Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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The following is a written public comment submitted to the Santa Monica City Council on 6/29/21 This is to request that Mayor Himmelrich refrain from nominating or voting for SMRR-endorsed Council applicant Caroline Torosis due to the appearance of a conflict of interest caused by the fact that Mayor Himmelrich's husband, Michael Soloff, is a co-chair of SMRR. A conflict of interest is a situation in which a person such as a public official has a private or personal interest...
Dear School Board -You all have repeatedly stated that the History Building must be torn down because it cannot accommodate modern classrooms shapes and sizes. This is a lie. After staff said they never studied adaptive reuse, the Information Item last week magically says you did that in the January meeting. Another lie. Of course everyone but the school board, district staff, and the bond manager know that adaptive reuse of the History Building means gutting the interior and...
As an Army Ranger in Afghanistan, I witnessed countless tragedies during my three deployments. After leaving the army and working in finance, I was drinking heavily and fell into a deep depression. I felt lost and suffered from a constant feeling of dread. For so many people, like me, who have suffered from anxiety, depression or PTSD, traditional therapy and medications have failed to treat my mental health. I didn't want to be heavily medicated and numb my pain through...
Courtesy of the brainiac who is pushing to densify our neighborhoods, California State Senator Scott Wiener, Senate Bill 519 to legalize psychedelic drugs, including LSD, was approved by the state's upper house. It will now move to the State Assembly where a similar vote is likely. Citing numerous studies touting the potential health benefits of methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA) and Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), Wiener said "it makes no sense to criminalize" their use....
There will be a Gelsons at the eventual megalith development that is replacing Martin's Cadillac on Olympic Boulevard near Bundy. Hines development company, who is constructing the eight-story mixed-use project, thinks that learning this exciting news will make up for the increase in traffic that 200,000 square feet of offices and 600 apartments will bring to an already crowded area. "Securing a retail anchor of Gelson's caliber is a true testament to our place-making plan,"...
The City of Santa Monica's Planning Department has made available for public consumption its most current draft of the Housing Element of the General Plan. While this combination of words may cause your eyes to glaze over in boredom, the city staff's recommendations in this bulky document, over 1500 pages long, will significantly impact the quality of life in Santa Monica, including its density, environment, strain on infrastructure, cost of living, and finances. Since no one...
A miracle just happened for the residents of Santa Monica that can save our city forever: Councilmember Kevin McKeown, who has served for decades in this role, just unexpectedly announced his resignation effective 2 weeks from now to a shocked Council and city. Why is this a miracle? Because Kevin had been leading the efforts to enrich wealthy developers by using "equity" and "anti-racism" as a BS excuse to upzone the entire city (including single family R1 zoned communities)...
May 18, 2021 After taking the weekend to mull the matter, Governor Newsom and the California Department of Public Health decided that California would not be following the guidelines put forward May 13 by the Centers for Disease Control regarding masks. On Thursday, the federal CDC declared that vaccinated people could safely remove their masks in all situations: indoors or out, crowded or not. But on Monday, California officials, ruling over a state with one of the lowest...
May 17, 2021 The Los Angeles Fire Department responds to an average of 24 homeless-related fires a day, according to reporting by the Los Angeles Times. That's two dozen emergencies every day. LAFD classifies one third of those fires as arson. The rest of the fires are caused by outdoor cookstoves or other unsafe and unpermitted use of flames. These fires cause death and a great deal of damage. 41 homeless people have been killed by them since 2015 and they have caused an...
The current Los Angeles District Attorney sends press releases that are markedly different from his predecessor. While Jackie Lacey would announced the arrests of people in positions of trust, such as police officers and politicians, she would intersperse such victories of justice with stories of the detainment of the sorts of criminals that most people are going to encounter and from whom they will suffer. Serial murderers, rapists, and the like. Not DA George Gascon. He...
Pfizer has submitted a request to the Food and Drug Administration to approve its innovative Covid-19 vaccine for children ages 12 to 15 years old. At present, this vaccine is only approved by the FDA for emergency use for individuals aged 16 and older. The Los Angeles County Department of Public Health is solidly behind the vaccination of children. "To prepare for this change, Public Health is urging providers to consider expanding the range of vaccines they are delivering...
Our legislators' hunger for more and more housing units in the region ignores one remarkably significant limiting factor: water supply. Over recorded history in the region, California has suffered multiple droughts, many of the more recent episodes requiring strict rationing of residential water supply. Los Angeles is currently at only 46% of average rainfall for the Water Year according to the California Department of Water Resources (DWR). Riverside is at 50%, and other...
State Senator Josh Newman, a Democrat, is pulling from consideration his proposal to allow the objects of a recall petition access to the names and contact information of those who signed the petition. Newman, reelected in 2020, was himself the victim of a recall election in 2018 - which he lost. He says the present system of privacy for those who sign a recall petition allows for potential fraud. Those who sign the recall petition may not realize what they are signing. The...
