Periodically, City Hall conducts its own community needs surveys. Its the city’s way of assessing public opinion on what’s good and what’s bad about our community.
Recently a private sector public opinion survey was commissioned by Southern California Disposal Company and conducted by a professional firm, National Demographics Corp. Three-hundred-fifty residents were surveyed by telephone from April 28 through May 1, and the results were presented to the City Council on Aug. 26.
Although the poll was designed to gauge reaction to a city plan to build a multi-million dollar trash facility that would compete with SCD’s operation next door, most of the seven questions dealt with the way the city is governed.
NCD’s survey results mirror the city’s own polls and recent surveys by various neighborhood groups, political organizations and candidates.
For example, 35 percent of those interviewed said that the homeless was the city’s No. 1 problem. There’s nothing new here.
Traffic, parking and high housing costs were mentioned by 20 percent of the responders — in line with other recent public opinion surveys.
City politicians should note that the cost of housing is not synonymous with desire to build affordable housing. Rather, it reflects public concern about the high cost of housing, whether it be renting a market-rate apartment or buying a single-family home in tony Santa Monica.
Shortage of funds for city projects was mentioned by 18 percent of those participating in the survey.
A question asking whether the city should spend $6 to $7 million for architects and engineering plans for a new city waste treatment facility revealed that 52 percent of respondents were either uncertain or needed more information.
But when a question about whether that $6 or $7 million could be better spent and how, almost half of the respondents said “schools and education.” Parking and traffic control, and the homeless also were mentioned as possible beneficiaries.
Nearly half or 48 percent of respondents felt the city was wasting some (money) on unnecessary things. On the other hand, only 18 percent felt that the city spent money “only on essentials,” and 7 percent said “some of each,” and 27 percent had no opinion or didn’t know.
One question dealt with the City Council’s performance. Only 13 percent rated the City Council’s performance as “excellent,” 46 percent judged it “fair,” 18 percent said “poor” and 23 percent weren’t sure.
The damming part of the poll shows that nearly two-thirds of those participating in the NDC survey think the City Council is doing a fair to poor job in governing.
I’m surprised their approval rating is even that high.
For example, the city annually spends millions on homeless services and tens of millions of dollars more for police and paramedic services because of vagrants. Our large and increasingly service-resistant transient population has been the No. 1 problem here for two decades. Yet, city leaders seem to have no inclination or desire to solve it.
The city’s policy exacerbates other problems, too. Vehicular traffic gets heav-ier every year. So the City Council responds by spending millions on traffic islands, speed bumps and narrower traffic lanes to bottle things up even more.
Despite claims of “pedestrianization,” the city leadership’s real motivation is to force you out of your car and onto that Big Blue Bus, bicycle or your feet.
All these traffic calming schemes do is create gridlock, generate air pollution and encourage drivers to use residential streets to bypass impacted main thoroughfares. It makes no sense and we all know it.
Parking problems are “solved” by restricting even more streets, making it harder to work and shop in Santa Monica.
Preferential parking zones are supposed to keep commercial or business parking off residential streets, however, the city is considering allowing business employees to park in restricted residential zones with an employee parking permit. What sense does that make?
And, how do they deal with high market rate rental costs and soaring home prices? They ignore ‘em.
Some council members were insulted that NDC’s poll rated their performance low.
They should be. When elected leaders ignore then needs of residents and screw over the good citizens of Santa Monica in deference to their own whacked-out social agenda, they don’t deserve a poor rating, they deserve a miserable rating.
Like Smith-Barney, they’ve earned it. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident. If you would like to respond, write a letter to the editor because he doesn’t want to hear it.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 3, 2003. Read the original PDF.