It doesn’t matter whether comments come by snail mail or e-mail, they’re always interesting and good food for thought. I’m glad you all write in.
Letters about “My Write” are no exception. I thought for sure my column (June 27, page 6) about “flipping” (buying, fixing up and turning real estate for quick profit) would get lots of response. I only heard from City Councilman Kevin McKeown.
McKeown copied me on an e-mail he’d sent to city staff suggesting staff look into ways to tax, or place fees on businesses or persons who flip properties. Such fees could help finance new affordable housing construction, he said.
While I haven’t heard whether collecting a fee on profits derived from “flip-ping” residential properties is doable, I was disappointed that McKeown didn’t express more interest in ways to save the homes of low-and middle-income residents who are being forced out by developers and profiteers purely out to turn a quick buck.
I shouldn’t have been surprised because the extent of most of our elected politician’s and city staff’s imagination is to keep building new, affordable, rental housing for those who want to move into Santa Monica, as opposed to protecting present Santa Monica families from predatory speculators. Hint to McKeown: pass tough new zoning codes that would take the big profits out of flipping and replacing existing affordable housing stock with expensive new market rate condos.
We’ve also receive lots of mail from and about former Daily Press columnist Charles Springer who, after many years on city streets utilizing our vaunted “continuum of services,” still can’t seem to get his life together. I wish Charles well.
There have been letters about the proposed vest-pocket park on the 1500 block of Euclid Street. Many neighbors didn’t want a park because they felt it would attract vagrants. Nearly everyone expressed that, if it must be, it should be fenced and secure.
Keeping that in mind, consider the debate at a Landmarks Commission meeting on July 11 about whether a six-foot screened fence — already OK’d by City Council — or an eight-foot screened fence should be built around the small green space that will replace the old police building behind City Hall once it’s demolished.
City staff argued that it wasn’t a public park but open space, reserved primarily for use by City Hall employees. A fence would keep them safe and protect the lawn furniture, especially during nonbusiness hours, they said. What hypocrisy. What nerve. Talk about talking out of both sides of one’s mouth. What’s good for the Euclid Street neighbors should be good enough for city staff? Enough said.
Alan Toy (SMDP, June 27, page 6) complained about excessive admission fees required of Santa Monica youth using the new skate facility in Memorial Park. Alan is on target. The fees — $80 annually for resident youth, plus a $10 annual registration fee or a $3 daily admission — are outrageous. Non-resident youth and all adults pay even more but there is “assistance available to qualifying Santa Monica youth.” Wonderful.
The City Council allocated $370,000 more this year for services to vagrants and transients. Yet, they couldn’t find the bucks to subsidize the skate/BMX park, or come up with the scratch to keep the branch libraries open on Fridays and Sundays. It’s all about priorities, Mr. Toy.
John Petz wrote in (SMDP, July 14, page 4) and described the new main library downtown as “unattractive and uninviting,” “a prison,” “gulag architecture” and “a barren concrete box” with “no heart, no soul and no beauty.” The edifice is under construction and near completion. Kudos to John. It is a cold, unappealing, industrial warehouse more at home in a postwar Germany industrial park than in Santa Monica and it’s costing more than $75 million, too.
Petz is right about another thing. After seeing this botch job, one can only imagine what city staff and our politicians will eventually create in the new Civic Center. Based on the proposals they’ve approved so far, it too, will probably be something we can all despise.
In the meantime, keep those cards and letters coming. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 18, 2005. Read the original PDF.