By LEGAL VIEWS AND NEWS By David Pisarra
The 5 Man Electrical Band song that came out originally in 1971 was an anthem for youth, freedom, and a mocking of the business community and homeowners. Today, it is still the anthem of the City Council.
We have a city that won’t allow a busi-nessperson to put up a sign announcing their business without a sign permit approval process. Then you have to go through a building permit approval process, and finally prove you have a business license.
Yet the City Council is more than willing to allow those same business people to clutter their windows with “no trespassing” signs that tell the police department when they can and cannot do their jobs by removing the trespassers, versus just having the police remove the obviously homeless from doorways that they don’t pay rent on. The logic here is amazing to me. It goes like this, “there might be some people who want the homeless to stay in their doorways, so we should allow all homeless to sleep in doorways, unless a sign is posted otherwise.” Frankly, I think it should have been written that if you want a homeless, passed out, bum on your front step you should have to advertise for it with a sign, otherwise the police will make them move.
Councilman Kevin McKeown is concerned about the visual clutter of the city, so he jumps all over the idea of regulation of the business people, but God forbid we make the poor and downtrodden homeless move from the sidewalks.
Mayor Richard Bloom is in charge, if one could call it that, of a City Council that will allow a herd of homeless to encamp themselves on the bluffs in Ocean Park, but won’t let them stay in Palisades Park bluffs, away from the public, for their own safety. If these people are so mentally incompetent that they can’t determine for themselves where it is safe to sleep, they should be locked up and put in a safe environment. They should not be allowed to roam the streets like hungry Tasmanian devils, scaring the tourists and annoying the residents.
Councilman Herb Katz sees the homeless as a big problem and the business sig-nage issue as a small one. Well, I think he’s half right. The homeless are a big problem. They always will be. This is a chronic situation that we will always have to manage. The business signage issue is, to my mind, a tremendous problem. It is not only a huge issue in its own right, but it is indicative of the larger mentality of the city government. There is a tremendous need for an overhaul of the systems that City Hall uses to regulate business and land development. When I asked one of the City Councilmembers what was being done, I was told they have a consultant looking into it. The problem won’t be solved by hiring yet another commission, consultant or free-range marketeer at $75,000 to $200,000 apiece.
“Sign, sign, everywhere a sign, Blockin’ out the scenery, breakin’ my mind, “Do this, don’t do that, can’t you read the sign?”
The fact that the City Council thinks it will get good information from a consultant hired by them is a sign of just how out of touch they are with the way the world works. They want to remove themselves from the process as much as possible. I could accomplish the same thing as the consultant being hired to address the building permitting process, and it would have cost the city about $1,000.
On a Saturday, I would bring in the head of each department and I would open the meeting to all lawfully operating businesses that have had to navigate the slip-stream called the permitting process. I would put them all in the Civic Auditorium, have lunch donated by the local restaurateurs, have paper donated by Sanford, and coffee by Peets and coordi-nate a solution to expediting the process.
I think the problem is that the bureaucracy is allowed to hide behind the council and the council is allowed to hide behind consultants and commissions. Then they ultimately bury the issue with “staff.”
It is a lack of accountability that is holding this city back. No one is accountable to anyone — well, except for Santa Monicans For Renters Rights, but that is another column.
Accountability in management is key. In any organization, there must be someone who is accountable to the boss. In this case, the boss is us. We, the citizens of the city, are ultimately responsible for the number of children in our schools who don’t live here when there is a budget crisis. We are to blame for the lack of a council that is responsive to our neighborhood needs by not requiring districts. The business community has no one to blame but themselves for their lack of a voice on the council.
Until accountability is brought in, and some of those who have not been accountable are removed, the song will remain the same, “And the sign said anybody caught trespassin’ would be shot on sight, “ So I jumped on the fence and yelled at the house, ‘Hey! What gives you the right?
“To put up a fence to keep me out or to keep Mother Nature in.” (David Pisarra is a partner in the law firm of Pisarra & Grist. He He welcomes your comments and questions).
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 27, 2004. Read the original PDF.