Opinion Commentary 4
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 24, 2014
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LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
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Bill Bauer
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Ross Furukawa ross@smdp.com
Not another tax Editor:
Please do not waste $27,800 to study whether homeowners want to pay more tax (”City Hall considers tax hike for low-income housing,” Feb. 21, page 1). I am sure that 99.99 percent of us do not want to. A study and more consultant fees are not necessary. We continue to talk about affordability, but for some reason the city increasingly seems to want to make this an unaffordable place to live. I’m sure city tax revenues are at an all-time high and yet you want more and more from us. Start living within your means. Why did you spend $45 million on a new park where nobody lives if now you are concerned about housing? There seems to be no prioritization in City Hall or the concept of saving for something. Do you want a park, fire station or housing? You picked park. Do not pick my pocket now as a result of your remorse for your decision. Personally, I also do not want any more affordable housing. We have enough housing of any kind. This housing does not even go to people from Santa Monica but from out of the area. Why do we want to grow our population base? I assume the unions want to so the city can justify hiring more employees. We have a water crisis, a city of people who don’t want our city to grow and realistically no land to build affordable housing. I can only imagine that at some point any money raised would just go for pensions. How about police and fire staff taking at 10 percent pay cut and contributing 100 percent to their pensions. Also if we truly care about providing affordable housing, Santa Monica is an inappropriate place to do so. We have some of the highest land values in the U.S. (partially as a result of city policy on development and rent control which reduce market rate housing). So for the cost of housing 100 people in Santa Monica, housing could be built somewhere else in the region where land is a fraction of the cost and you could provide housing for say 200 people. We are a small city and have already done way more than our fair share on affordable housing. Please work to make this an affordable city for people who have invested their life savings to buy a home. We are some of the largest contributors already. For many of us, our homes are our retirements so I am against you taking more of my assets when I choose to sell. The city refuses to use eminent domain. I see this as a form of eminent domain, but you aren’t even paying me for it — you are just taking part of home value and my home value will decline as a result of increased transfer or property taxes. Have you also even considered the impact on the housing market? You might actually earn less revenue (just look at our brilliant school board’s latest fiasco) as I would imagine housing sales would decline. More people would choose to rent their homes which have several negative impacts; (i) less homes would be valued upwards due to Prop. 13 and the city would collect less property tax revenue, (ii) you would have a more transient population of 6-18 month renters who are not tied to our community, and (iii) you would harm the overall real estate market and make this even a less business and resident friendly city. I thought Santa Monica was a creative place. However the city manager’s only ideas seem to be based on raising taxes. This is not creative or sustainable. We’ve got a city which is a world class destination. Can’t we find a way to harness our resources and make a profit on them and perhaps make it affordable for us who live here and maybe even lowering the cost of living?
Linda Fineman Santa Monica YOUR OPINION MATTERS! SEND YOUR LETTERS TO
Santa Monica Daily Press • Attn. Editor: • 1640 5th Street, Suite 218 • Santa Monica, CA 90401 • editor@smdp.com
Referendum goes beyond Bergamot Transit Village A NUMBER OF RESIDENTS ARE CIRCU-
lating a referendum petition to recall City Council’s approval of a development agreement for the Bergamot Transit Village. Opposition to the massive 766,000-squarefoot project proposed for 26th Street and Olympic Boulevard is being led by grassroots organization Residocracy.org. Literally hours after council gave its final approval of the development agreement in February, between 200-300 Santa Monicans took Residocracy’s referendum petitions and hit the streets. 6,500 valid signatures are needed to force a public vote on the development agreement. Gatherers have only 30 days (March 14) to collect signatures. When the Residocracy folks and their supporters get the necessary signatures, City Council will be required by law to reconsider and repeal the Bergamot project or to place it on the ballot for the November election thus letting Santa Monica voters decide the fate of the development. Everyone needs to sign the petition to take City Hall back from special interests and send a message to the politicians and staff who continually ignore us. The much-hated Bergamot project and development in general will be the big issue in the upcoming election. Aside from stopping a very unpopular project, voters will be able to change the balance between slowgrowth and pro-development members on council. Two pro-development councilpersons are on the hot seat. If they fail to be re-elected and two slow-growth candidates replace them, the council balance shifts to five to two who favor slow growth. Then, the 2016 election should usher in two more antidevelopment council persons for a “full house.” Overly large and unpopular development proposals traditionally pushed by city planning staff will no longer fly. The way that development and traffic issues are handled will change, big time, after the power balance flips. The new order of doing business will apply to City Hall managers and department heads, too. The last time that Santa Monicans got this fired up about a development was in February of 1973 when an out-of-touch City Council voted to demolish the Santa Monica Pier and adjacent Newcomb Pier to build a causeway and a 50-acre, man-made island offshore (where the breakwater is now) that would feature a luxury, high rise hotel and convention center. Within days, thousands of enraged Santa Monicans formed a number of citizen groups to kill the island proposal and “Save the Piers.” Under pressure, council then voted to forgo the island but held fast on tearing down the so-called “crime-ridden” piers by refusing to rescind its demolition order. In those times, municipal elections were held in May and as fate would have it, the three councilmen who voted multiple times to tear down the piers were up for re-election that spring. I was one of many Santa Monicans who fought to save the piers and I — along with
others — worked like a banshee to retire the three anti-piers councilpersons. Election day came. Rumor is that Bob Gabriel, Arthur Rinck and James Reidy were sitting around their headquarters election night, watching their dismal returns and ruminating about how they didn’t realize how much the public loved the piers. They were replaced by three new persons who immediately rescinded the demolition order and pledged to save and preserve what has become the city’s most beloved landmark. History does repeat itself. Today, four members of the current council are as out of out of touch with public opinion as the council of 1973 was. Some members are in denial. Despite what one member of the dais told her colleagues during a recent council meeting recess, we will remember. If you want to circulate or sign a petition, go online at Residocracy.org. You’ll be joining with all seven of the neighborhood associations, Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC), Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights (SMRR), UNITE HERE, Local 11 and other groups and community leaders who support this effort. Thanks and many props for those who got this going and who are responsible for the referendum: Armen Melkonians who created Residocracy, Diana Gordon (SMCLC), realtor Kate Bransfield and board members of the seven neighborhood groups. MAIL IN MY BOX
I received loads of e-mails in my Gmail box about last week’s column on traffic and City Hall’s transportation (mis)management’s determination to jam things up instead of getting things moving. Phil Brock who is chair of the Recreation and Parks Commission and an announced City Council candidate told me that bicyclists have complained about getting squeezed at intersections where sidewalk curb extensions extend into intersections and force vehicles against them in the narrow traffic lanes. He adds that planning and traffic engineering staff are aware of the condition but are doing nothing about it. Except maybe putting in more curb extensions? Another reader e-mailed: “Santa Monica residents are becoming increasingly roadraged and we are rejecting our former polite behavior. If we could only elect new council members who would intelligently address our current massive traffic jams, poor signal-timing, construction, etc., things would be pretty nice. But I think that’s called ‘when we get pie in the sky, in the great bye-andbye!’” And, another e-mail: “Don’t get me started on the cock-a-mamie plans to ‘mediate’ traffic problems on Michigan and Pico to help poor confused Santa Monica High School students. Surely they are old enough to learn how and where to cross streets.” Another reader writes: “Your columns give me hope that it might still be possible to save SM from the crazies.” Amen. Bill can be reached at mr.bilbau@gmail.com.
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