs of our community and uphold the beautiful spirit of Santa Monica.”
Man Arrested for Murder of UnitedHealthcare
CEO in NYC Has Ties to Santa Monica
Suspect Found with Ghost Gun, Manifesto, and Fake IDs in Pennsylvania
Luigi Mangione, a 26-year-old man, was arrested in Pennsylvania on Monday after an intensive search for the man who shot and killed UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson in the early morning hours of Wednesday, December 4 in New York City.
The murder has stoked online anger at insurance companies, with many people sharing stories of being refused coverage by UnitedHealthcare and other companies after the death of Thompson.
Despite the efforts of the NYPD and the FBI, Mangione was arrested because someone recognized him at a McDonalds in Altoona, Pennsylvania, and called the police.
Mangione was born in Baltimore,
Maryland to a wealthy family, but information has surfaced that he has ties to Santa Monica and Stanford College. He worked as a summer counselor as part of a program at Stanford, according to CNN, and worked at True Car, an online car sales website as a data engineer starting in 2020, according to his now deleted LinkedIn account.
True Car’s spokesperson confirmed to CBS News that Mangione was at one point employed by the company, but has not worked for True Car since 2023.
True Car is based in Santa Monica and the company’s LinkedIn page states “TrueCar has built a trusted brand and a strong reputation for providing consumers with useful tools, research, market context, and pricing transparency as they embark on their car-buying journey.”
The suspect was found in possession of a ghost gun and silencer, a manifesto, several fake IDs, and a passport, according to multiple media accounts. His Twitter account has a Pokemon character, a
shirtless photo, and an x-ray of someone’s back with three pins in it. Mangione reportedly moved from Honolulu because of severe back pain that he was enduring before he had back surgery.
The “manifesto” is a document that explained his motives and stated that he had “ill will towards corporations” and “These parasites had it coming, I do apologize for any strife and trauma, but it had to be done.”, as quoted by CNN according to police officers who had seen the document.
Both the state of Pennsylvania and New
York City have charged Mangione. New York City has charged him with one count of murder, two counts of carrying a loaded firearm, one count of possessing a forged instrument, and one count of criminal possession of a weapon.
Pennsylvania has charged him with forgery, firearms not to be carried without a license, tampering with records or identification, possessing instruments of crime, and false identification to law enforcement.
Brock, de la Torre, and Parra each served four years.
Franklin Fire Containment Reaches 20% as Malibu Begins Repopulation Efforts
Residents Return Under Evacuation Warnings, While Malibu Schools Remain Closed
Officials have announced progress in the battle against the Franklin Fire, which has burned 4,037 acres and is now 20% contained. Unified Command, composed of CalFire, the Los Angeles County Fire Department (LACFD), and the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD), is coordinating efforts to transition from emergency response to the repopulation of evacuated areas.
Pacific Coast Highway is open to traffic, but canyon roads, except for Topanga Canyon and Kanan Dume require resident IDs. Traffic on PCH going west also requires proof of residency and as of 3:00 p.m., a sheriff’s deputy was stationed at the intersection of PCH and Tuna Canyon which is causing some delays.
As of Thursday, nine structures have been destroyed, but the hard work of over 1,700 personnel has led to containment progress. Residents are urged to check
the status of their evacuation zones on the Genasys Evacuation Map at protect. genasys.com.
Normal Status (Warnings Lifted): Zones east of Las Flores Canyon, including Topanga and Sunset Mesa, have returned to normal.
Repopulation Under Evacuation Warning (Yellow): Areas west of Las Flores Canyon to Sweetwater Mesa and west of Serra Road to Puerco Canyon are being repopulated. Access is restricted to residents with proper identification.
Mandatory Evacuation Order (No Access): Areas west of Sweetwater Mesa and Serra Road remain closed as hazards are assessed.
Repopulation areas have undergone thorough inspections to ensure the safety of roads, utilities, and critical infrastructure. Residents returning to these zones are advised to exercise caution and follow public safety guidelines, including proper use of protective equipment in burn areas. Additional safety resources are available at Los Angeles County Public Health’s
page.
SMMUSD announced that all of Malibu’s four schools will remain closed on Friday. The email from the school district added that clean-up would take place this weekend and a decision would be made on Sunday about next week’s classes. Webster Elementary was damaged and will require repair before it can be reopened. Santa Monica’s 11 schools are unaffected by the closures.
wildfire
Santa Monica City Manager David White Announces February 2025 Departure
White To Leave Position After Three Years of Service to the City Government
Tati Simonian, Public Information Officer, announced the following this afternoon via an email press release: Santa Monica City Manager David White announced Tuesday that he will leave his position in February 2025, concluding more than three years of service to the city.
White, who began his tenure in October 2021, collaborated with the City Council to establish and advance five key priorities: addressing homelessness, maintaining a clean and safe city, fostering economic growth and cultural vitality, promoting justice, equity, and diversity, and ensuring sustainable and connected infrastructure.
