Here are your responses to this week’s Q-Line question: “Is the City of Santa Monica doing everything it can to promote and support businesses here? What suggestions can you offer the powers that be?” ■ “Over the last 15 years, the city has been doing everything it can to discourage existing and prospective businesses. There has been a marked exodus of reasonably priced family restaurants and an influx of high-end restaurants. Fast food lunch is the food order of the day. Auto repair shops are told to be ‘environmentally friendly.’ The trendy Trader Joe’s was business non grata on Wilshire Boulevard. Ocean Avenue and Santa Monica Pier businesses had to jump through administrative hoops to establish themselves and stay in business, then face city council oversight of its employment practices, respond to civil rights abuse allegations, and scrutiny over its profit margin. Building permits take two to three years to be granted. Real estate interests have to face the ever-present sledgehammer intervention posture of the rent control board. If the powers that be were to lift the heavy hand of regulation from around the throat of business, maybe business could play a more productive role in Santa Monica and not have to worry about how much longer they could afford to stay in business in Santa Monica.” ■ “The city does little to assist or promote business. In fact, it goes out of its way to antagonize business. For almost 20 years, the homeless have impacted business negatively, chasing away tourists as well as residents. Yet city policies continue to attract them in record numbers. The city prosecutor defends the rights of these individuals to live in public spaces. The SMRR city council folk defend the right of our brothers and sisters to imbibe, defecate and fornicate in public. The police — now in full force — no longer can remark, ‘We don’t have the resources,’ but smartly divide its manpower into specialized task forces, thereby limiting responsibility for action. Now they blame merchants for not executing citizens arrests, and the residents of Pico for tolerating gangs and drug dealers. The church groups from outside the city continue the 40-plus weekly feedings in our parks. How convenient for them that their neighborhoods are free from blight. Responsible cities do not allow such massive feeding programs, which, in effect, roll out the red carpet for all the derelicts, bums, winos and miscreants to camp in our alleys. But this is exactly what SMRR wants. They want to show the world that they are in charge and can destroy the city with impunity all in the name of preserving affordable housing. Too bad they can’t see they’re killing the proverbial goose that lays the golden egg that funds their march to the workers paradise. Remember this when you vote in November.” ■ “When you dance, you have to pay the fiddler. Now is the time for Santa Monica to pay up. Santa Monica is not friendly towards new businesses as evidence by the denial of Target and Trader Joe’s. Instead, they okayed a Staples store? What gives? The powers of Santa Monica seem to be concentrating their sights on the Promenade. You cannot make a silk purse out of a sows ear. Other cities such as West Hollywood and Culver City are welcoming new businesses. Businesses that choose to relocate from Santa Monica. Santa Monica can no longer depend on the hotels and the tourist trade to support it. They need to look further beyond tourism.” ■ “No. They need to do something about the problem with the transients laying all over the sidewalks and hitting people up for money every five or ten feet. I live in Santa Monica and I could walk to the grocery store, but I choose to drive to Pacific Palisades to do my shopping because it’s so wonderful up there. There aren’t any bums all over the place. I just can’t believe this is not doing great harm to tourism. When I have visitors from out of they town, they are just appalled at this situation. It looks like a huge skid row everywhere you go in Santa Monica. I think it’s very sad. I think the city needs to figure out something and do it very quickly. It’s going to get to the point where no one is going to want to live here let alone shop here.” ■ “I believe that a lot of the businesses in Santa Monica has to do with tourism. I have to say that when I read the newspaper and I see in the crime report that a woman is approached by a transient who is talking to himself, who obviously has a problem mentally and lunges at her with a pair of scissors, I don’t think this is conducive to having a good tourist attraction. I go to Santa Monica on occasion, but I try not to go to the Promenade because it’s become very dirty. Also there are so many people who are transients who panhandle aggressively and are very, very dangerous. The tourism is going down the tubes.” ■ “The 5,000 jobs are gone. Past history. Getting 5,000 people to replace them will not be easy when you consider that owners of high-rise office and business buildings are still asking $4.00 a square foot in a $1.60 per-square-foot market. The owners of hotels have priced themselves for only the affluent. These building owners need a hard punch of reality to bring them back to their highly educated senses. The carte blanche, free spending days of dot.coms are over.” ■ “No. The biggest mistake we made was not letting Target come in. Trader Joe’s as well. The small businesses are being pushed out and the charm in Santa Monica is going, and it’s not going good.” ■ “The reason Santa Monica is losing business is because the shops are too expensive, and it looks like every other place in the world. I’ve heard tourists say these things to me when I sit and do my art-work at Starbucks. I’m a homeless person that has been here since 1996, and I’ve seen this place decline because of all the high-end shops moving in and all the mom and pop places moving out. Now I hear they are trying to get rid of the street performers!” ■ “I don’t think there are 5,000 people working over at City Hall. I think there are 1,500 or so. I think you should print a retraction. Also, I don’t think that the role of city government is to promote and support businesses. I think the role of the city is to support its people. Sometimes the business and the people are at conflict. I wish you would not use this question until it’s accurate. There are not 5,000 employees at City Hall.” ■ “We could give them the raspberry like they do in Brooklyn? If this were Brooklyn, we would give them the triple raspberry. What can we do for them? Come up with a better idea and we can give you a raspberry, too.” ■ “We all know that tourism is a major part of our local economy. The tourists I have spoken with are appalled by the number of homeless and their sometimes aggressive behavior. I sympathize with the business owners, who in addition to their exorbitant operating costs, have to deal with the filth left behind by the homeless, mentally ill and the simple derelicts among them. This is a problem on a national level that in large part began during the Reagan years when so many were released from mental hospitals. Is the tourism impacted by the simple derelicts? Yes, it is. We need to realize that many tourists come from countries where a large portion of their countries’ resources are spent to deal effectively and humanely with this problem, and are thus even more shocked by it than us local citizens. Again, it’s a problem that needs to be dealt with on a national level. Simply providing more public bathrooms does not address the core problem. Our local government leaders were not elected to be social engineers for the entire country. If tourists do not feel safe and comfortable here, they will simply avoid the area. One more thing, if hotel rates increase because of the living wage ordinance, it may be an additional reason for tourists to avoid the area. You either believe in a free market system or not. Note to all hotel workers: If you plan on raising a family of four or five or six on hotel worker wages, forget it! Put it off for awhile. Get a better education that will lead to a better paying job and then plan your family. Carefully. Always know that in a free market system, things can go well or not. That’s life, that’s reality.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 16, 2002. Read the original PDF.