> ## Content Index
> Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.smdp.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further.

# Santa Monica lacking leadership, common sense
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/santa-monica-lacking-leadership-common-sense/
- Published: 2002-02-11T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T00:01:46.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Promenade, #archive-import

*By Bill Bauer Santa Monica*

(This letter was originally addressed to Barbara Tenzer, a commercial real estate broker, in response to her guest commentary in the Feb. 7 edition of the Santa Monica Daily Press).

Great guest commentary in the SMDP. You hit the nail right on the head. The city’s responsibility is to provide a safe and convenient experience on the Promenade.

However, when it comes to panhandlers and vagrants, disgusting, smelly alleys with no signage, unsightly and annoying parking garages and traffic mismanagement, (including the transit mall and all the road construction going on), an oversupply of tacky shopping carts and way too many overly loud performers competing for too little space, the city has f\*\*ked it up beyond belief.

Keep in mind that many of these same people thought that a Target Store was a bad idea, so that gives us all an insight into their real mindset.

Not content to just tell the hospitality industry how to manage their business affairs, the city also wants to micromanage Third Street businesses even down to telling landlords who they can rent to. What is so sad is that the city council, (city planning director) Suzanne Frick and the others whose job it is to know better are deliberately ignoring what is obviously so wrong with the Promenade and refusing to fix it.

While you give “thumbs up” to Kathleen Rawson, and the Bayside District Corporation, I lay some of the blame at their feet for not being loud, persistent or forceful enough to grab some councilmen and city administrators by the ears and shake some sense into them.

Unless somebody starts showing some common sense and leadership, for most of us it will continue to be “Good-bye, Santa Monica. Hello, Westwood and Century City.”

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 11, 2002.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/021102.pdf?ref=smdp.com)