Editorials, letters to the editor, and other community opinions about Santa Monica.
Last night, Los Angeles voters soundly beat Measure S, a poorly-conceived and draconian attempt to control the city’s planning process at the ballot box. The defeat of Measure S comes only a few months after Santa Monica decisively rejected a…
Tuesday night, the Santa Monica City Council passed a resolution reaffirming its commitment to an inclusive city and that makes clear the beachside city won’t cooperate with federal authorities on enforcing immigration laws. Below is an open letter, published to the city’s…
Every night, tens of thousands of people bed down in shelters, in their cars, or on the street. The causes are myriad. Some are homeless because of bad luck. Some are trying to escape abusive homes. The increasing cost of…
Via The Healthy City Local “Belts and suspenders.” That’s a phrase that we lawyers use to describe how we write contracts and other documents repeating the same concepts multiple times. (“Repeating” and “multiple times”—you see, belts and suspenders.) Sometimes the belts…
Tomorrow, the South Coast Air Quality Management District will vote on a long-term regional clean air plan for the urban portions of four counties—Los Angeles, Orange County, Riverside, and San Bernardino—under its jurisdiction. The plan as currently written contains few new…
Via The Healthy City Local Procrastination can pay. For the past two weeks the top item on my to-do list has read, “Blog on SMO—read dox.” “Dox,” meaning the pleadings and briefs that have been piling up in multiple pending…
Via Streetsblog California This weekend’s Women’s March was an unparalleled event in United States history, with over three million people taking to the streets in cities and towns across the country. Timed to coincide with the inauguration weekend of America’s 45th…
This piece was originally published on Santa Monica City Manager Rick Cole’s blog, The Long View. In a recent post, I acknowledged public concerns about the City of Santa Monica’s salaries and benefits, sparked by a misleading press release from a Nevada…
The following piece first appeared on The Healthy City Local. I haven’t written here for a while. It’s easy for a little hiatus to become a long vacation, especially over the holidays, and especially, if you write a column about local…
This piece was originally published on Santa Monica Next’s sister site, Longbeachize. It’s frightening when the wealthy hijack the narratives of the good. And they did so brilliantly in 2016 and will continue to do so this year. When I walked into…
This post originally appeared on The Healthy City Local. As I’ve written in two recent posts, tomorrow night the Planning Commission will review the Santa Monica Downtown Community Plan (DCP). After staff makes revisions to the current draft, the City Council…
This was originally published on the Healthy City Local. In my rant a few days ago I promised (threatened?) to come back with substantive analysis of the Downtown Community Plan (DCP), which the Planning Commission will review at its meeting…
This piece originally appeared in The Healthy City Local. For a liberal like me, it’s hard not to be cranky after Donald Trump’s TKO (i.e., Electoral College) defeat of Hillary Clinton. True, my mood was elevated somewhat by the local KO…
(Note : This article first appeared in the Healthy City Local. – DN) Shell-shocked after the presidential vote, I’ve been slow putting my thoughts together on the local election. In fact, when analyzing local elections it’s a good idea to…
With election day nearly a week behind us the dust is beginning to settle and a clearer picture of the political landscape at the national, state, and local levels is emerging. One thing is resoundingly clear from the outcome of…
