Author Archives: Frank Gruber

It’s the zeitgeist, stupid

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There has always been a dance between local and national politics, a dance that can appear to take place in a maze of funhouse mirrors. That’s how Santa Monica politics in 2024 look to me. The electorate here is much different from that of the nation, but to a great extent I can’t differentiate between what I’m seeing on the local candidate mailers and the political commercials interrupting the baseball playoffs and the analysis that the national commentariat is producing.

Let’s begin with realignment. Nationally realignment of the political parties has been underway since the “Reagan Democrats,” but it accelerated when Donald Trump came down the escalator. In Santa Monica, realignment came abruptly with the 2020 City Council election, picked up steam in 2022, and this year was fully realized.

Realignment in Santa Monica means that the anti-development side, epitomized by Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC), is no longer allied with its previous great benefactor, Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR). SMRR enabled candidates supported by SMCLC, such as Kevin McKeown and Sue Himmelrich, to get elected to City Council. But now after realignment, SMCLC has joined with business groups supporting candidates under the “Safer Santa Monica” banner (namely, incumbents Phil Brock and Oscar de la Torre, and newcomers John Putnam and Vivian Roknian) against the SMRR-backed candidates.

As a longtime participant in and observer of Santa Monica politics, the most, may I say, amusing manifestation of this break between SMRR and the anti-development crowd has been the dispute between McKeown, still a SMRR-loyalist, and SMCLC over the question about who is responsible for the housing development that’s coming to Santa Monica after the Change Slate-controlled City Council failed to file a compliant Housing Element. After McKeown wrote a letter to the Lookout blaming Changer Slaters Brock and De la Torre, Diana Gordon responded with one slamming McKeown. Breaking up is hard to do.

Meanwhile SMRR has formed an alliance with traditional liberal/progressive groups (the Santa Monica Democratic Club, Santa Monica Forward, Unite HERE Local 11, and Community for Excellent Public Schools) to support a “United Slate” of Dan Hall, Ellis Raskin, Barry Snell, and Natalya Zernitskaya.

Much of the national realignment – the part where working-class whites joined with hedge fund billionaires and military-adventurist neocons – never made sense to me, but there is a logic to the realignment in Santa Monica. Fundamentally, local politics changed when California largely took over planning for housing from cities. The development wars, which defined most of Santa Monica politics for 35 years, are over, or at least no longer have any reason for being (regardless of any residual rhetoric). There is nothing SMCLC can do now to stop housing development in Santa Monica, and they know it.

It is logical that a realignment occurs after fundamental issues change. What is uncanny to me is how Santa Monica’s quintessentially local, fine-grained, often personality-based politics reflect, even through a funhouse mirror, the national zeitgeist. I want to be clear that I am not saying that anyone running for City Council this year is a Trump supporter; so far as I can tell, all the candidates are Democrats who stress their Democratic credentials and support Kamala Harris. But consider these parallels when it comes to the rhetoric, if not the issues, of this election.

Crime and crisis. From the very name of the slate Brock and De la Torre put together after their former Change Slate running mate Christine Parra decided not to run for reelection, the “Safer Santa Monica” slate, you know that they are simultaneously feeding on and stoking the public’s fear of crime and disorder. In Santa Monica this includes feeding frustration about homelessness and stoking anxiety that Santa Monica is a failed city — much as Donald Trump describes every city north of Richmond or west of Ft. Worth.

(Side note: since the Change Slate has more or less had majority control of the City Council since McKeown quit the council in 2021, to be replaced by Change Slate-adjacent Lana Negrete, Brock and De la Torre might have thought that continuing with “Change Slate” would have caused confusion. Better to play the crime card and blame someone else. “Safer Santa Monica” indeed. Meanwhile, you can’t live in today’s zeitgeist without someone invoking “take back the city” rhetoric.)

Yes, there is crime in Santa Monica. There always has been crime – Santa Monica has every characteristic, good and bad, of American cities. Crime is significantly less frequent now than it was in 2019, but has steadily (but slightly) increased since the pandemic. Coincidentally that increase occurred during the years the Change Slate has been in control, but I am not blaming them. Honestly, the City Council has little to do with how much crime there is Santa Monica. Fortunately crime is rare enough here that when there is a violent act, it is still newsworthy, which of course is what sticks in one’s mind. Think of how Trump reduces the complex issue of immigration to isolated cases of violence perpetrated by immigrants.

But is Santa Monica a hellscape like the Safer Santa Monica candidates and their supporters would have us believe? I don’t think so.

