Party politics: Two to take on the ‘five’
The Santa Monica City Council may be facing a revolution from within its own ranks.
Concerned that council members are politically lopsided and are out of touch with residents, two of its seven members have taken a grassroots approach to governing.
Councilmen Bob Holbrook and Herb Katz believe a large rift has formed between what residents want City Hall to do and what the city council thinks is important.
Holbrook, Katz and 25 supporters founded Santa Monicans for Responsive Government about two months ago with the goal of increasing resident participation in government. The group appears ready to tweak, if not challenge, the prevailing political party on council: Santa Monica Renters’ Rights.
Katz is emphatic that the new group will not become politically active. Instead, he’s proposed to limit it to educating residents about the often-complicated issues before the council.
Whether he can make good on his pledge to keep the group out of politics is an open question, as he seems to subtly concede.
“I’m getting concerned the few in power are trying to govern us without input,” Katz said. “It’s not meant to be political. We’re not going to run candidates. It’s about getting more residents involved.”
But it is political. According to Katz, the politics of City Hall are in the hands of a powerful few.
“These same five council members are running this whole thing uniformly and singly,” he said. “I wouldn’t want five or six of me on council. That’s not healthy. We need more diversification.”
“These same five council members are running this whole thing uniformly and singly.” — — HERB KATZ Santa Monica city councilman
The group started with a mail survey asking for comments about conditions throughout the city.
“We said, ‘let’s pick 20 or so items to get a flavor of what’s going on and get a more global concept of our city.’ You’ll have people with different agendas who will disagree with each other,” said Katz. “But it will get us together and make us discuss things.”
Holbrook said the high cost of running a local election and council meetings that typically stretch into the early morning hours prevent a lot of residents from participating.
“The dynamics are that (Santa Monica Renters Rights) have professional campaigners who raise money. That war chest is spent on those SMRR endorses for council,” said Holbrook. “If you’re just an average working person, you don’t have that kind of backing. You just don’t stand a chance.
“Plus you can’t have meetings that run until 3 a.m. and expect your average working person to be able function at work the next day,” he said. “The Santa Monica City Council has become a hopeless scenario for any working person.”
Holbrook also said he sees the same handful of people at council meetings, leaving the views of the vast majority of residents in the dark.
“On many, many issues we end up hearing from the same four or five people at our meetings,” said Holbrook. “Out of 90,000 people, we hear from only a few.”
For that reason, Holbrook wants to stir up residents and make them realize the severity of city decisions.
“We would love to hear from a couple hundred people to see what they think,” he said. “We want to find unfamiliar sources, so we’re asking questions on every thing from crosswalks to traffic.”
So far the response has been far better than Katz expected. Though he wouldn’t speculate on how many responses his group will get, he said the surveys are flowing in by mail and fax. Soon the survey will be up on the group’s web site, as well.
“It’s starting to become a formal organization,” said Katz, adding that he recognized the need for an organized membership and fund-raising.
Other members of the council were not immediately available for comment.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 14, 2001. Read the original PDF.