News from Santa Monica.
This post, by Frank Gruber and Juan Matute, first appeared on The Healthy City Local. The City of Santa Monica is experiencing a financial crisis unprecedented in living memory. If left as is, planned expenditures are likely to exceed revenues…
This story first appeared on The Healthy City Local. The 19th century saw a great expansion of global connectivity and vast increases in productivity. The century didn’t begin in 1800, but at Waterloo in 1815; and it ended in 1914,…
On Friday, Santa Monica released its plan for layoffs to address the city’s acute financial crisis. The numbers are as brutal as we might expect, with over 400 permanent and as-needed positions targeted for elimination, for a savings of $86.2M.…
This op/ed was submitted by the Santa Monica Safe Streets Alliance: Santa Monica Spoke, Climate Action Santa Monica, SAFE and the NRDC. Our Santa Monica streets are our largest public space, over 20% of our landmass, and one of our…
Note: This story first appeared on The Healthy City Local. After years of creating procedural and other obstacles to the building of much-needed new housing, the City of Santa Monica is poised to do something significant to encourage housing development.…
The following article first appeared on The Healthy City Local. Wednesday night there will be a joint meeting of the Planning and Housing Commissions to discuss the future of Santa Monica’s housing policies. (Don’t ask me why there is a…
Earlier this week, the Santa Monica City Council approved extending the city’s initial 16-month e-scooter program through May 2020. In September 2017, the first app-based shared electronic scooters appeared in Santa Monica. The initial Bird e-scooters were followed by several…
(Note: This story first appeared on the Healthy City Local. Two Thousand Nineteen seems remarkable for the number of historical events that are being commemorated with round number anniversaries. Fifty years ago, 1969, saw the Moon landing and Woodstock on…
Earlier this month, the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority’s report showed the dramatic rise in the number of people experiencing homelessness in Los Angeles City and County. There is no shortage of pundits assigning blame for escalating homelessness. But the bigger question…
This article first appeared on The Healthy City Local. I ended my blog last week about Santa Monica’s housing policies with some good news, namely that a lot of housing was either under construction in the city or had approvals to proceed…
This article first appeared on The Healthy City Local. When in the summer of 2017 the Santa Monica City Council, after six years of work, adopted the Downtown Community Plan (DCP), the then architecture critic for the L.A. Times, Christopher Hawthorne, wrote…
The big headline from yesterday’s news roundup was a new study released by the Southern California Association of Governments that found a congestion pricing charge of $4 at peak hours could reduce car traffic congestion by 20 percent during rush…
Tourism in Santa Monica is booming – and once again hotel workers are fighting for decent wages and working conditions at hotels like Loew’s, Viceroy, Delfina and Le Merigot. Over the next month, our city council members will be reviewing…
Older adults are mobility challenged. More than 20 percent of those 65 and older, according to a Rand study, do not or no longer drive. Those who do drive go shorter distances, are fearful of driving at night, have difficulties with…
Last Friday, Santa Monica experienced what appears to be L.A. County’s first e-scooter rider death – which is to say, the first time that a person driving a car has killed a person riding an e-scooter. Media coverage of the…