Folks enjoying themselves on the Promenade on a recent night.

In at least one important respect Santa Monica is safer now. It wasn’t that long ago – I wonder if Oscar de la Torre ever reflects on this – that there were gang shootings here every year. In those days De la Torre believed in using social services, as opposed to heavy-handed policing, to end gang violence. He and the police union were foes. I remember that time well: I almost didn’t receive the union’s endorsement when I ran for City Council in 2014 because of a column I’d written in support of De la Torre when the police were investigating him in 2010. Now – talk about realignment – the police union has endorsed De la Torre and he is running on a law and order platform.

Homelessness is the shame of California, of our “civilization.” However, is it worse in Santa Monica because Santa Monica has been a leader in creating programs and, to some extent, in building supportive housing, to address homelessness? Absolutely not. Do the Safer Santa Monica people ever cross the border into Los Angeles? Where encampments are all over the place? We don’t have them in Santa Monica. Why? Because as I understand it, the Grants Pass Ninth Circuit case did not affect us, because we could offer shelter to unhoused people who would try to camp on our streets.

Does tougher policing reduce homelessness? The police in Santa Monica arrested twice as many unhoused people in 2023 (1840) as they did in 2021 (981); have you noticed any impact? Both crime and homelessness are societal problems that can only be solved with social change. Reactionary sloganeering will not generate beneficial change.

Young people on a recent night enjoying life on Main Street

As for the economy, sure, there are empty storefronts on the Promenade. Much of Santa Monica’s economy is based on hospitality and retail, sectors that the pandemic hit hard. Retail here and around the country is reeling from the disruption of e-commerce.

However, today Santa Monica is a magnet for hundreds of millions of dollars of investment. Look at all the cranes around town, with more on the way. Large apartment buildings, now permitted under state law, are planned or under construction. Google is bringing one of its first brick and mortar stores, and the first in the L.A. area, to the Promenade.

One of the first Google stores in the world coming to the corner of Broadway and the Promenade.

One of our major Ocean Avenue hotels has been undergoing a huge upgrade, and another, the Miramar, received its final approval for its complete upgrade Monday night at the Landmarks Commission.

Workers putting finishing touches on the renovations at what will now be the Regent Hotel on Ocean Avenue.

Failed cities don’t attract investments like these.

And Cirque du Soleil is coming back to the beach.

Governmental competency. Switching over to an argument from the other side, the “United Slate” candidates charge that Brock and De la Torre, and their “Change Slate” colleague from 2020, Christine Parra, are not serious when it comes to governing; that they come to council meetings unprepared, not having read the staff reports, and waste everyone’s time in meetings that go on to the wee hours. Unfortunately, this is true. City Council meetings have become a mess. Instead of legislating, the Change Slate councilmembers like to grandstand, bringing to the vote hot button issues that the council has no power to act on, like distribution of clean needles. The obvious parallel is to the current Republican-controlled (meaning “controlled-chaos”) and unproductive House of Representatives.

The ”Deep State”/the “Establishment.” The MAGA universe uses the “Deep State” the same way it attacks journalism as “fake news.” There is a parallel in Santa Monica when the Change Slate candidates, now running under Safer Santa Monica, and their supporters like SMCLC refer to the United Slate candidates as the “Establishment.” This is consistent with decades of attacks on city staff from the anti-development side of Santa Monica politics. Experts are to be distrusted; only the wisdom of an imaginary consensus of “residents” counts (even if real residents consistently vote contrary to how the imaginary residents are supposed to vote).

I get it that since SMRR-endorsed candidates have usually had a majority on City Council for the past 45 years, and since during that time these majorities have molded City government to reflect a set of (liberal) values, that it is tempting to call SMRR and anyone it supports, or even other groups representing local institutions, like the School District, as the establishment. Sure, go ahead.

But using “establishment” as a political pejorative in 2024 in Santa Monica misses the point; doing so ignores who the candidates are. The candidates running this year with the endorsement of SMRR – Hall, Raskin, Snell and Zernitskaya – are insurgents within SMRR. They don’t consider themselves part of any establishment.

Other than Snell, who has served as an elected School Board and College official for years, the three other candidates are all a generation (or two?) younger than the leadership of SMRR. The four candidates could only get the SMRR endorsement after the collapse of the SMRR alliance with SMCLC and other anti-housing types, which effectively controlled the City Council for most years since the early 1990s. (The collapse was complete two years ago, when SMRR endorsed Jesse Zwick, Caroline Torosis, and Raskin.)

