By Bill Bauer

Last Tuesday, City Council took the first steps in eliminating citizen review on some of our largest and most egregious residential developments.

They approved a first reading of a permanent change in the city’s codes to exempt low and very low income housing projects, consisting of 50 units or less, from obtaining Development Review permits and/or Conditional Use Permits — this time, in multifamily neighborhoods.

With final approval of this latest measure expected in the weeks ahead, discretionary public review before a commission with the power to mandate meaningful change in these large and intrusional developments will be “null and void” in virtually every part of the city except for single family zoned neighborhoods. This completes a systematic effort to “fast track” public housing throughout the city.

Council persons voting to eliminate review included Ken Genser, Richard Bloom, Pam O’Connor and Herb Katz. Even Kevin McKeown, usually a staunch supporter of neighborhood livability, voted against the public’s being heard.

Councilmen Bobby Shriver and Robert Holbrook opposed eliminating public review. Shriver want so far as to suggest that these issues should be reviewed by a “board” directly answerable to the people. He said that, sure, meetings are held, but stakeholders and political appointees can ignore the public because they can’t be “fired” or voted out of office.

There are more than 2,000 low income units in the city, most of them operated by Community Corporation of Santa Monica, a city-affiliated nonprofit. CCSM’s governing board is filled with past and present Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights power players – many of whom live in single family neighborhoods.

SMRR leaders, bleeding heart social engineers, a homeless services provider or two, architects (who are making big bucks on city low income housing) and weepy public housing advocates showed up en masse at Tuesday’s Council meeting. It was an impressive array of idealists and political movers and shakers determined to damn any public voice in conflict with their limousine liberal agenda.

Public housing advocates insisted that discretionary review severely impedes time-critical project funding and increases carrying costs, thus endangering all future public housing even though Planning and Community Development Director Eileen Fogarty testified that upholding the public review process might create some funding problems, including increasing carrying costs, but it wouldn’t end public housing construction.

Public housing advocates are really trying to eliminate criticism of the size, scale, number of these ‘favored” projects and their impacts on a neighborhood. Debate about their relation to crime, school and city services and property tax exemption status is also “off the table.” Unfortunately, more than one low income housing cheerleader resorted to vilifying discretionary review supporters as “being against the poor” or “NIMBYs.” But these are folks who want super blocks of public housing like those proposed for the Civic Center.

The city itself is the most prolific developer in Santa Monica; much of which is city sponsored public housing. Therefore, passing on public review is especially dictatorial and heinous. Despite claims of supporting public process, five council persons permanently opened the door for intense development of the public housing kind. The massive, oversized buildings under construction at Main and Pacific streets, 15th Street and Broadway and 26th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard are coming to your street. Very soon, there’ll be nothing you can do about them.

So, who besides Shriver and Holbrook speaks for the residents? Not non-SMRR councilman Herb Katz or any of the phony hotel-backed “activists" slinging pro-resident horsepucky during the last election. Most sickening is witnessing planning commissioners such as its chairman, Gwynne Pugh, architect Hank Koning and former Council candidate Terry O’Day willingly surrender their duty to protect the public interest.

Typical of the games played by those profiting by the city’s aggressive housing policy is the shamefully self-serving letter to the Daily Press (Jan. 11, Page 4) from Linda Jassim (the wife of Gwynne Pugh), gushing over the “breakthrough architecture” of the controversial CCSM project at 15th and Broadway designed by her husband’s architectural firm, Pugh + Scarpa.

Lastly, those leaving the council meeting at 12:30 a.m. couldn’t help but notice the City Hall lawn sprinklers were on and water was running onto the street in sheets only days after the city began earnest enforcement of water waste and urban runoff codes by fining homeowners up to $500 for infractions.

Oh, the hypocrisy of it all.

Bill Bauer can be reached at mr.bilbau@gmail.com