By Greg Thomas
You have got to be kidding me. In the Monday, June 16 version of the SMDP, our beloved Mayor Richard Bloom states: “Santa Monica is largely considered to be providing leadership from a political and programmatic perspective to ending homelessness.”
The gall and simple unabashed cluelessness of this City Council simply astounds me. Ending homelessness? Ending it? How about encouraging it?
I respectfully ask his honor “Where are you living in this city? Do you walk along the beach? Do you walk through Palisades Park at all? I dare you to walk through it any day, any time of the day.
From where I and the vast majority of this city’s citizens sit, you guys at City Hall are not doing one thing toward rounding up the miserable people that use our city as their own bathroom/mattress/shooting gallery and running them out of town.
It’s easy to see they are a drain on resources and contribute nothing to the city’s coffers and society in general. If you need a reason, how about the fact that it costs the city in lost revenue every day of the week. How about the fact that the citizens (yeah, those folks that pay their city taxes) who live here are tired of seeing/living with it in the alleys/sidewalks/and all spaces, both public and private?
Want to be a hero, Mr. Mayor? Want this city’s residents and visitors to talk of you as a saint? Want to be remembered as the one mayor who actually did something of concern to its residents and used the position effectively? Then get tough on the homeless. Do it now. Do it today. Cut all of the funding — $2 million that is currently wasted, as more and more lousy miscreants see our city as the promise land of non-personal responsibility. Make life harder on them. Give SMPD Chief Butts the go-ahead to arrest each and every one of them.
In short, give Santa Monica back to its tax paying citizens. We deserve nothing less from you.
I have given you the option of impressing me and every one of the citizens you represent. How will you handle it? Dare I ask?
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 18, 2003. Read the original PDF.