MY WRITE
It’s going to get a lot more expensive to live in Santa Monica in the months ahead.
The Santa Monica Rent Control Board is contemplating a 4 percent increase in the annual general rent adjustment. Rent control also is suggesting a cap of $54 per unit with the annual rent adjustment. Sounds to me like a Bush-Cheney type tax ruling that helps the rich and penalizes the poor.
The cap means that everyone who pays up to $1,350 per month for rent would face a 4 percent increase. But anyone whose rent is more than $1,350 would see their increase capped at $54 per month.
So, If a person pays $1,800 per month in rent, instead of a 4 percent or $72 monthly increase, their increase would still be maxed out at $54 or 3 percent. On a $2,400 a month apartment, instead of a 4 percent increase, or $96, a tenant would pay only $54 — a 2.25 percent increase. A $3,000 per month renter would face a 1.8 percent increase. Those living in Santa Monica’s toniest apartments and paying more than $5400 monthly rent, would see increases of less than 1 percent.
So why another big break for Santa Monica’s wealthiest renters? How come ultra liberal City Hall isn’t creating a formula that gives a break to low-income folks paying less than $800 per month, for example?
There’s also a proposed $2 per month, per unit, increase in the apartment registration fee. With less apartments to oversee these days and the need for fewer administrators, it’s only appropriate for this municipal bureaucracy to kick up monthly fees paid by tenants to $13.
Go to the Rent Control Board public hearing on all this, Thursday, June 8, at 7 p.m. in City Council Chambers in City Hall or write and say “Hell, No” to these unfair and ill-conceived increases. And, remind Rent Control Board members Betty Mueller, Alan Toy and Jennifer Kennedy who are all up for reelection this fall, that if they vote for this, you’ll not support their reelection bids.
This is the time of the year when the annual City Budget is approved by the City Council.
The proposed 2006-07 budget is a whopping $444.8-million — up $34.5 million from the current 2005-06 budget because of record revenues. Holy mushrooming bureaucracies!
New City Manager Lamont Ewell promises that “this will be a refocusing on core services.” Ewell mentioned tree trimming, graffiti removal and maintenance of the new city facilities such as the new library and Virginia Avenue Park as examples.
I guess garbage collection fees that were recently upped 7 percent don’t count as core city services, nor do extended hours at the branch libraries or reduced fees for skate park kids.
The big question is: With record city revenues, why are all of us paying more for “core services” and getting less for our money?
The new budget reflects hiring 25 new city employees — that’s in addition to the more than 2,000 employees already on the payroll. For the record, Santa Monica with close to 90,000 residents, already has one of the highest city employees-to-resident ratios in the country.
Anyone who thought the new City Manager would reverse the more than two decade long squandering of money and resources on solving the region’s homeless problems are going to be disappointed. City staff is tossing more dollars at the homeless by requesting another $200,000 for Homeless Czar Ed Edleman’s salary. Did anyone really believe that Edleman’s position would only last one year? Silly people.
Not to be outdone, the Santa Monica- Malibu Unified School District is holding a public hearing on June 15 at 8 p.m. in City Council chambers and will adopt a resolution to levy a 4.7 percent Consumer Price Index adjustment to the Proposition Y school parcel tax passed a few years ago resulting in a $116.88 rate per parcel. Please remember this is another regressive parcel tax that penalizes the poor while giving a huge tax break to big real estate holders.
The costs for this and other parcel tax and college bond proposals approved by voters have been added to most of our rents because the Rent Control Board has allowed landlords to pass on their expenses to tenants.
The bottom line is that local government is still on a spending spree. The only result is thinner wallets for you and me. (Bill Bauer is a 35-year, overtaxed and “mad as hell about it” resident. He)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on May 29, 2006. Read the original PDF.