Residents were screwed again at last Tuesday’s City Council meeting. Not once, but twice in one evening.
A proposed neighborhood mini-park on the 1500 block of Euclid Street and a plan allowing non-resident parking in residential preferential parking zones were the hot issues.
There’s been almost consistent neighborhood disdain for a proposed, unfenced park that would include a garden, children’s play area, seating and a small grassy areas. Neighbors fear it will become a hangout for gang-bangers, drunks and vagrants. Instead, they want a secured community garden with fencing.
After a year of community meetings and redesigns, the park proposal was before the City Council. Twenty-seven neighbors spoke — all of them were critical of the design and safety parameters. The council even heard how a disabled resident from Hacienda Del Mar, operated by United Cerebral Palsy and right next to the proposed park, was mugged the previous week after exiting the facility.
Councilmen Bobby Shriver and Bob Holbrook dissented mainly because of public safety concerns, but the council approved the project anyway. In an amazing show of arrogance, Councilman Ken Genser said he didn’t believe safety was a problem — although “he’d revisit (the issue) if problems arise.”
Apparently councilpersons Richard Bloom, Herb Katz and Kevin McKeown, and Mayor Pam O’Connor agreed — they voted for it. Unfortunately, recommendations of “regular police patrols” and “monitoring” come up short and don’t make a bad proposition “good.”
Ignoring the wishes of constituents is bad enough, but clearly something’s wrong when city leaders would rather wait until someone is robbed, injured or murdered before they get the picture. As with our large and dangerous transient population, politicians have once again turned a blind eye to real resident concerns about safety.
City Hall is ramming its park down Euclid Street residents’ throats — and has done so since the beginning. But that’s nothing new in Santa Monica. “We know better” still rules within City Hall.
Residential permit parking was first implemented over 20 years ago so people residing near busy commercial corridors could better compete with non-residents for scarce parking space near their homes. social engineers, “greens” and “traffic-calmers” loved the idea. There was a big effort in the 1980s and 1990s to discourage people from driving private cars. Speed bumps, curb extensions, mid-street islands and extensive resident-only parking restrictions were part of an overall scheme to discourage driving and reduce traffic.
Mayor Pam O’Connor, who has supported almost every preferential parking zone in the city — except around Montana Avenue — vigorously defended “resident only” parking when Ocean Park restrictions were almost voided by the California Coastal Commission a couple years ago. Now, she “hates to privatize the streets.”
Even more schizophrenic was her argument supporting the inadequate parking requirement for a proposed mini-mall at Euclid Street and Montana Avenue a few years ago. She asserted that plentiful parking encouraged driving and increased traffic. Larger parking areas would mean smaller buildings on city lots and make Santa Monica like West Covina. Duh? When will it occur to City Hall that limiting the size, types and amount of development is a much better way to limit traffic?
Commercial building codes were implemented that intentionally reduced on-site parking, especially on Montana Avenue. All this failed social engineering has added to a traffic and parking nightmare. Now, City Hall is pursuing a half-baked fix that’ll really screw up the works, possibly for everyone.
I don’t know whether the transportation management folks are clueless about how to handle traffic and parking issues or whether they’re taking marching orders from someone. For example, at a public meeting held on Montana Avenue, June 9, staff’s published employee parking proposal was suddenly as vague, undefinable and ethereal as the morning fog.
Despite almost universal opposition from residents, a motion to develop a scheme implementing employee parking in currently restricted residential zones that are “under-parked” passed unanimously. Already under consideration are the residential blocks immediately adjacent to Montana Avenue’s commercial district — even though dozens of unrestricted streets are one short block away. Although supposed to be a one-year test, we all know that once implemented, it’ll never go away — something even Shriver fretted about.
While we might all lose preferential parking, one mid-city neighborhood also got a mini-park it doesn’t want. Score? Them: two. Us: zip. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on June 20, 2005. Read the original PDF.