> ## 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. # Ho, Ho, Ho! Bauer has a long gift list - URL: https://www.smdp.com/ho-ho-ho-bauer-has-a-long-gift-list/ - Published: 2007-12-24T16:00:00.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-24T04:32:32.000Z - Author: Bill Bauer - Tags: Opinion, Pico, #archive-import, Homeless IT’S CHRISTMAS EVE AND THERE should be holiday cheer aplenty for all good boys and girls. Therefore, I’ve put together a holiday wish gift list. A handful of corks for City Council is on my list because they just can’t stop their endless micromanaging. For example, take Pico neighbors’ simple request for greenery (without altering traffic flow) to beautify 20th Street and Cloverfield Boulevard, between the I-10 and Pico Boulevard. At their Dec. 11 meeting, Councilman Ken Genser and Mayor Herb Katz suggested planted medians and islands, while Kevin McKeown wanted bike paths on 20th (which may require narrowing or removing traffic lanes). Genser also suggested modifying turn patterns in and out of neighboring streets. It seems some loquacious councilper-sons don’t have a clue that this project “was” about planting trees! After eight years of design, planning and community input, some of them are going back to “square one,” inserting their own personal “wish list” and reinventing the wheel. Maybe the next time the urge to micro-manage strikes, they’ll put a cork in it. How about the gift of a real traffic engineer for the city of Santa Monica? I’m talking “professional” who wants to get things moving, not another philosophical traffic jammer. The city’s latest traffic debacle — realigning Ocean Park Boulevard to single lanes in each direction between Lincoln Boulevard and 25th Street — yielded a pedestrian/two car accident before the paint was dry on the new striping. (“Bottling traffic gets panned,” Dec. 18) The systematic removal of traffic lanes and implementation of physical road impairments is bad enough, but what about the traffic impact of the many large developments coming down the pipe for the future? Two other items on my holiday wish list are updated traffic research and a city-wide moratorium on non-single family construction. The city doesn’t even have an accurate measure of present, let alone future, congestion that would include impacts of both ongoing and proposed development. Nearly two years ago, the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC) asked City Council to allocate resources to expedite a study of alternate traffic impact methodologies and to begin collecting baseline traffic and congestion data including data that would distinguish between residential and visitor traffic. In the meantime, with numerous, large commercial/mixed use developments in the planning stages mostly in the Mid-City area, SMCLC and other civic and neighborhood groups have also asked for a moratorium on approvals and construction until the City’s Land Use and Circulation Element is updated. There’s an urgent need to properly plan for future development and better mitigate traffic congestion. Without it, future growth could result in unacceptable environmental impacts and intolerable traffic congestion. City funding for West Coast Care is also on my list. Fifteen months ago, Ron Hooks and his crew came to town and began extensive outreach to Santa Monica’s homeless population. Working the beachfront, Main Street, Palisades Park, Third Street and places beyond, “Pastor Ron” and his team make daily contact with the longest term, most needy and most visible of our street denizens as well as recent arrivals. Knowing that life on the street here is a downward spiral, getting help where a person has family or friends — back home — was Hook’s hook. West Coast Care buys bus tickets and sends people home where they can find love, support and a second chance. WCC has relocated over 200 of the city’s hardest core homeless “home” where, amazingly enough, the vast majority of them have stayed, received assistance and are straightening out their lives. WCC’s been phenomenally successful in getting people help and off our streets. Their initial funding from Northern California sources is running out so City support is needed for their good work to continue. The city of Santa Monica wants to hire a park custodian. My wish is for a Santa Monican to fill that position. The job pays between $3,000 and $3,700 a month and includes generous benefits. So, why was it advertised in the Daily News (San Fernando Valley), Pasadena Star News and other regional newspapers and online over the last few weeks? Are the requirements for this position so pernicious that we have to search the far corners of the world to find someone qualified? I thought we were trying to find employment for young people in the Pico neighborhood or, at best, jobs for Santa Monicans who don’t have to drive twenty, thirty or forty miles each way to work? Employing our own gives a resident a job and also means we don’t have to import workers and build “public” housing for them. What a concept! Coming up: The 2007 Sammies. The Good, Bad and Downright Disgusting. Happy Holidays. *Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 24, 2007.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/122407.pdf?ref=smdp.com)