By Rose Dabney Santa Monica
I am amazed that during this campaign some of the incumbent Council candidates can get away without being held accountable for some of the significant problems in the city that they have allowed to fester on their watch. I am talking about how our public areas have been allowed to turn into a skid row cesspool. Our sidewalks, parks, alleys and libraries are allowed to become tenement camps for the homeless and thugs. As a middle class renter, I cannot buy my own house and hire a security guard. I have to depend on the City Council to enact and enforce laws — rules whatever you want to call it — so that we can live in a clean, safe and civilized way.
You would think that would be the main job of the Council. You would think that residents’ votes would count. Well, it seems that instead, some on the Council are more concerned with getting the rest of the world to change its ways rather than take care of business here in SM.
Why not really support the taxpaying and voting residents, and actually propose some actions to clean up our parks? Why not give the police real power to get the crystal meth-using bums out of our city instead of facilitating a revolving door system where the police are ineffective and the bums know they can keep coming back?
We need a council that focuses more on the everyday problems facing this city, like cleaning up our streets and making them safe, and empowering the police to do their job, not handicap them. We all need to vote for the candidates that will focus on these core issues and not keep putting the same candidates back in office who created the problems in the first place.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 5, 2006. Read the original PDF.