Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
Community, Diversity, Sustainability and other Overused Words
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I'm going to tell a story for those people who think dealing with the IRS is somehow fair or "reasonable" - buckle up. When I was a kid, my dad owned a small cabinet shop. He decided (against better judgement of my mother) to go into partnership with another furniture maker. The business with both of them operated for about one year successfully. Dad ran the shop with about 55 employees. The other guy ran the books (you see where this is going.) Until one day, a bunch of...
If Arthur Jeon truly is running for SM city council, he needs to be honest and truthful. His letter in your July 25-31 issue was neither. SM voters -- who are mostly renters -- must know he clearly has an anti-renter agenda. Mr. Jeon threatens the very existence of rent control which protects so very many low- and moderate-income SM renters/voters. Mr. Jeon is wrong when he says the mayor's property tax measure would benefit only the homeless. In addition to our schools, the...
August 5, 2022 - At her media briefing yesterday, LA County Public Health Director Barbara Ferrer, PhD, MPH, MEd, declined to answer a question from a Los Angeles Times reporter regarding to what extent it is safer to be around a person who is vaccinated. Ferrer does not typically miss answering a question from the press, even if multiple questions come from one reporter. Data from the Health Department's website on "Outcomes by Vaccination Status," clearly show that transmiss...
It was with sadness that I read this in a recent story in The Santa Monica Current: “The One Thing you need to know is that SMPD responded to a call at Palisades Park last night for two unresponsive men behind a restroom. One man was pronounced dead at the scene and the other was taken to a local hospital. There were no signs of foul play but officers did find drug paraphernalia nearby.” Sadness, but not surprise. Because this is a photo I took recently of the area at the top...
Open Letter to Sue Himmelrich and husband Michael Soloff: It was with dismay that I watched both your orchestrated attacks on councilman Phil Brock's alternate tax transfer measure at the July 12 City Council meeting (http://santamonica.granicus.com/ViewPublisher.php?view_id=2). It was the definition of bad faith. Michael Soloff, in your labored straw man argument, you called Councilman Brock's measure a "poison pill." You used every cliche in the canon to push for endless...
Dear Editor, The Santa Monica city attorney, or the city council needs to act immediately to force the Mayor's recusal from all council discussions and votes regarding either of the transfer tax ballots currently under consideration. Fact: The Mayor is spending $200,000 of her own money to gather signatures and campaign for her transfer tax ballot measure. The presence of a competing measure will require her to spend additional funds to achieve success, which will lessen her...
If you have walked our iconic bluffs overlooking the ocean, you will find discarded cans, old backpacks, blankets and clothes on the other side of the concrete railings that spoil the otherwise majestic ocean view. While the rest of Palisades Park is kept up beautifully, the bluff's rim is riddled with trash. I asked a Parks employee about it and he said they weren't allowed to go over the fence to clean it up because it was too dangerous. So that's it? Are we out of ideas on...
July 8, 2022 - Los Angeles County has been living under the threat of a new indoor mask mandate for weeks now as Covid-19 cases, driven by various Omicron subvariants, bring more Covid patients to area hospitals. Once there are over 10 Covid patients per 100,000 residents in the hospital, the county is deemed by Centers for Disease Control guidance to be in a High transmission level. A patient is a Covid patient if they test positive for Covid, whether they suffer from the...
July 7, 2022 For many weeks now, Los Angeles County Health officials have warned that a health order requiring masks at indoor public places will be re-instituted when there are 10 admissions or more of "Covid" patients per 100,000 residents for two weeks in a row. The cutoff is a guideline from the Centers for Disease Control. It is designed to reduce the stress on the hospital system. Two questions require to be answered for one to consider this guideline and its...
As Caroline and Anastasia say, rent control is for all tenants, but it is the rent challenged who they, understandably, use to justify emergency rent freezes, thus lumping all renters into one group. But using a subset of the group to set policy for all is the opposite of how progressive taxation and the redistribution of wealth is performed in any well-meaning democracy, such as ours. All taxation and economic policies need to account for individual wealth, to ease the...
A Call-to-Action on Crime Dear Editor, I believe many Santa Monicans, rattled by an epidemic of brazen crime, are understandably furious at LA County DA George Gascon. They may not be aware, however, that the City of Santa Monica, not Gascon, has authority over violent misdemeanor prosecutions in our city, while Gascon's permissiveness, which the Council has failed to condemn, applies solely to felonies committed here. The combined effect is that lawbreakers, many of them...
Gascón's refused to hold Victor Bibiano accountable for a 2009 double murder. That decision was based solely on Gascón's ideological policy. There is no science, no data, and no consideration for public safety supporting his position. It was a policy based upon having the "lightest touch" on all criminals. The same failed reasoning kept Justin Flores on the streets on June 14, 2022, when he murdered two El Monte police officers. It is why Mario Rodriguez was murdered on A...
