Editorials, letters to the editor, and other community opinions about Santa Monica.
It seems that every meeting of the Santa Monica City Council there’s a debate or controversy caused by how darned long the meetings are. The seven person Council includes more than a handful of senior citizens, parents of school and…
The following article first appeared in Streetsblog San Francisco. Governor Newsom signed A.B. 413 into law on Tuesday. As explained in the Tweet below from the advocates at Los Angeles-based Streets for All, A.B. 413 will, in theory, make it illegal in…
When I interviewed Jesse Zwick for the first What’s Next podcast on Santa Monica Next, he proposed for our second segment a discussion of public participation. He argued that the current public participation process under-represents large portions of the public…
At last Thursday’s meeting of the DTSM Inc. Board Meeting, they announced that the contract with Covered 6 to provide additional private armed security patrols, with one member lethally armed at all times, to the 3rd Street Promenade area had…
Waymo has arrived in Santa Monica. Yes, for several months Waymos have been riding around town gathering data and testing. Sometimes there’s a test driver, other times there’s not. But Waymo is a passenger service, and that capability is soon…
This article first appeared at Streetsblog L.A. The author is none to Streetsblog but wished to remain anonymous because they work for a government agency. Like many people around Los Angeles, I was excited about the opening of the Regional…
(Note: public speaker’s names are removed because I was uncertain of the exact spelling from the audio and didn’t want to misattribute a quote, especially the anti-Semitic ones.) Never doubt the power of one speaker, or one written comment, at…
At last night’s meeting of the Santa Monica City Council, Jason Mastbaum confronted Councilmember’s de la Torre, Negrete, Parra and Brock about their conduct at the July 25 City Council meeting where they maligned city staff while defending Councilmember Brock…
Note: the original letter to Council called for passage of Item 16-E at last week’s meeting. Given that the item wasn’t heard and was pushed forward to next week’s meeting; I have updated letter below to reflect it’s new Item…
Ahead of the July 25, 2023 city council meeting, Santa Monica city councilmembers Phil Brock and Oscar de la Torre placed a councilmember discussion item on the agenda “to assign unspent funds from the FY 2022-23 individual Councilmember travel budgets…
In advance of Tuesday’s meeting of the Santa Monica City Council, Councilmember Phil Brock placed two items on the agenda. By the end of the meeting the Council not only failed to consider either of these two items, but also…
Dear Editor, We strongly support the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) and its intent to ensure that voters who are part of marginalized communities have the opportunity to influence local elections and to elect their preferred candidates. While there is…
This is part three of a series on the recent ruling by the California Supreme Court on the Voting Rights Act filed against the city. You can read our coverage of the arguments and ruling and parts one and two…
This post first appeared on The Healthy City Local. The next step in an analysis of the California Supreme Court’s decision in the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) case the Pico Neighborhood Association brought against the City of Santa Monica…
The following op/ed first appeared in Streetsblog California and uses examples from the Bay Area Rapid Transit System, BART. However, the lessons and messages apply well to Metro and the Big Blue Bus as well. Tuesday afternoon, Senator Scott Wiener…