During his leadership, Santa Monica made strides in several critical areas:
• Strengthening public safety measures and enhancing efforts to address homelessness.
• Advancing sustainability initiatives and developing a multimodal transportation network.
• Adopting tax measures to sustain and expand city services.
• Approving zoning amendments that supported economic recovery, revitalized the hospitality sector, and brought new businesses and residential developments to the city, including enhancements to the Third Street Promenade.
• Initiating the long-term process to convert the Santa Monica Airport site.
“This is a bittersweet departure, and I am tremendously grateful to have had the opportunity to serve Santa Monica,” White said. “I’ll be working closely with the City Council and city leadership to ensure a smooth transition and am confident in the city’s bright future.”
White’s career includes extensive public service experience. Before joining Santa Monica, he served as deputy city manager in Berkeley, where he helped reimagine public safety and introduced a civilian oversight model for Berkeley’s Police Department. Previously, he was city manager of Fairfield, California, and finance director in the same city, after a career in investment banking.
White will return to Berkeley to take on the role of deputy city manager. The City of Santa Monica will announce details regarding the process to hire his successor in the coming weeks.
Preserving Santa Monica
SMa.r.t.
Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow
Since Giving Tuesday I’m sure you have been bombarded with appeals from countless organizations, local, national, or even international that are doing exceptionally valuable work that enhance the public good. It’s sometimes hard to select those that deserve our membership, donations, and/or direct participation.
There is one major advantage to supporting local organizations that align with your values, in that you can quickly see the direct benefits of your donation and often can actually participate with your volunteer labor in realizing their goals. In addition, while the City of Santa Monica has had a long history of supporting, in countless ways, ambitious initiatives for the public good, it is currently in a major cash crunch: some would say verging on bankruptcy (see https://smmirror. com/2024/12/sm-a-r-t-column-climbingthe-vertical-learning-curve/ and also see https://smmirror.com/2024/11/s-m-a-r-tcolumn-your-city-is-broke/ ). So the city’s ability to support worthy public initiatives beyond just “keeping the lights on” so to speak, is very limited. In this period of inevitable municipal contraction, the efforts of citizen volunteers is often the
only way to make progress on major problems.
One major problem we face, for which the City is completely unprepared, are absorbing the negative impacts of the 9000 units the state requires us to build by 2028. These include water shortages, traffic overload (including significant parking problems), and the damage to the City’s historic fabric among other significant problems.
The five voluntary organizations listed below are just a sample of local organizations preserving our historic fabric essential for our City’s future.
HEAL THE BAY: https://healthebay. org/ (CEO Tracy Quinn). We are here because of the beach. Tourists come for our beach. Our streets are numbered from the beach. Our road signs all have a yellow stripe representing the beach. Our largest hotels are on the beach. Our visitors arriving down Wilshire are greeted by a blue wave sculpture and the Pier is our Eiffel Tower (our pier is actually about 50% longer than the Tower is tall). Santa Monica has always been about the beach. So 38 years ago Heal the Bay stepped up and started issuing report cards for beach pollution, organizing beach cleanups which now gather upwards of 22,000 lb. of trash per event, and eventually they started managing a small public aquarium at the foot of the Pier among other aquatic initiatives. They have also expanded their
portfolio to include inland watersheds that are often the source of the pollution that dumps into our bay. Finally, they have become, through, no fault of their own, on the front lines of sea level rise which has become a major issue for the entire City: can a beach city survive without its beach?
MUSEUM OF FLYING (https:// www.museumofflying.org (Director of Operations Steve Benesch, $50 membership). Moving from the water to the air, the Museum of Flying was started 45 years ago from the memorabilia of Douglas Aircraft’s founder Donald Douglas Sr. Ten years later they opened a superb new facility on the north side of the runway that included actual aircraft and runway access. Because of financial constraints, in 2008 the museum moved back to the south side of the runway in a smaller facility where it is today headlined
Apart from its massive role in aircraft production during WW2 and birthing the jet passenger era with the DC-8, Douglas played an incredibly beneficial role in Santa Monica’s history by providing solid employment for generations of workers, engineers, fabricators, and specialists many of whom lived in Sunset Park. Its presence helped our tourist-dependent (and vulnerable) City survive the ravages of the great 1930s depression and the periodic recessions till 1963 when Douglas’s planes became too big for our short runway (The City Council refused to allow extending the runway).
The important lesson here is that Douglas Aircraft, for our City, was the equivalent of getting say Facebook or Amazon to locate their headquarters in your city. Aviation was the pinnacle of
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Call 424-512-7129 to plan a tour. May all your days be merry!
