Editor's Note: The vote to remove the board was 6-1 with Mayor Lana Negrete opposing the decision.
The Santa Monica city council executed a good ol’fashioned power grab last week with the purging of six political appointees from the Downtown Santa Monica (DTSM) Board and the installation of a proxy Board who will better do the Council’s bidding.
Why should the average resident care if some business owners and Council cronies played musical chairs in a conference room you don’t know exists? It’s a good question but the answer is simple. Money. Without money the City simply can’t do anything. Whether you want housing, bike lanes, police officers or clean beaches, it all costs money. Money the city largely doesn’t have due to an extended period of failed fiscal leadership and external costs. So control of the DTSM Board is both a source of direct income through the taxes levied on businesses and an indirect revenue generator as it should be attracting high-spending tourists who in turn pay taxes to support local services.
Revitalizing the City’s flagship economic zone is hugely important and the Council’s coup is both about shifting responsibility for the city’s economic fortunes and solidifying their grip on power.
The decision, backed by a group of Councilmembers that actually campaigned on “good governance” as a platform, was surprising, not for its hypocrisy, but for its audacity.
When the most recent slate of Hall, Raskin, Zernitskaya and Snell were elected, they specifically criticized the incumbents they sought to replace for violating governmental norms, undermining staff and undermining opposing voices.
So far this council has belittled staff reports they didn’t like, rewritten the budget from the dais and now mounted a Trumpian purge of appointees. Pot. Kettle. Black.
The only reason we’re not calling it a stunning hypocrisy is because their hypocrisy is to be expected given other decisions. This council’s steadfast adherence to social justice melts into quicksilver when it comes to district based voting, a cause universally endorsed by every social justice advocate and organization yet opposed by the Santa Monica City Council.
Their “support” for public safety didn’t translate into the additional officers the Police Chief wanted.
We’re not saying they are without principles. We are saying that like a caricature of the impacts of absolute power, there are some principles they’re entirely willing to abandon when their authority is threatened.
To cite something they are committed to, this group remains strongly committed to housing production and we can all pretend to be surprised when the feasibility study for the airport comes back claiming it's impossible to build a park without revenue sources and suddenly housing will be a necessary part of that plan.
The Councilmembers are also adept politicians as evidenced by the way this happened. Nothing about the timing is illegal and the manipulation of the process is what you’d expect from politicians trying to quash dissent.
Snell submitted his memo on the 25th, one of the City’s off-Friday’s where most staff are not at work. The Clerk’s office scheduled the discussion as soon as they did receive it and “special” meetings can be scheduled at any time, for any reason as long as they’re noticed 24 hours in advance. The item was published at 5:15 p.m. on the 28th and it just so happens, late enough to prevent DTSM from scheduling a response before the Council’s special meeting on the 29th.
The appointment of replacements was made possible by the fortuitous timing of candidate applications. With five of the six coincidentally applying a week before the memo was submitted.
Entirely legal and entirely underhanded.
As to why the purge was needed, Councilmembers have failed to articulate any emergency situation that would warrant such an extreme action.
They can articulate opportunity and authority.
Council wants to control the selection of a new DTSM CEO and the DTSM bylaws allow action. Opportunity and authority are not an emergency. Nor are nebulous accusations of wrongdoing. Actual wrong doing is absolutely a reason to remove people. But to get to that point, you’d have to make specific accusations, investigate and follow through. You know, good governance.
The real motivation here is that the City has thoroughly pooped the bed when it comes to the local economy. They’ve failed to create an environment where retail businesses can flourish, they’ve failed to protect the City’s reputation for tourism and with the pending downsize if not departure of RAND, they’re in the running to medal in a new failure event, brain drain (which will be the only medal they see after also failing to understand the value of the Olympics).
They want to shift responsibility and like an overly floral air freshener in an office bathroom, they want to mask the stink of failure before they ask the property owners to keep giving them money.
It has been suggested behind the scenes that the current board wants to dismantle DTSM. That may be true, but if that is the reason for the mass firing, it should be stated in public and with evidence. Council should then have the decency to explain why business owners should voluntarily pay taxes to support City Hall if the Council consistently refuses to address issues like the perception of crime and homelessness that make running a business in Santa Monica so difficult (not to mention the byzantine permitting processes, high fees and general disdain for the business community).
But City Hall doesn’t want a DTSM Board with ideas of independence. They want a vassal state who will ask “How high?” every time they’re told to jump. They don’t want a CEO who will advocate for the Board when they want to question the City. They want a suitably subservient lackey advocating for the Council’s whims.
We’ll have to see what they actually get as the next move belongs to the elected DTSM boardmembers who are outside City control. They will have to choose how, or even if, they interact with the current seatwarmers while Council drums up suitable permanent puppets and we’ll all have to wait to see what arguments the new hive-mind will make to convince property owners to keep sending their tithe to City Hall.