SMRR leadership has failed SM
By GUEST COMMENTARY BY SHANE MCLOUD
(An open letter to the citizens of Santa Monica, from Shane McLoud, Santa Monica-Malibu school board member and public school teacher.) Dear Santa Monicans: As a public school teacher, I evaluate student performance every day. Grades indicate a student’s level of knowledge, skill and improvement. Unfortunately, politicians aren’t really graded by citizens. We vote for them every four years, but we usually walk away from the polls wishing we had better choices and desiring more accurate and balanced information on the candidates and issues to base our decisions. As the only elected official in Santa Monica who is a public school teacher, I’m offering this Candidate Report Card to help you decide who will best represent our interests in city government. My evaluation considers three criteria: ideas, experience and political courage. I hope you find it useful.
The grading process of the Candidate Report Card used the question: How effective were the incumbents in addressing ten quality of life challenges and problems in Santa Monica? For the challengers, how effective are their proposals, positions, and experience in addressing eleven quality of life challenges and problems in Santa Monica?
Issues include reducing homelessness and vagrancy; supporting public schools; reducing crime and gang violence, especially in the Pico neighborhood; offering hope and successful opportunities to at-risk youth through creating jobs, counseling, services, arts, sports, quality schooling and academic intervention opportunities; expanding parks and safe public spaces; improving traffic flow, resident parking and public transportation; simplifying and speeding up the planning and building permit process; supporting a balanced approach to low-and mid-income housing needs and rent control; having the political courage to stand up to the demands of the city employee unions and single issue/special interest groups; creating public policy that benefits all those who live, work and visit Santa Monica; and, for challengers only, experience and participation in solving community problems.
As far as I’m concerned, the most important criterion is political courage. Why? Because so many politicians have the skills to improve government, but they lose their courage when tough issues arise and think only of their own political survival. I call it Spinal- Absentitus. Their backbone disappears and they become more interested retaining support from special interest groups than doing what’s best for all of us. I have seen this phenomenon in the LA school district as a teacher for the past eight years, and I see it throughout Santa Monica government as a Santa Monica- Malibu school board member.
Why should you give consideration to my evaluation? One, I am not beholden to any special interest groups other than students — the most important yet least politically powerful group in the city; two, I understand and represent the average citizen’s interests and concerns; three, I am more concerned with “doing the right thing” than getting re-elected in two years. I want to improve the way our government serves and represents us.
I am sure you share the disgust that I have for most politicians. Throughout California, we see waste, bureaucracy, inefficiency and incompetent public employees who can’t be fired (including teachers and principals). We see politicians cave to special interest groups rather than fight.
In Santa Monica, we see a majority of our City Council members who have forced homeowners to limit the heights of their hedges, threaten them with $25,000 fines for non-compliance, and then claim to be “responsive” when they suspended the ordinance for further study. We see our city become a magnet for homeless and vagrants over the past 20 years, but our council majority still believes it’s better to give the fish and not the fishing pole. We see our council majority attempt to tell banks how much they can charge customers in ATM fees, only to be dragged to court, spending hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to lose and take official city positions against the war in Iraq and whether cat owners can de-claw their cats.
As a school board member, I see dozens of school district employees making salaries for moderately skilled positions that are higher than most teaching salaries, like eight employees of various roles (carpenter, electrician, painter, mechanic, locksmith and maintenance employee) making over $50,000 salaries. I see a painter, plumber and metal worker all making over $60,000 per year. We pay nine administrative assistants over $50,000 per year and two over $60,000 per year. At the same time, class sizes average over 30 students per class in our middle and high schools. We’re told we can’t afford to hire more teachers to reduce class sizes, or more counselors, or offer more intervention and summer school classes. We receive millions per year from the city’s budget and parcel taxes, but we still can’t afford to provide a more intimate learning environment. When employee layoffs occur, including teachers, we are obligated to do layoffs by seniority. Our system assumes that all employees are equal in value and performance. Though this layoff procedure is a state civil servant law, if the Governor were ever able change this, I don’t think we could get four votes to change our contracts and have our managers and principals make these impor-have limited development and ensured that owners can’t harass renters. But these same elected officials also created the hedge police, allowed our parks to have more homeless people than residents, taken on battles well beyond their scope of work, and made it next to impossible to remodel your house. They have controlled the City Council, the school board, the college board, and the rent control board for 25 years, using scare tactics to threaten people that rent control will be yanked away unless the SMRR candidates win.
In fact, all major challengers in this year’s race have publicly supported the continuation of rent control. But here is the kicker: SMRR’s founder and co-chair, Denny Zane, uses SMRR’s $90,000 plus election budget to elect candidates through threatening mailers and providing dozens of door-to-door walkers, and then gets hired as a political consultant by the school board and college board for projects. He personally has earned over $100,000 in the past three years as a political consultant on Measure EE, Measure S, and as the SM College’s political consultant for their new Madison Theatre Project.
This is an enormous conflict of interest. Everyone who is anyone in Santa Monica knows of this cozy situation for Denny, but none have had the courage to say that it doesn’t pass the smell test. It stinks and it’s time to unplug the machine.
It’s time for a change. We need to put into office people who work for their customers rather than their contributors. We need leaders who have a balanced approach to representing the interests of all Santa Monica residents and businesses.
Please join me in supporting the following candidates for City Council: Herb Katz, Matt Dinolfo, Bobby Shriver and Bill Bauer.
Please also join me in supporting Jose Escarce, Maria Leon Vazquez, and Kathy Wisnicki for School Board — all of whom represent the best opportunity to improve our schools. (McLoud’s full report can be read at www.shane4schools.com/reportcard.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on October 30, 2004. Read the original PDF.