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by the DC3 monument (see photo above: the plane that taught America to fly).
technology between 1920 and 1970: the manufacturing equivalent of AI or super computers today. At this time we have not yet replaced their economic equivalent but it reminds us to keep looking for those recession-resistant industries to buffer our City from the inevitable roller coaster of a tourist-dependent economy. Should the airport be closed, probably for housing the 9000 units mentioned above, there will still be seven traces left (if you know where to look) of Douglas’s heroic era: Douglas Park, the landmarked beacon at the east end of the runway, the landmarked compass rose at the west end of the runway, the airplane in the City Hall mural, the Aero cinema, Douglas’s home on Woodacres Road, and of course the Museum of Flying. That museum tells the story of when Santa Monica was on the cutting edge of a key industry and reminds us to keep looking for today’s version of that goldmine.
CALIFORNIA HERITAGE MUSEUM https://californiaheritagemuseum.org/ (Toby Smith Executive Director, $35 membership). But life is not all just the environment or technology, preserving heritage and culture is equally valuable for a successful City. This is where the Heritage Museum performs a valuable and unique service in Santa Monica but also statewide. Their collection and shows of art works, paintings, posters, ceramics, photographs, sculptures, assemblages, and memorabilia reflects the cosmos of our artists’s concerns and their visions. Located in an approximately 140-year-
old landmarked Victorian building that was moved from Ocean Ave to its current location in 1977, this museum is part of a historic complex that includes a restaurant (The Victorian) and on Sundays the farmer’s market. Visiting the CHM is a perfect Sunday afternoon excursion.
SANTA MONICA HISTORY MUSEUM: https://santamonicahistory. org (Rob Schwenker, Executive Director, Individual membership $75). Located in the northeast corner of the Santa Monica Main Public Library, it is an incredible collection of over 600,000 documents maps, photos, diaries, books, and memorabilia that document and preserve our City’s past. Just to make it clear that museums aren’t just about the musty past, SMHM is currently showing two exhibits that have direct relevance to the challenges of today. There is the current exhibit, in collaboration with the Santa Monica Conservancy, called “Unhoused: A history of Housing in Santa Monica” which speaks to the important issues of housing and the unhoused in our City. And also there is an exhibit, in collaboration with the Quinn Research Center, about Vernon Brunson a seminal black poet, playwright, organizer, and columnist for the California Eagle. This exhibit, among other things, speaks to the many missing and untold stories of minorities that exist hidden in our City.
Additionally, the SMHM is buttressed on one hand by the used book store, and on the other hand the Public Library which has its own substantial collection
of documents, photos, catalogues, etc. The used book store (also on the ground floor of the main library) is a book lover’s nirvana that sells old and used books, (many in excellent condition) whose proceeds go to buy new books for the Public Library. This excellent example of recycling, run by Friends of Santa Monica Library, is also a place where you can volunteer directly to help the City reopen its shuttered libraries which are really a financial casualty of “long covid”.
The SMHM acts, in essence, as our own personal Smithsonian Society.
SANTA MONICA CONSERVANCY https://smconservancy.org/ (Kaitlin Drisko director, $45 membership) This 20+ year-old organization is the newest of these preservation organizations with over 350 dues-paying members. It is headquartered in a 1897 Landmarked Shotgun House that was moved to its current location in 2014 directly across the street from our landmarked Ocean Park Carnegie Library. The Conservancy runs five regular tours (the Downtown Walking Tours, the Annenberg Beach House, the Shotgun House, the Main Street Tour, and the Third Street Historic District Tour). In addition, they do a plethora of historic podcasts, salons, landmarking advocacy, educational programs, and thematic walking tours. In a sense, to use a computer analogy, the SM History Museum preserves the software (City memorabilia) while the SM Conservancy preserves the hardware (buildings). Because one of the key roles
of the Conservancy is the preservation and rehabilitation of historic buildings, it will be involved in many upcoming challenges (e.g. restoring the Civic Center Auditorium) and those battles created by the buildout of our required 9000 new units. That buildout will inevitably involve ripping out a huge part of our urban fabric, threatening it and many other historic resources.
None of these five organizations require the preservation of every single snowy plover, propellor, photo, postcard or property. But enough have to survive to tell our story and someone needs to be there to actually tell the story. And that’s where you come in. These five organizations cover the environment, aviation, art, history, and architecture. Thus they offer something of interest for everyone. They are a gift to your City, So if you receive a solicitation from them, please donate generously and actively participate.
By Mario Fonda-Bonardi, AIA
S.M.a.r.t Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow
Thane Roberts, Architect, Mario Fonda-Bonardi AIA, Robert H. Taylor AIA, Architect, Dan Jansenson, Architect & Building and Fire-Life Safety Commission, Samuel Tolkin Architect & Planning Commissioner, Michael Jolly, AIR-CRE Marie Standing. Jack Hillbrand AIA Landmarks Commissioner.
This is an update of the article that appeared February 29, 2024
For previous articles see www. santamonicaarch.wordpress.com/writing
