During his recent reelection kickoff, Mayor Robert Holbrook criticized the City Council for taking stands on unimportant or nonresident issues such as trade with Myanmar and ground squirrels while ignoring the more pressing needs of Santa Monicans.
A few days earlier, the City Council approved a resolution from Councilman Kevin McKeown for staff to prepare an ordinance requiring a “transitional worker retention period” when grocery stores change ownership. The move was designed to protect Santa Monica workers from sudden job replacement. Maybe this is the kind of “non-issue” Holbrook was talking about.
Albertson’s was sold last month and perhaps McKeown heard rumors their store on Wilshire Boulevard might become a nonunion Bristol Farms. I guess that when McKeown asked staff to waste time writing an ordinance to oversee and micromanage another group of private businesses, he didn’t know that Albertson’s employees are relocated when a store goes nonunion or closes. Kevin’s resolution smacks of blatant pandering for union support for his own reelection bid.
Holbrook is right. City Hall spends way too much time on social engineering, fixing mistakes and screwing up even more.
For years, politicians and bureaucrats alike have tried to force us out of cars and onto busses, bicycles or our own feet. Uncoordinated traffic signals, curb bump-outs, speed humps, planters and other traffic jamming are deliberately created to discourage driving.
I wasn’t surprised to read in a local newspaper that City Hall’s transportation planning manager Lucy Dyke said during a Planning Commission meeting about “Motion by the Ocean,” the city’s new traffic and circulation plan, that “some will still drive, but they will be required to pay their fair share.” Sounds like Lucy’s throwing down the gauntlet.
You’d just know the goals for “Gridlock by the Sea” would include recommendations such as “separate parking from housing costs” and “managing driving speeds on streets so they are not timesaving cut-through routes.” My favorite is “developing street design standards that result in low auto speeds and recreational walking experiences.”
Parking management is another disaster, and half-baked fixes are coming fast and furious.
The City Council on Tuesday will decide whether to adopt two more bad transportation management proposals: a pilot business parking permit program for restricted residential parking zones around 10th Street and Pico Boulevard, and another proposal to allow “non-permit” residents living within 200 feet of existing preferential parking zones to buy permits to park in the nearby restricted zones.
The proposal would affect most permit zones including G, K, O — most zoned blocks roughly between Lincoln Boulevard to 19th Street and Wilshire Boulevard to Alta Avenue including California, Washington and Idaho Avenues — and DD — in Sunset Park on Pearl Street, Cloverfield Boulevard, 24th, 25th and 26th streets between Pico Boulevard and Pearl.
Zones TT — 20th to 26th streets, Chelsea, Washington and California Avenues; Zone YY — Harvard, Yale, Princeton and 26th streets between Washington Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard including Arizona Avenue; and ZZ — Fifth, Sixth and Seventh streets between Wilshire and Montana and California, Idaho, Montana and Washington avenues between Fourth Street and Lincoln Boulevard also are included.
Residents are granted preferential parking to ease chronic space shortages on their blocks. There are six buildings with 80 apartments within 200 feet of my permit zone that alone could put twice as many cars on our block as there are parking spaces under this proposal.
These “parking fixes” are badly conceived Band-Aids and take space away from those who worked hardest to get it. That alone is reason why they deserve to be shelved.
A reader informed me about some 200 non-working parking meters on Pearl Street adjacent to Santa Monica College. Apparently, former City Manager Susan McCarthy and college administrators made a deal to delay activating the meters and enforcement. The City Council approved meters for Pearl Street in 2002, and they still aren’t in, working or enforced.
Based on a 75-cent hourly charge with three-fourths of the spots occupied eight hours a day, City Hall is losing $200,000 per year. So, why the special treatment for SMC? “They wanted more time to think about how meters would affect them,” Dyke told me.
Humm. Why is City Hall ignoring $200,000 in yearly lost revenue and allowing students to park for free while college bureaucrats ponder the situation? Would City Hall do this for anyone else? I don’t think so.
I’ve heard through the grapevine that the meters will be operating and enforced by mid-April. However, allowing 10 hours of parking does nothing to provide turnover and provide relief to campus visitors and John Adams Middle School parents shut out because of students who park long term.
City Hall might not have a good handle on resident problems, but not to worry. Its labor and foreign policies are well in place and good as gold. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 27, 2006. Read the original PDF.