Boyd Williams (March 12, Page 4) echoed my February 26 column (Page 4) about the Santa Monica/Malibu Unified School District’s latest financial crisis. Williams questioned the recommendations of the Fiscal Crisis and Management Assistance Team hired to review district finances after the former Chief Financial Officer resigned last fall over a 5 percent teacher pay hike.
Williams points out that although FCMAT said the district could afford the raise after all, steps would have to be taken — such as a transference of funds from building to operating accounts — to balance the books. Williams called it “a complicated shifting of monies that appear to be intended for school facilities will now be heading for salaries.”
Williams notes that when voting for Measure BB,the school improvement bonds on the ballot last November, he might have been mislead about the bond money only being used for improving school facilities.After a huge pay-out to former school CFO, Winston Braham, requiring him to “go away and keep silent,”Williams also asks why Braham was paid anything if he resigned? And why the silence?
Dr. Lisette Bauersachs, (March 16, Page 4) took issue with the possible expenditure of Measure BB money on a new facility for the Edison Language Academy elementary school on Kansas Avenue. Previously, Bauersach’s told the Daily Press (March 13, Page 14), “Close to 50 percent of students at ELA are non Santa Monica-Malibu residents. Why would the cities of Santa Monica and Malibu taxpayer money subsidize a school that is 50 percent Los Angeles Unified and Culver City?" Good question. Any answer?
An angry letter from David Mendez- Yapkowitz (March 16, Page 4) trashed the Santa Monica Police Department. Mendez- Yapkowitz has the right to speak his mind, but maybe he should seek ways to get along with police rather than baiting them.
Mendez-Yapokowitz taunted the police for harassing the community’s children and berated Chief, Timothy Jackman, for not attending a peace march honoring Miquel Martin and Eddie Lopez who were shot to death by young West Los Angeles gang-bangers. He wrote,“Children are stopped for no reason, no reason at all. A police officer can be just as dangerous a criminal as anybody out on the streets.”
Mendez-Yapkowitz can vent, but cops aren’t shooting young men in the back, other young men are. As a volunteer with the SMPD, I know when the police stop someone, there’s always a reason which may not be apparent to the person being stopped.
Marches and peace rallies are fine but they can’t stop violence especially when gangbangers intimidate people into keeping silent while they assassinate other young men on the streets. If the people who had information about Eddie Lopez’s killer would’ve come forward in time, maybe Miquel Martin would be alive today. Now, that’s something to get angry about.
Mendez-Yapkowitz’s “cop-a-phobia" makes a bad situation worse by provoking distrust and anger. We don’t need a poison wedge between the community he says he cares about and those in law enforcement trying to protect it.
A March 20 letter by Linda Morris (Page 4) criticized the landscaping planter that’s in the middle of Pico Boulevard at 33rd Street instead of a much needed left turn lane for Trader Joe’s market. Surely Linda, you wouldn’t expect to see traffic planning that makes sense in this town?
And, for those in Sunset Park who want traffic mitigation on Ocean Park Boulevard between 14th and 18th Streets, the same kind of incompetent traffic planning that turned Pico and many other Santa Monica streets into ugly, unsafe avenues were unveiled at a community meeting last week.
These schemes will result in a main boulevard less able to handle heavy traffic loads safely — especially with diagonal parking and single, narrower traffic lanes — and increased traffic on residential side streets with even more congestion, pollution and noise.
Former Rent Control Board member, Alan Toy (March 22, Page 4) disagreed with Joan Roger’s assertion (March 21, Page 4) about polluted air around a public housing project under construction at 26th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard. Sorry, Alan, Joan’s right. The air from all the traffic is not healthy and a busy commercial intersection is not the best place to put any housing — even “affordable” — for a number of reasons.
Well done readers. Keep those letters coming.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 26, 2007. Read the original PDF.