> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # City Hall closed today for the environment - URL: https://www.smdp.com/city-hall-closed-today-for-the-environment/ - Published: 2002-02-22T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-23T00:03:29.000Z - Author: Andrew Fixmer - Tags: Government & Politics, Santa Monica, #archive-import *Other area cities also compress work week in effort to improve air* Today, Santa Monica City Hall is closed. In fact, it hasn’t been open on alternating Fridays for more than a decade now. And among Southern California cities, it’s not alone. Since the early 1990s, around the nation’s first skirmish with Iraq, California enacted stringent ride-sharing rules for all public and private entities with over 100 employees. Back then, companies and municipalities were forced to enact programs to reduce the number of trips being made by their employees or pay the state hefty fines. But most municipalities west of La Cienega Boulevard went a bit further. They compressed their week so employees work 80 hours over nine days and receive every other Friday off. Without it, many public officials said their municipalities couldn’t cut the number of trips made by their workers below state mandated levels. Today, scientists are finding that cleaner burning engines and a greater reliance on mass transportation has improved the air to the point where it’s no worse than any major East Coast city. And though the Santa Monica’s program isn’t clearing out Interstate 10 one day every other week, it is keeping 16,000 employees from driving into the city each year. The city also features an aggressive carpooling system, which 660 employees use every day. An additional 300 workers carpool on a part-time basis. Employees who carpool to work are given preferential parking. Those who do it more than three days a week are given a $1.50 stipend per day. Employees who take public transportation receive free bus fare after paying for the first month. According estimates by the Southern California Air Quality Board, only a couple of dozen of the 180 cities in Southern California compress their work week. “This is one option, but there is no requirement mandating they do this,” said Sam Atwood, spokesman for the SCAQB. “The general goal of this rule is to increase the average vehicle ridership, which means trying to get more than one person in each vehicle. “It says nothing about closing a day every other week.” The SCAQB operates on a 4-day week, closing every Monday, he said. Since it’s not a mandated practice, SCAQB doesn’t track exactly which cities or companies do it. And Atwood could not say whether it is a common practice or if the number of towns with alternating days off has grown or shrunk over the past decade. Over the years in Santa Monica, there has been talk of altering the system to re-open some services on Fridays, but no official action has ever been taken. “Whenever rumors start circulating that we might go back to the old system, employees get nervous because they see it as a real benefit,” said Jacqueline Brooks, a transportation management specialist for Santa Monica. > “Whenever rumors start circulating that we might go back to the old system, employees get nervous because they see it as a real benefit.” — — JACQUELINE BROOKS Santa Monica transportation management specialist And because Monday was Presidents Day, municipal workers had an especially kind three-day week. Not too many years ago, the city gave its employees Lincoln’s Birthday off too. “But we changed that because we had too many days off at once,” Brooks said. “It just didn’t work out.” Many westside cities still use a combination of the compressed work week. In Beverly Hills, city hall is open every day of the week. There, half the work force takes one Friday off and the other half works. The next week, they switch. “Being closed isn’t good customer service,” said April Meadow, Director of Human Services for Beverly Hills. “We wanted to provide services to those who need it on Fridays.” Culver City originally closed every other Friday. Then it adopted the schedule Beverly Hills uses, only to return back to the original method at the beginning of this year. “We weren’t going to add people to keep city hall open every Friday just to split shifts,” said Seth Fogel, Assistant CEO at Culver City. “There were some departments which were really strained because you would have half the number there as during the week. “Also, people had it in their minds city hall was going to be closed so they didn’t come in.” The City of West Hollywood, like Santa Monica, continues to work the same compressed schedule. However, the city has instituted a “Friday’s Light” program, where a skeleton crew at the permit office, the cashier’s office and the motor pool are available to the public. “Our problem here is that we have a small workforce,” said Joyce Rooney, an Associate Transportation Planner with West Hollywood. “At the time we started we had 160 employees, now we have a 195\. So it wasn’t really in our best interest to have people trading days.” However in Santa Monica, the city is the largest employer with about 2,000 employees. Santa Monica city officials said the system is beneficial to the public. Expanded hours during the week allow greater access to city hall, they argue. Some local builders say the reduced hours have slowed down the time it takes to work with city staff and get permits approved. “This is what the schedule is supposed to be, but that’s not what it really is,” said David Hibbert, a Santa Monica-based architect. “For one reason or another, that schedule doesn’t work for them so they don’t work well that way.” But the system has some advantages. Hibbert said since nobody knows which Fridays City Hall is closed, the day has become the best time to do business. “For me it’s great,” Hibbert said. “Nobody is sure when they are open on which Fridays, so if you need to go to the building department, that’s the time to go.” The system has also been good for employee morale and increased productivity, officials said. Former Santa Monica Mayor and Councilman Denny Zane said the decision to go to a compressed work week was a win-win situation for both senior staff and the blue-collar workers. “As a senior staff member, it was one day a week where you didn’t have to come in but you could,” he said. “It was the one day when the phones weren’t ringing and you had a chance to catch up on the work you couldn’t do when everything is normal.” ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/55/9f/559f9abc-8372-4a2e-8c2d-27386da4e363/content/images/2026/10/022202-01_01.jpg) A sign on the door of Santa Monica City Hall informs visitors that the building will be closed every other Friday to help improve area air quality. (Photo: Carolyn Sackariason/Daily Press) *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 22, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/022202.pdf?ref=smdp.com)