As younger Santa Monicans, the 2022 SMRR candidates and the candidates this year are running “post-development wars.” They take the need for more housing as a given, since they and their generational cohort need more housing options. They are in sync with the national zeitgeist on that, too: Kamala Harris has made building three million homes a major plank in her platform. These candidates represent a new generation of liberals, with high ideals about making Santa Monica work better for everyone.

I guess you know for whom I am voting: Hall, Raskin, Snell and Zernitskaya.

However, let me conclude on a less confrontational note. Sure, there is overheated rhetoric in this election – again, matching the national zeitgeist. But as Kamala Harris might say if she lived in Santa Monica rather than in Brentwood, we Santa Monicans have more in common with each other than we have differences. Santa Monica voters are going to vote overwhelmingly for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. There is a lot of “narcissism of small differences” going around. As someone who has been involved for more than a decade in turning Santa Monica Airport into a great park, it is good to know that all the candidates running in the two slates support closing the airport and building the park. If you haven’t done so already, be sure to complete the current survey on the future of the airport land. It’s accessible here, and needs to be completed by Sunday the 20th. Be advised that the survey is a little complicated, but give yourself 15 or 20 minutes and you will be able to get through it.

Thanks for reading.







































































Time to settle this thing?

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About a year ago, after seven years of litigation, the California Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in the case the Pico Neighborhood Association and Maria Loya brought under the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) to challenge Santa Monica’s at-large voting for City Council. This was the first time the state’s highest court had ruled on the CVRA, and the decision clarified the meaning of certain significant undefined terms in the law.

I discussed the case and the court’s decision in detail in three blogs last summer. (Here and here and here.) To summarize, the court made it more difficult for a plaintiff to prove discrimination (i) when it held that plaintiffs must show that a current situation was discriminatory not in the abstract, but in comparison to alternatives, and (ii) because the court was skeptical about the use of new or revised voting districts to remedy discrimination where the population of the protected class is dispersed. The court, however, expanded the potential remedies available to plaintiffs to include remedies not as extreme as districts, so as to give plaintiffs reasonable alternatives against which to judge an existing system.

The court sent the case back, not to be retried, but to the California Court of Appeal for more action. That is where I thought the case would be adjudicated, and hopefully quickly, but the Court of Appeal sent the case back to a trial judge for more fact-gathering. The case’s original judge has since retired, and recently the new judge, Daniel M. Crowley, presided over his first hearing in the litigation.

According to press reports, Judge Crowley urged the parties to settle, predicting that if they don’t, the case will continue for another five to seven years. A sticking point in reaching a settlement is that if the City is found to have been in violation of the CVRA, the City will be obligated to pay the plaintiffs’ legal fees and costs, which according to papers filed in the case already totaled more than $20 million years ago. The City has not disclosed how many millions of dollars it has spent fighting the case, but the legal costs for both sides increase with every motion, every brief, and every hearing.

Given that I believe, as I have discussed in my blogs, that the plaintiffs cannot prove a crucial element in their case, namely that Santa Monica suffers from “racially polarized voting,” and that breaking Santa Monica into districts will not increase Latino voting and political power in Santa Monica), I have always supported the City’s defending the at-large system in court.

My views in favor of the City’s position have been reinforced by the fact that the plaintiffs have demanded, and apparently continue to demand, that the remedy must be to break Santa Monica up into voting districts. Plaintiffs stick to this position even though the California Supreme Court ruled that districts would not be an appropriate remedy in Santa Monica. Districts would not increase Latino voting power, but would mean that every voter here would lose the right to vote for all seven councilmembers over two years. Instead, voters would only get to vote for one councilmember every four years.

Nevertheless, it could be time to reach a settlement. The court decision opened up possibilities for settlement, provided that both sides would be willing to give something up. The court ruled that alternative remedies can be considered in CVRA cases where districts are not an appropriate remedy. These include ranked choice voting (RCV).

What makes sense is for the City to investigate how RCV would work in conjunction with citywide at-large elections. I want to give a shout-out to former mayor Michael Feinstein, a longtime proponent of RCV, for alerting me to an RCV variant called “Proportional Ranked Choice Voting” that has been used in at-large elections, including in voting rights cases. A public process to analyze how RCV would work would allow the public, including the plaintiffs or their supporters, to be informed and to weigh-in. The analysis would necessarily include what would be required legally to institute RCV: for instance would the change require a charter amendment, or could a judge order it? If RCV is workable and popular, then the City, for purposes of settlement and without admitting liability under the CVRA, could include it in a settlement proposal.

