This past week, Q-line asked: “Do you support requiring businesses to pay more to provide additional services downtown? Why or why not?”
Here are your responses: ✆ “No, I certainly do not. This city extorts enough money from the businesses and citizens of Santa Monica to support their pet and secret agendas, few of which benefit the tax-paying citizens. We don’t need any additional services downtown, we need the city to be cleaned up. We need the bums and cruds run out of town. Those are the two big, main issues that need addressing. The third is for the police to become more proactive in protecting the citizens from the drug addicts, drunks, crazies, and criminals that have taken over this city.” ✆ “Business assessments are passed on to the consumer. This creates inflation due to the consumer paying extra for assessment and not increased quality of product. Eventually, the consumer pays mostly for costs of doing business, and ends up with an over-inflated product. No assessments, please.” ✆ “I don’t think the Santa Monica business owners should pay more just to bring in revenue. They’re paying enough. So equalize it among different people that utilize the services of the city, and don’t pick on business owners because you know poor people — they have enough to deal with, with the scandalous city in Santa Monica” ✆ “Why gouge the merchants and make them pay more money when they keep wasting what they’re already collecting from them?... Until then, why should the merchants have to pay more when they’re not getting anything for what they’re paying now?” ✆ “I don’t think it should be done. The Bayside District is a non-profit organization. Well, non-profit organizations are just licensed con artists. I mean, what are they going to do with more money? Slap up another geranium or some tacky flags that have been hanging there since Moses climbed Sinai? Whatever they do, it’s only going to affect the consumer. Everything they do, the consumer has to pay. I just don’t agree with it, whatsoever. I mean, are they going to provide more benches for the bums to sit on? I mean, they pay themselves a big salary, and they don’t do a damn thing, except cause more stress for the consumer.” ✆ “Require businesses to pay more? Sure, why not? Go for it. After all, businesses are an unlimited supply of funds, aren’t they? So why not soak them, I mean extort them, um excuse me again, tax them to support even more parasitical, deadweight, bureaucratic scum employees.” ✆ “The way to increase revenue is better service. Sure not going to get that from the bloated, quasi-city hall Bayside District. First remove the First Amendment screechers in the middle of the 10 Freeway. Think of a connection to the Santa Monica Place. How about a monorail from Wilshire Boulevard to and around the new Santa Monica Place with a spur to the pier and later to the low-income housing since low-income people won’t have cars. They can take the monorail to the Santa Monica Place, which could have a Costco or a Wal- Mart for low-income shopping. Each corner of the Santa Monica Place would have sky ramps crisscrossing so you could eliminate a lot of pedestrian traffic on Second and Fourth streets, thereby increasing the flow through cross-town traffic. For the mall, how about sidewalks that light up when you walk on them? How about a camera obscure day and night to watch the mall activity? How about picture phones so that you can talk to other parts of the mall? How about an electronic bulletin board that you can write anything you want, except gang writing and profanity? How about guessing how many people are in the mall and a computer can give the answer and the closest guess? How about a laser light show at night? Get rid of those stupid dinosaurs and replace them with dolphins and pools of colored water. How about an automatic ticket that guides you to your store destination? How about satellite photography over Santa Monica that you can watch on a large screen in the mall? You need more interactive things to entertain people. Spend money to make a lot of money.” ✆ “Definitely not. I do not support businesses to pay more to provide additional services such as hiring ambassadors to assist visitors and monitor illegal activity in or around the Third Street Promenade. Much of the fun of visiting place like Santa Monica involve people discovering things for themselves. To this end, there is more than ample assistance information made widely available in print, by phone and online for visitors and residents alike. Businesses are burdened enough already. Also, given the shameful extent of camera surveillance and too many unethical Santa Monica police officers, I think it is a bad idea to increase stress levels further in the name of more crime prevention. The police should better focus their efforts on violent and white collar crimes, stop making false arrests and stop terrorizing non-violent drug users and the homeless. No matter how much crime prevention we have, there never seems to be a good police officer when we need one.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 30, 2005. Read the original PDF.