LAST WEEK YOU MAY HAVE RECEIVED an e-mail from the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City, an organization apparently dedicated to creating a rift between the business community on the one hand and municipal government and community leaders on the other.
The focus of this e-mail was to promote Proposition T, an initiative measure drafted and circulated by no-growth neighborhood activists early this year. Supporters characterize it as a “common-sense initiative.” The Board of Directors for the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce unanimously disagreed for a variety of reasons.
Most importantly for many chamber members is that Prop. T will increase commercial rents.Common sense tells us that as the supply of development is artificially limited, rents will rise. Prop. T supporters claim that by “protecting” existing small businesses from large new developments, it will prevent increasing rents. In fact, just the opposite is true.
While it wasn’t really necessary to engage economists to demonstrate that reductions in supply result in higher rents, two independent experts with national reputations concluded, in a report given to the City Council in June, that Prop. T would result in probable increases in rents for existing commercial space creating a “windfall for commercial landlords” as a result of supply constraints, and have potential secondary impacts on small business from higher commercial rents and a reduced supply of space, with local businesses potentially priced out of the market with regional/global businesses being the most likely to afford the available space.
Supporters contend … that opposition comes from developers who stand to benefit from future development. The truth is that the opposition to Prop. T comes from an extremely diverse coalition of community leaders, including five of the seven council members, the healthcare community, environmentalists, supporters of social service agencies and other nonprofits, and many other neighborhood activists as well as the chamber and other business leaders.
In any event, it is the effect of Prop. T on the residents and businesses that is critical irrespective of who supports or opposes it.
Prop. T contains absolutely no traffic mitigation measures beyond the simplistic notion that drastic development restrictions will automatically cure our traffic congestion. However, this will not be the case.
Two independent experts have concluded that Prop. T will not result in less traffic generation than would result over the next 15 years from growth limits contained in the current land use and circulation plans recently considered by the City Council. In fact, by encouraging residential growth, Prop. T may actually make traffic worse.
The economists’ report … also determined that it would cause a significant shortfall in the city’s general fund of millions of dollars. It is the general fund which pays for public safety, provides grants to social services, delivers millions of dollars to public schools, pays for after-school and summer programs, parks and recreation and other essential services. While obviously not all the funding for these programs would be lost if Prop. T were to pass, risking the loss of millions of dollars for these services is foolish, particularly when the promised traffic benefits will not be realized.
Supporters defend its impact on health care by citing the exemption for “hospitals.” While “hospitals” are exempt from the growth limits, there is no exemption for other important health care uses, such as medical office, clinics, and laboratories.
We should not irrationally restrict development of other health care facilities necessary in order to give these hospitals the support they need to better serve those in need.
Why would anyone include within the definition of “commercial development” facilities such as the YMCA, the Boys and Girls Club, OPCC and the Red Cross? More importantly, how can it possibly be rational to subject these facilities to the same development restrictions applied to large-scale office and retail development? Yet this is exactly what Prop. T does.
If Prop. T were to pass, it would delay, perhaps for 15 years, the ability of these important organizations to better serve the public. For all of these reasons, the chamber board unanimously voted to oppose Prop. T and we urge you to do the same.
TOM LARMORE is the Immediate past chair of the Chamber of Commerce, and co-chair of the Government Affairs Committee.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 9, 2008. Read the original PDF.