This past week, Q-line asked: “What should the City Council’s resolutions be for 2006?”
Here are your responses: ✆ “Top among the city administration’s priorities for 2006 should be clean up this filthy, disgusting city. The sidewalks and alleys all around town are a disgrace. In conjunction with this, get the bums and all the garbage they drag all around town and leave all over town, out of here. Have this wonderful, new homeless czar siphon the money away from the useless homeless programs and put it in a general fund to reopen and build facilities for these indigents away from the citizens and working areas. Second, please try to get the traffic flow right. Third, straighten out the parking mess. These are the three primary things as far as I am concerned and add to that the overbuilding. It’s a nightmare already.” ✆ “What should the City Council’s resolutions be for 2006 be? Well, that’s simple. Same as everybody else, lose weight, trim down and they can start by foregoing any new taxes, any new bonds, and any new fees. They could also exercise a little bit. By that I mean exercise restraint and just shut up.” ✆ “Santa Monica is a city that will never be finished. I cannot remember a day that I have been in residence here that I have not had to circumvent one construction site or another while driving. Out with the old, in with the new is always the plan of the day. I suspect it will not change.” ✆ “The City Council should make four resolutions. The first one is to get rid of all these drunken bums that are ruining Santa Monica. The second one is to get rid of all these drunken bums that are ruining Santa Monica. The third is to get rid of all these drunken bums that are ruining Santa Monica. And the fourth is if they refuse to do the first three they should all resign immediately. We don’t need any of them.” ✆ “The City Council’s resolution should be to preserve rent-controlled, low-rent apartments for wealthy tenants like us. My wife and I earn over $10,000 a month and pay just $240 a month for our two-bedroom apartment. That’s a 50 percent discount from market value. Forcing our landlords to subsidize our rent allows us to drive new cards, take vacations in Europe, and eat out at expensive restaurants. So what if the landlord has to pay market rent for everything he purchases, we like renting his apartment at a 50 percent discount.” ✆ “Yes, I think it would be really nice if the City Council would obey their own strict rules. Years ago my husband tried to build a beautiful project and it was denied and I see now that with these (expletive) in the picture, they just do whatever they want to do even if it doesn’t make sense and build that hideous new library when the other one would have been just fine. It’s about time that we got a new City Council with the exception of certain key individuals like Bobby Shriver.” ✆ “First and foremost, they should resolve to go into rehab to try and cure their addiction to squandering public money. They need a 12-step program. Step one could be a group session where each council member states, ‘I am a spendaholic’ and then goes onto explain why the construction of a massive $50 million library, which was not needed, was more important than neighborhood plight such as the crumbling alleys that need resurfacing. In step two, they would need to face their compulsion to erect more and more street signs and roadway obstacles so detrimental to traffic flow. There’s no room here to discuss further steps in their therapy except to suggest they try to analyze why for 25 years they have chosen to demonize and harass the very people who produce the revenue that feeds their addictions.” ✆ “The first should be the resignation of the entire City Council because of their utter failure to effectively lead with sound policies instead of political correctness and feel-good attitudes. Next, no building over three stories should be built in this town. That’s going to be very hard to do with the Rand property development of 365 housing units of which 51 percent are low income, then 44 percent of those are for people outside of Santa Monica. Just like the school district, 20 percent or 3,000 students are from outside the city. No homes or education for people not from Santa Monica. Of course, you will have to give up the federal and state money. Next, less businesses means more parking and less traffic congestion for locals. Again, this means less tax money for social do-gooder programs. Next, enforce all bum laws. Give the $200,000 for the homeless czar, plus all other taxpayer homeless funds, eliminate taxpayer funding for the parasitic nonprofits dealing with the bums and give it to the Salvation Army and downtown LA. That takes care of about 90 percent of that problem. Next, look at other beach communities: Laguna, Manhattan Beach, parts of Newport, Malibu, Pacific Palisades to give the council a better idea that simple may be better than more. Last, we should not feel guilty about living and working in Santa Monica. That we can’t and should not have to try and save the world. People outside the city need to be responsible for their own lives.” ✆ “One of the items I wish the City Council would work on would be to stop the use of handheld cell phones while driving. There are earpieces that people can use for safer driving. Even worse is to ban a cell phone in one hand and a cigarette in the other.” ✆ “I think that Santa Monica City Council should, A: Certainly be more strict on affordable housing, they should really go for it, they shouldn’t put up with any of the bologna that these developers put out about hardship exemptions and in lieu fees or any of that stuff and have the low-income housing and the affordable housing where the people are and are being kicked out of their homes because of the inflationary rents. The other thing that I would hope for, for Santa Monica is that A: They do not do any development on that Santa Monica Place monstrosity. It’s already a monstrosity, why make it a bigger one? Number two, if you’re going to plant trees, wouldn’t it be nice to plant Jacaranda trees? They are so beautiful and turn such lovely colors in February. Number three, please save City Hall the way it is. It is an absolute jewel of art deco and I hope that they don’t do anything to it. I love the sustainable gardens that they have there, such as the desert and California friendly plants. I think that ought to be even used more and I even love the rose gardens. I love those rose gardens in front of Santa Monica City Hall and please, please don’t destroy it and don’t ‘change it for the better.’ It is lovely, it is a jewel of art mod-erne and art deco the way it is. Please keep it. Please, please keep it. And also, if you could do something to solve the traffic problems, that would be lovely. And bless the Big Blue Bus, which I love very much. Thank you Big Blue Bus and thank you Santa Monica. You are wonderful, I just hope you keep on being wonderful in the New Year.”
“We need to ask City Council to enforce the leaf blower law. Those things do create a lot of noise and pollution and are unpleasant and there are a lot of them around town that are operating.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 31, 2005. Read the original PDF.