“It hurts me to think that a person who has a good job, who wants to make a living, can’t these days. It’s a sorry day when you have a job that you can’t make a living at. That day is today. That day was yesterday.” Gayle Gonzalez, a Santa Monica resident who must travel to Hawthorne for work after her former grocery store in Westchester closed. She supports the City Council’s move to approve a law requiring grocery workers to be retained for at least 90 days after the store is sold.
“I kind of feel like a tobacco executive telling you not to smoke, because we’re here selling cars and telling our employees not to drive to work.” Mark Harding of Santa Monica Toyota on the dealership’s efforts to get employees to ride mass transit or carpool as a way to cut down on traffic in neighboring residential areas and to save scarce parking spaces for customers and inventory.
“Didn’t you look into it?” Councilman Herb Katz, who grilled staff from Planning and Community Development after not receiving answers to several of his questions regarding new zoning laws regulating auto dealers.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 11, 2006. Read the original PDF.