Editor’s note: Because few people, especially parents of school-age children, have time to attend and report-out from government meetings, Santa Monica Next has been working to determine whether artificial intelligence can transcribe and write news reports from these meetings. This…
Editor’s note: Because few people, especially parents of school-age children, have time to attend and report-out from government meetings, Santa Monica Next has been working to determine whether artificial intelligence can transcribe and write news reports from these meetings. This…
The crossing guard at Chelsea Avenue and Santa Monica Boulevard has been escorting McKinley kids across the street for almost twenty years, and for much of that time he’s had to watch out for left-turning drivers who didn’t see her…
If you drive, walk, or bike around Santa Monica, you’ve seen them: white and yellow plastic bollards—those flexible posts meant to protect bike lanes or tighten corners—lying flat on the ground, mangled by the tires of a passing SUV or…
Santa Monica has a new legal option to enforce red lights and stop signs. It is an option I think our community needs to make our streets safer for everyone. Street racing and reckless driving impact our community daily, often…
(The city will unveil the three draft scenarios for the future site this Saturday at the airport. Get the details here.) The airport planning process was always going to get contentious…it just didn’t have to get to that point this…
It may seem that “Abundance” is the latest buzzword in democratic policy circles, being thrown around without a deep understanding of what it means. And I think that would be an accurate representation of the current state of this policy…
At the Santa Monica City Council’s budget workshop earlier this month, council members expressed a desire for the city to take a more active role in supporting economic opportunity and growth. This was one of the three budget priorities adopted…
Discussions at the City Council’s March 8th budget workshop reveal a determined push to run the municipality more like a business, focusing on well-defined priorities and bringing revenues more in sync with expenses. Economic development, housing, support for education, and…
The Santa Monica City Council will set budget priorities this Saturday at 9 a.m. at the Santa Monica Library. The city forms its operating budget every 2 years, and the 2025-27 budget will be contentious because the city faces a…
In part 1, I used a safe systems lens to understand traffic safety in Santa Monica after a fatal crash at the intersection of Wilshire and Chelsea in December, 2024. In that column I showed that traffic enforcement activities and…
A city that is responsive to complaints seems like a desirable standard to strive for. Who doesn’t like having their complaints addressed in a timely manner? This was the idea when Santa Monica contracted for a 311 system in 2018,…
Even as the Palisades fire and other megafires shift the focus on public safety from transportation to wildfires made more likely by climate change, many in our community are still mourning the death of a 70-year old Santa Monica resident…
The Palisades Fire, a devastating wildfire that has ravaged the Westside of Los Angeles, has caused immense destruction and loss. My heart goes out to all those impacted by this tragedy. However, as a trained urban planner who often thinks…
Santa Monica Mayor Brock held a Town Hall meeting last Wednesday. If you didn’t hear about it, that may be because it was called only 49 hours in advance of the meeting, the location changed, and the venue prohibited attendees…