Such a settlement would require that the plaintiffs drop their demand for districts, but I hope that they would, given the Supreme Court’s ruling.

The parties would still need to work out a financial settlement over the legal fees. As a taxpayer in Santa Monica, what I would propose is that the City estimate what it would spend on its attorneys over another five to seven years of litigation and offer that amount as a settlement. If I were the plaintiffs’ attorneys, and considering the obstacles they face in the case after the California Supreme Court’s ruling, I would accept it.

Of course, a settlement and what it contains will depend on who is on City Council. The politics of the CVRA case have always been intriguing, particularly after Oscar de la Torre, husband of plaintiff Maria Loya, was elected to the council in 2020 as part of the Change Slate. De la Torre, of course, has always wanted the City to throw in the towel and agree to districts.

One recent news item that caught my eye was that, according to an article in the Lookout, at a Sept. 8 candidate forum all four Change Slate candidates (incumbents De la Torre and Phil Brock, and newcomers Vivian Roknian and John Putnam) indicated that they support changing from at-large elections to district elections. Wow; frankly, given the Supreme Court’s decision on districts, this would be a classic example of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory.

Voters have a lot of reasons for the choices they make when they vote; everyone has their issues and it’s probably usually a mistake to be a single-issue voter. But for me it will be hard to vote for anyone who wants to take away my right to vote for all seven councilmembers, which is what I have under at-large voting, given than my right to do so is not discriminatory. If district elections come to Santa Monica, my right and your right to vote for City Council will be reduced to one vote every four years.

Thanks for reading.

Better late than never

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I have been attending the endorsement conventions of Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) for decades. I joined the organization nearly 40 years ago. Even after I had resigned from SMRR when I was writing my column for the Lookout, I attended the conventions as a journalist. I rejoined SMRR when I quit the column to run for City Council. For all those years, until two years ago, it was frustrating. Starting in the late 80s the organization, which purportedly represented the interests of apartment renters, would include among its endorsements candidates who represented the anti-housing, anti-development, often anti-everything elements of Santa Monica politics. A purportedly progressive, renter-oriented organization promoted a homeowners’ association agenda and contributed to our chronic housing shortage.

Arguably, SMRR created the no-growth movement in Santa Monica politics. Certainly SMRR enabled it. Until 2020 no one supported by the anti-development faction in Santa Monica won election to the City Council without SMRR’s endorsement: Ken Genser, Kelly Olsen, Kevin McKeown, Richard Bloom, Mike Feinstein, Ted Winterer, Sue Himmelrich, all elected with SMRR support. Feinstein was defeated when he ran without SMRR’s endorsement 2004.

SMRR leadership contended it had to support candidates who represented anti-development groups like the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable City (SMCLC) to enable SMRR’s more progressive candidates to win. There was no evidence for this. Progressive candidates Paul Rosenstein (1996), Pam O’Connor (2014), and Terry O’Day (2016), won election without the SMRR endorsement. Candidates who were more conservative but not categorically opposed to development, such as Bob Holbrook, Herb Katz, and Bobby Shriver, also regularly won. But again, no anti-development candidate won without the SMRR endorsement until the election of 2020. Not only that, but all anti-development initiatives no-growthers put on the ballot, starting with the 1994 challenge to the Civic Center Specific Plan, lost, and a rare pro-affordable housing measure won when it was on the ballot. The anti’s never created an effective political organization. Instead they relied on SMRR. (Yet they always claimed at public meetings that they alone represented “the people.”)

That brings us to 2020, that fraught year of the pandemic and the disturbances after the murder of George Floyd. In that election the “Change Slate” ran on a platform of restoring order to Santa Monica. Development was not the main issue for the Change Slate, but SMCLC and other anti’s endorsed the four Change Slate candidates. That SMCLC abandoned SMRR should not have been a surprise, as the anti’s had previously turned on council members whom they had initially supported but who had voted for any development: examples are Richard Bloom, Ted Winterer and even Kevin McKeown, the anti’s long-time hero. In the election, three of the Change Slate candidates (but not the most anti-growth candidate they ran) won and incumbents previously endorsed by SMRR lost. (You can read my detailed analysis of the 2020 election here.)

No need to go into it here in detail, but the Change Slate council members, including Oscar de la Torre whose entire political career was enabled by SMRR, have shown not only that they don’t care anything about the progressive elements of the SMRR agenda, but also that they don’t take governing seriously. Aside their habitual unpreparedness that results among other things in meetings that go into the wee hours, the best example of their lack of seriousness was how they ignored the need to get a certified Housing Element and thus enabled Builders’ Remedy projects.

