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# Baseball playoffs, rain douse voters’ enthusiasm
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/baseball-playoffs-rain-douse-voters-enthusiasm/
- Published: 2004-10-20T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T05:19:04.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import

complained that city government has issued far too many liquor licenses in Santa Monica, which has led to public intoxication, open container law violations and crime. She also said the City Council has ignored for years making a new policy to curb alcohol consumption.

“When will City Council make it a priority to return to the citywide alcohol policy after 13 years (of not addressing it?)” she asked.

Most candidates didn’t have enough information to address the issue because they weren’t familiar with the concept. Others, including Morea, who offered personal accounts of picking up empty beer bottles around her property, and City Council Maria Loya who acknowledged the need to have the community involved, were in favor of possibly implementing a policy if a study indicated it would reduce alcohol-related problems in the city.

Cole questioned the need for new rules when current ordinances are not being enforced.

“I don’t know enough detail, but we can’t make new laws when (other laws, like) the noise violations are not enforced,” he said, citing the Saint John’s Hospital project that he said violates the development agreement every day.

The conversation also turned to city planning and department managers. Certain positions, such as the city manager, have civil service protection and cannot be directly removed from their post without a long process. A history of complaints about the mismanagement of the planning department prompted discussion and candidates took turns asserting who they felt wasn’t doing their job adequately.

“If I’m elected, the first thing I will do is tell the city manager to look for a new planning director,” said City Council candidate Bill Bauer.

The lack of power from the City Council to remove personnel also was acknowledged.

“Let me get this straight,” said Mayor Richard Bloom. “We have all the challengers who want to get out the incumbents.

“He (Bauer) wants to fire the planning director and Matt (Dinolfo) wants to fire the city manager... after she has fired the planning director, I presume?” he said, amid laughter from the group.

City Council candidate Bobby Shriver, who showed up more than halfway through the forum due to an event conflict, then asked City Councilman Ken Genser questions about the process of amending the city charter to strip certain officials of their civil service protection.

“Finally, a fun forum,” he said. Another longtime resident, Jacob Samuels, asked about his neighborhood near Sixth Street, between Ocean Park and Pico boulevards. He was worried about the impact of low-income housing, high rises and urban planning.

“It doesn’t look like the artist’s conception (that we were given),” he said of the new Rand Corp. building and the project’s apparent lack of open space.

Bloom, who arrived late to the forum, was able to provide details on the entire project, which will take about 10 years from start to finish, and includes retro-fitting downtown parking structures, 300 units of affordable housing and the conversion of space in front of the Civic Center into soccer fields.

“We can’t build a wall around Santa Monica and say ‘no one is allowed in’ but we can’t keep allocating $5.4 million for this affordable housing, and so on,” said Morea, who also said that additional families moving in would cause overcrowding in schools.

“Low-income housing shouldn’t be in the Civic Center area,” she said. “The housing is already too dense.”

Genser pointed out that the state mandates that 20 percent of redevelopment funds must be affordable housing, and that often times the money spent is not city funds, but state and federal grants restricted to specific uses.

The event was meant to provide a channel of communication between residents and city government to discuss matters of importance to the community.

“I think residents are at a critical mass of discontent,” said resident Anita Holcomb, who helped organize the forum. She added that she considered the event successful even though the very people who said they wanted to be more informed didn’t show.

Holcomb said she had received messages from 50 people reserving a spot in the audience. Candidates attributed the no-shows to the rainy weather and the Yankees-Red Sox playoff baseball game.

As the participants filed out, Holcomb stood up to collect the unused name cards at the front of the room.

“It was OK to break with the format,” she said. “We got more detail than we potentially (would have had) and much deeper answers than I’ve ever heard.

“It was lively.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 20, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/102004.pdf?ref=smdp.com)