Ted Winterer is a former Mayor of Santa Monica and City Councilmember. He is still active as a political activist with Communities for Excellent Public Schools.
There’s been a heated debate on these pages about the potential impact of SB 10 on Santa Monica R-1 zones, with doomsayers claiming it will “end single family neighborhoods.” But all of the dialogue has been about the theoretical rather than the practical impacts.
Let’s first look at SB 9, the companion bill to SB 10 passed and signed into law at the same time. Like SB 10, SB 9 increases the allowed density on single family parcels, in this case via a lot split with the potential for a total of four housing units. But while implementation of SB 10 is optional, SB 9 is mandatory for all cities and requires ministerial approval, i.e., no required public hearing, no CEQA review.
Like SB 10, the passage of SB 9 was denounced as the death knell of single family neighborhoods (https://tinyurl.com/Lookout-8-12-21). But unlike SB 10, SB 9 has been in effect in Santa Monica since January 1, 2022. The total number of applications for SB 9 lot split projects here since then? Two. That’s right, just two. As reported in this paper, there are over 12,000 single family lots in our city, so the rate of change to R-1 neighborhoods from this law has been incremental at best. Just because homeowners can split their lots and redevelop doesn’t mean they have to or will be so inclined. And existing limits on lot coverage and floor area and the setback requirements in R-1 make redevelopment less likely.
Yes, SB 10 allows for greater density than SB 9. But it also allows for a discretionary approval process, unlike SB 9 projects which cities have to approve by right. And while SB 10 exempts the needed up-zoning from review under the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA), the individual housing projects are not exempt from CEQA review unless a city adopts a ministerial approval process for such projects.
The upshot of SB 10? “(T)he law will have a limited effect in significantly advancing housing approvals” (https://tinyurl.com/Holland-Knight-SB-10).
SB 9 and SB 10 together? “Rest assured, however, that neither bill will turn your quiet suburban utopia into a busy thoroughfare of mid-rise apartments. Like its more controversial cousin SB 9, Senate Bill 10 is projected to have a modest impact on eligible neighborhoods” (https://www.myhomestead.com/blog/sb10-explained).
We can also look at another city that completely eliminated single family zoning in 2020: “Minneapolis appears to be a YIMBY (Yes in my backyard) success story of relaxed zoning regulations leading to increased housing production and declining rents. Its much-ballyhooed abolition of single-family zoning doesn’t have much to do with this success, however.” Instead the removal of parking minimums for partner buildings and a focus on new housing on commercial corridors, as we do here in Santa Monica, drove the housing construction boom (https://tinyurl.com/MinneapolisZoning).
But there’s a much more dire and consequential threat to single family neighborhoods at play in this year’s City Council election. The incumbent slate, led by Mayor Brock and Councilmember De la Torre along with political arrivistes Vivian Roknian and John Putnam, wants to dismantle and then reconstitute our city government in a manner alarmingly congruent with the Project 2025 proposal espoused by conservative supporters of Donald Trump. Apparently the major issue in our city is the deep state, so the employees need to be replaced by loyalists.
Their proposal? Replace the current City Manager and hire a new one who commits to firing senior staff and asking them to reapply for their jobs.
Say what? Despite the deep divisions in our city, I hope we can all agree that we face major challenges with public safety, economic recovery, housing affordability, mobility and a host of other issues. And given the dysfunction on the Council, we have already lost years of institutional knowledge as staff have left for better paying jobs at agencies where the elected officials treat them with respect — it’s no secret that workforce morale at City Hall is at an all time low. In fact, I had a drink with a senior staffer this week and we discussed this cockamamie plan — she confirmed that many are dusting off their resumes in search of greener pastures and said to me “I’d be happy if they fired me!” And ask yourselves — if your boss fired you and required you to reapply for your job, would you instead look elsewhere? And if you were looking for a job in the public sector, would your first choice be a city with a track record of cavalierly terminating employees?
The reality is this proposed purge will only yield mediocrity. It used to be Santa Monica paid salaries that were among the highest in the region and even without that financial incentive the lure of working at a city that was a leader in our region was a draw. Now, after the last four years of unbridled chaos in the Council chambers, prospective employees look elsewhere, especially since budget cuts have made Santa Monica salaries much less competitive with other cities and the labor market is tight.
I know there are readers who believe the source of our woes is City staff. Having served as a Councilmember for eights years, I couldn’t disagree more strenuously — these are the folks who make our city function, from trash pickup to beach cleaning to policing (and does this slate propose to fire Chief Batista along with other senior staff?). For those concerned homeowners, it’s the City services that maintain property values — do they really want to see those decline as the folks who make the city work depart in droves, leaving behind an even smaller and more overworked organization?
Diminished quality of life, a City Hall culture in a death spiral and more broken campaign promises as goals can’t be accomplished without a full complement of dedicated staff — that’s what this candidate slate would yield if elected. And that’s what homeowners should really fear.