How does one get a free room with oceanfront view, no taxes to pay, and no building codes to follow? According to Los Angeles Councilman Mike Bonin, be a vagrant. The controversial councilmember is already routinely lambasted on social media for the unsanitary and dangerous conditions caused by vagrants in his district. His proposal to allow the homeless to legally camp in the beach parking lots at Will Rogers and Dockweiler Beach and next to Fisherman's Wharf was met with a...
On every page of the official Black Lives Matter website, a button urges one to "donate today." Benefactors may warm themselves with supporting BLM's "ongoing fight to end State-sanctioned violence, liberate Black people, and end white supremacy forever." In their 2020 Impact Report released in February, the activist organization attempts to explain how they are going about achieving these lofty, distorted, and utterly vague goals. In the process, they try to explain what...
The case against Assembly Bill 101, a law that would require ethnic studies be a part of the high school curriculum in the state's public schools, was made by Tammi Rossman-Benjamin of the Amcha Initiative in the San Diego Tribune. AB 101 will be heard before the California Assembly Education Committee this week. The Amcha Initiative is a nonpartisan nonprofit dedicated to combating anti-Semitism on school campuses. Rossman-Benjamin's contention is that the entire curriculum...
UPDATE/CORRECTION: The Santa Monica Shines program does not involve inspections from city of Santa Monica code inspectors. Sustainable Works conducts the walk-throughs to grant the Assurance Seal and they are a separate entityt hired by the city. The empathy course that seems so mysterious involves guidance in how to interact with business customers or guests who do not want to follow the county's safety guidelines, i.e. are refusing to wear a mask or socially distance. Half...
Dressed up in the language of compassion and social justice, the City Council's vote on March 30 to accommodate 6,168 affordable housing units, 70% of whatever new housing is built, and then to disperse these affordable units throughout the city, including along Montana Avenue and Main Street, is in reality a despicable theft of the earnings of hardworking residents and will end up benefiting no one. There are so many fatal flaws in the logic, data, and goals involved in both...
Police were needed to protect construction workers on Wednesday night at Echo Park as over 200 protestors arrived to decry the attempt to clear an estimated four dozen homeless people who'd set up camp on park grounds. The City of Los Angeles said they need to close the park to conduct about $500,000 in damage to lighting and plumbing and to remove hazardous waste and make public safety improvements. The park has been the site of a tent city commune of up to 100 people at...
March 11, 2021 The City of Santa Monica on Tuesday joined the County and City of Los Angeles in adopting an ordinance granting an additional $5 per hour "hero pay" to workers at large grocery chains and drug retailers. The law takes effect immediately and is supposed to sunset after 120 days. The Covid-19 virus began sweeping through the local population last spring, with several plateaus and surges during the year since. Throughout this whole time, "essential workers" at...
During an alarming surge in the number of homicides committed in Los Angeles, with the majority of victims people of color, Black Lives Matter-LA has begun a campaign to deplatform and abolish unions protecting law enforcement officers. At a news conference held during a protest outside the Los Angeles Police Protective League office, BLM-LA made it clear this is just the first step in their determination to completely eliminate law enforcement. The LAPPL is the union...
February 26, 2021 Community health clinics think the answer to solving vaccine rollout disparity is to let them administer more vaccines. At a webinar on February 24, representatives from health clinics and the President of Chares R. Drew University of Medicine and Science made the case for allocating more doses to health clinics that service poor communities. "Advancing equity is in our DNA," said Louise McCarthy, President of the Community Clinic Association of Los Angeles....
I have read with disappointment the Staff Report accompanying Item 8.A. The report is long on process narrative but entirely deficient on hard objectives and measurable milestones to achieve those objectives. The City must stop focusing on the process and focus on quantifiable OBJECTIVES and the measurable milestones required to achieve them. The Staff Report does not provide any indication of the total amount being either received nor spent on the unhoused issue in Santa...
If you are wondering how your tax dollars are spent on addressing the homeless crisis in Santa Monica, do not ask the City as they would likely not be able to answer. They would probably even think it is impolite of you to ask. The lack of oversight and accountability in homeless services has been brought up to the City's attention by advocates and former and current clients of homeless services for years now. Such inquiries routinely fell on the City's deaf ears or were met...
February 22 District Attorney George Gascon issued a statement today explaining why his office accepted a plea bargain from convicted sex offender Kenneth Rasmuson for the murder of two 6-year-old boys rather than seek the death penalty. Rasmuson pled guilty to two counts of murder and admitted the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders. A recent court ruling would not allow the special circumstance to be dismissed. The defendant admitted he killed 6-year-old...