June 15, 2022 - Pools of urine, tagged walls, drug addicts, and homeless squatters greeted downtown Santa Monica property owner John Alle as he arrived early to work the morning following the City Council meeting that approved extending the contract with Allied Universal Security. The security company is charged with patrolling the seven public garages and associated alleyways overnight until 6 am in the morning. The Block by Block Ambassadors take over patrol duty at 6 am,...
July 4th is fast approaching, along with the devastating impact of fireworks. I know first-hand, as an illegal yet permitted fireworks show was responsible for the death of my dog last year. All fireworks are illegal in the city of Santa Monica. Despite restrictions, The Beach Club, a "members only" private club in Santa Monica, circumvents the law by claiming its parking lot sits over the city boundary in Los Angeles County. By doing so, last year, they received a last-minute...
On Thursday June 9, 2022 the Rent Control Board will be discussing the details of filling a vacancy since Board Member Nicole Phillis announced her resignation. In accordance with the City Charter, whenever there is an unscheduled vacancy on the Board, they make an appointment. They always appoint someone who will have the advantage of being listed as an incumbent in the next election. The appointee is always another SMRR (Santa Monican for Renters' Rights) member and never a...
This is not a 'wealth tax' as the signature gatherers proclaim - it is a real estate transfer tax. They are completely different things. With this new transfer tax, if you buy and sell a house for even the same price, you will owe $500,000. And as the threshold is not inflation adjusted, in a very few years it won't be just the wealthy paying this, it will be everyone - even for modest homes. And then the house-flipping industry will stop... This will have a crushing effect...
WASHINGTON, DC, May 27 – Memorial Day is of great importance for those of us who lost friends and family members in armed conflicts. But it should also encompass the ranks of those who have even a milligram of remembrance of old friends and relatives who made the ultimate sacrifice in the defense of our country and our way of life. It defines us as loyal citizens of America who love the land of the free and the brave. Oh, yes, it is the unofficial beginning of summer and that'...
To save, preserve and expand the United States Postal Service requires making the post office a national priority. Plus, first firing Louis de Joy. Now that the dysfunctional board which governs the postal service has new directors firing Postmaster de Joy is - priority one !! Note to president Biden ...... please, before your next international trip, before you sign your next bill, before your next state dinner, before your next cabinet meeting ...... in other words,...
May 18, 2022 - At a press conference today, Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon, who has presided over one of the highest increases in crime in the region, sought to educate the public regarding reducing gun violence. According the Association of Deputy District Attorneys, which has sued Gascon for violating state law, there were 859 people killed in the county during 2021. 687 of these deaths were the result of gun violence. Gascon began his tenure as district...
May 13, 2022 - The Ambassador program is a waste, and in the words of Councilmember Phil Brock, DTSM, Inc. itself must be dissolved. We need real law enforcement during the hours of 11 pm and 8 am. Private security has not worked and puts us all at physical and legal risk. The following was witnessed and photographed from this morning. 1) Ambassador following a City Maintenance street sweeper and power washer, with small broom and dustpan in hand (IOW redundancy of effort -...
A Change.org petition seeks to express a public vote of no confidence in the Mayor: "The undersigned members of the Santa Monica community support a vote of no confidence in Mayor Sue Himmelrich for the following reasons: 1. Complete disconnect from and denial of residents' needs, most importantly public safety. Disregarded results of every City-sponsored survey regarding crime, police presence, Parking Garage 3, and more. 2. Continued failure to lead on addressing the homeles...
The state of California has issued an unfunded mandate that Santa Monica must build 6000+ affordable homes, or face punitive fines and loss of zoning control. The city currently plans to build these as affordable apartments to rent, which would be utterly disastrous, both for the occupants of the affordable housing, and existing city residents. But if the homes were built as deed-restricted affordable condos for sale we would avoid the negative financial impacts on existing...
May 9, 2022 - Renters in Santa Monica may believe themselves exempt from the ramifications of a proposed ballot measure to increase the tax rate on the sale of certain buildings by 833%. After all, rent increases are strictly controlled and landlords are severely hampered in their ability to take rented units off the market. It might seem as though renters would be largely immune from the proposed increase to 5.6% from 0.6% on on sales of property over $8 million. That would...
Amid an affordable housing and homelessness crisis, why would the City want to suspend all meetings of the Housing Commission "until City Council considers its annual appointments in June 2022" (May 10, 2022 agenda item 13C)? And why are the Mayor and Councilmembers insisting that "once the Housing Commission resumes meeting following the appointments, it shall immediately hold elections for Chair and Vice Chair"? Those elections are already compulsory per Council Resolution 1...
Editor's Note: The following is a public comment by Michael Soloff, the Mayor's husband and then-Chair of the Housing Commission, at the 4/27/21 meeting of the Santa Monica City Council. His request was approved. Good evening Councilmembers, I'm speaking tonight in my capacity as the Chairperson of the Housing Commission, and I'm addressing you on behalf of the Housing Commission. Specifically, I'm addressing the issue of how often we're going to be allowed to meet going...
