MONDAY, MAY 20, 2013
Volume 12 Issue 163
Santa Monica Daily Press
BOX OFFICE CHAMP SEE PAGE 3
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THE CHILL LIKE THAT ISSUE
Fate of L.A. pot shops left to voters GREG RISLING Associated Press
the structure, something residents have long called for to end competition with hospital employees, patients and visitors for scarce parking in and around the neighborhood. The hospital has also agreed to provide an analysis of its parking operations after the new entry plaza and west lot have opened to make sure everything is working out as planned, although administrators made it clear in a May response that they did
LOS ANGELES Los Angeles politicians have struggled for more than five years to regulate medical marijuana, trying to balance the needs of the sick against neighborhood concerns that pot shops attract crime. Voters will head to the polls Tuesday to decide how Los Angeles should handle its high with three competing measures that seek to either limit the number of dispensaries or allow new ones to open and join an estimated several hundred others that currently operate. Election Day in the nation’s secondlargest city comes just two weeks after a pivotal state Supreme Court decision gave cities and counties the authority to ban pot shops. More than 200 local municipalities have bans, and some cities that were awaiting guidance from the state’s highest court have taken immediate action this month and begun shuttering clinics. While some cities have been able to manage pot collectives, Los Angeles fumbled with the issue and dispensaries cropped up across the city as a result. Councilman Ed Reyes said Los Angeles has run into trouble where other cities such as Oakland haven’t because of the sheer size of LA and a movement that is more organized and litigious. “The pie is so big here, so thick and rich, that we have many people making a run at it,” Reyes said. “Regardless of which measure you support, the city is going to have to focus on enforcement. I think as long as we don’t have enforcement, it’s just letters on paper.” City councilors passed an ordinance in 2010 to cut the number of shops from roughly 1,000 to 70. But numerous lawsuits were filed against the city by dispensaries and the ordinance was allowed to expire last year, leading to another surge of pot shops. Last summer, the city approved a ban, but two months later repealed it after enough signatures were gathered to get the measures
SEE PARKING PAGE 10
SEE POT PAGE 9
READY TO ROLL
Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com Santa Monica Police Chief Jacqueline Seabrooks helps employees of local business HLW while they build a bicycle for Wendy Rodriguez during a bike-build giveaway and safety instruction event at the Santa Monica Boys & Girls Clubs on Saturday morning.
Saint John’s, City Hall continue back-and-forth over parking BY ASHLEY ARCHIBALD Daily Press Staff Writer
MID CITY Officials at Saint John’s Health Center have 99 concerns, but parking, they hope, isn’t one. As rumors about the future of the hospital swirl and offers to purchase it from its owners, the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth Health System, percolate, officials have quietly been proceeding with its other constant battle — parking.
Hospital administrators have formally identified 210 new parking spots and beefed up contract provisions on others, changes they believe will satisfy City Hall’s requirements that the hospital provide the “functional equivalent” to a 438-space subterranean parking structure that was promised in a 1998 contract to rebuild the hospital after the 1994 Northridge earthquake. Fail to do so and the City Council could force the hospital to invest $25 million to build
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