When the United Democratic Slate swept all four seats in the last election, there were cheers (or concerns) that a new progressive super-majority would dramatically change the way the city operates. However, there were three controversial votes taken at last night’s city council meeting, with the “6-1 pro-housing progressive majority,” and two of them would likely have had the same outcome if former Mayor Phil Brock’s slate of candidates had won last December instead.
We’ll have more details of the meetings in the coming days, but here’s an oversimplified summary of the three votes.
The biggest news is that the Council instructed the Airport to Park Conversion team to move forward with planning for a future park on airport land that doesn’t include any new housing. Supporters of the park-only plan have argued that adding housing to the mix of uses would delay the conversion as it would require a vote of city residents. Opponents argued that without housing, the cost of building and maintaining the park is infeasible. One option to help fund both the park’s construction and maintenance would be to hold large music festivals on the site, which will surely be popular with residents surrounding the park who complained about airplane noise.
Coming out of closed session, the Council announced a new deal with the Santa Monica Police Officer’s Association which raises the salaries of officers for $22 million more than what the city has budgeted. While the importance of public safety is important, the city held the position that there was no money for salary increases for other city employee unions, but found the money for the POA.
In the third vote, the Council voted unanimously to study whether or not to continue funding neighborhood associations such as Friends of Sunset Park, the Ocean Park Association, and others. The city provides support for these groups’ non-political activities, although in a recent Council meeting a suggestion to audit the groups’ was scoffed at.
These neighborhood groups are allowed to host political events and even make endorsements. In the last election, no candidate endorsed by a neighborhood group won election, and a forum hosted by a coalition of neighborhood associations was blasted after the Ocean Park Association was removed from the committee for protesting that the questions were misleading.
At the forum, the questions were indeed misleading and confusing. Of course, without a public call with its endorsed candidates by Northeast Neighbors, we might never have learned the true agenda of the slate of incumbent Councilmembers in the last election…so maybe continuing the funding will actually help more progressive candidates be elected.
