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# City Council politicians still serve up broken promises
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-council-politicians-still-serve-up-broken-promises/
- Published: 2004-07-16T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T04:44:16.000Z
- Author: Bill Bauer
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import, Homeless

Election season has begun for the City Council, Santa Monica College Board of Trustees and local school board candidates. All four multi-term incumbents on the City Council are seeking reelection.

Mayor Richard Bloom announced that his campaign would be centered on “social justice and affordable housing.” Oy! It’s not surprising he’d avoid real issues such as our army of street transients, traffic, school funding, parking, property rights and the squandering of city resources on services for nonresidents — problems he and his council cronies promised to solve during previous elections but where they have failed miserably.

Worried about increasing community discontent with ongoing issues that are never addressed? “Speed Bumps” Bloom and his Santa Monicans for Renters’ Rights stooges deride anybody who dares complain. Do they want us to pretend everything is “A-OK?” Do they think we’re all simpletons?

Incumbents Herb Katz and Ken Genser, seeking their fourth and fifth terms respectively, still “do their own thing” too, and somehow “we” get left out of the process.

Councilman Michael Feinstein, also seeking a third term, cites parks and open space as a priority. But, he, along with the other incumbents, can’t vote fast enough for overly large, low-income apartment projects on any bit of open space. Feinstein talks “sustainable” but doesn’t walk the walk.

For example, they all encourage and support our large vagrant population. Public feedings continue unabated, tens of millions of dollars are wasted annually on ineffective services and public safety concerns are ignored. Their reaction? “You’ll get used to it.”

Traffic increases yearly, yet they consistently support air polluting traffic jam-ming schemes that make it harder and more dangerous to drive. And, continued assaults on single-family homeowner’s property rights have many neighbors claiming it’s a war between the “haves” and “have nots.”

I haven’t seen a bunch of self-righteous council persons this out of touch with reality since the mid-1970s when three politicians voted to demolish the Santa Monica Pier and lost their council seats because of it.

State -supported Santa Monica College this fall will ask local voters to approve a $175 million bond for a host of lavish perks and frills for itself, the school district and the cities of Santa Monica and Malibu.

It’s a grab bag of everything including projects left off the list from SMC’s $160 million bond approved by voters just two years ago. Their latest bond proposal provides yet another $75 million in projects for SMC plus $25 million for city/college partnership projects in Malibu and $75 million in Santa Monica.

Monies would be earmarked for mostly non-academic, physical improvements on the campus and for community cultural, athletic and recreational facilities. Even though less than 10 percent of SMC students are from Santa Monica and Malibu, we’re still being asked to pony up for a veritable cornucopia of “cake icing,” including a botanical gardens, child care, children’s fitness park, career center, community theater and an aquarium on the Santa Monica Pier.

Funny. I thought SMC’s mandate was to provide educational services. When did it become a provider of cultural, recreational and child care facilities for the Westside?

A news article in the Los Angles Business Journal, (July 5, 2004) says SMC could be hit with a $10 million state funding cutback because of a 28 percent decline in enrollment. It lost almost 7,000 students last year.

Even more disturbing is the Accrediting Commission for Community Colleges Report on Santa Monica College (page 14) that says: “... the college does not have a process to evaluate the effectiveness of the ongoing planning and resource allocation process.” It looks like their $175 million bond proposal is less about educational excellence and more about marketing, opportunism, political clout and grabbing the brass ring.

City Hall still beats the college when it comes to borrowing and taxing. City Hall is considering the issuance of up to $8 million in revenue bonds for development of a controversial, 44-unit, low-income, apartment complex at Main Street and Pacific Avenue in Ocean Park. Depending on the interest rate and length of the loan, the total cost to taxpayers could be between $16 and $25 million, or a half-million bucks a unit.

It’s another classic example of how the incumbents’ — and SMRR’s — social agenda takes priority over the public’s needs and only benefits a very small number of people, many of whom may not even be Santa Monicans.

Funding for voter-based rental housing projects and $10 million homeless shelters is done with a snap of a finger. We have to back them against a wall to get support for our services, such as schools.

The bond for the Community Corp. of Santa Monica, the low-income housing provider here, is scheduled for approval by the City Council at on July 27 at 5:45 p.m. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer).

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 16, 2004.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/071604.pdf?ref=smdp.com)