The Change Slate council members don’t even pretend to reflect Santa Monica’s overall liberalism. Recently at a council meeting Council Member Christine Parra referred to Gleam Davis, Zwick and Torosis as the council’s “liberal minority.” By implication Parra must consider herself part of a conservative majority.

Losing to the Change Slate in 2020 may turn out to have been the best thing that could have happened to SMRR and, by extension, to liberal politics in Santa Monica. That and the inevitability of generational change. Because finally the leadership of SMRR realized that they got nothing from their decades of support of the no-growthers—nothing but ingratitude, that is. When the 2022 election came around, SMRR endorsed three true progressives, all young: Caroline Torosis, Jesse Zwick and Ellis Raskin. They all would have won, but for the fact that a fourth terrific young progressive, Natalya Zernitskaya, also ran and she and Raskin split the vote for the third seat that year.

At the SMRR convention on Saturday, everything came together. The SMRR leadership, still dominated by Baby Boomers, finally recognized the generational change happening in the city’s politics. By necessity, they also recognized the organizing abilities of the new generation. Starting last year the progressive and mostly young organizers, who have their own organization, Santa Monica Forward, put together a slate of four candidates for the four seats being voted on this year: Dan Hall, Barry Snell, and now running together, Raskin and Zernitskaya.

The four candidates worked hard to come into the SMRR convention with important endorsements for the whole slate, including an extraordinary endorsement from eight former mayors who themselves had often disagreed with each other over development and other issues.

The SMRR endorsees after the convention, L-R, Dan Hall, Barry Snell, Natalya Zernitskaya and Ellis Raskin

There was a fifth candidate, Rent Board Chair Ericka Lesley, whom SMRR Co-Chair Denny Zane had at one point promoted. Ahead of the convention, however, Zane and the rest of SMRR leadership had backed off in the face of the inevitable. The SMRR Steering Committee endorsed all five candidates but recommended that the top four vote-getters get the endorsements and the fifth wait until 2026. That was a de facto endorsement of the slate. When the votes were counted, all four members of the slate received at least 100 of the 117 votes cast. As SMRR Co-Chair Patricia said, as quoted in the Lookout, “It may have been the easiest convention ever.”

At this point it is not known who of the Change Slate council members will run for reelection. But based on the 2022 election results, the Hall/Snell/Raskin/Zernitskaya slate have a good chance of taking three or even all four of the seats. The liberals only need to win two seats to regain a majority.

Thanks for reading.

When in Rome, do as Santa Monicans do: get inspired about building a park at Santa Monica Airport

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I was traveling in Italy earlier this month so thankfully I wasn’t around when the Santa Monica City Council had the mother of all nightmarish meetings. The meeting began the evening of Oct. 10, but the council was in closed session for hours and the public meeting didn’t start until late. Then the council stayed up until 4:00 a.m. to vote on what kind of public process to have for developing plans for when Santa Monica Airport closes at the end of 2028.

It was ugly. The “Make Santa Monica Great Again” crowd went way over-the-top crazy over a plan to expand public process by empowering a “grand jury” type group of randomly selected, but demographically representative residents to advise the City Council on what to do.

Staff had proposed the new plan after the council had directed it to do so, a fact ignored by some forgetful council members. The plan got caught up in anti-development paranoia, as MSMGA residents saw it as a plot to develop airport land. (This from the same residents who usually direct their paranoia at staff and City Council; one might think they would have more trust in 40 randomly-selected residents than the decision-makers they usually despise.) While the local outrage machine manufactured most of the hysteria, some was unfortunately stimulated by a staff report that seemed to forget that the default for the airport land is to turn it into a park in accordance with Measure LC. If you want to know more of the gory details, here are links to two articles in Santa Monica Next that unpack the false statements made against the plan: one from before the meeting and one from after.

There are lessons for everyone to learn.

For those worried about development at the airport, please – relax a little. However staff writes its reports, needing to sound evenhanded when it comes to alternatives, Measure LC still governs. No, a 40-person committee of randomly selected residents would not have had final decision-making authority over the airport land. Not even the City Council would have final authority if it wanted to propose something inconsistent with LC. Anything inconsistent with LC needs a vote of the people.

For those who want housing at the airport, take this over-reaction seriously even if it was not based on reality. This goes for staff, too, which may need to be agnostic about what happens at the airport, but which needs to be careful about the language it uses. The biggest danger to the future of the airport land is for the aviation industry to mount another initiative, like their Measure D in 2014, to stop the City from closing the airport. The biggest danger of such an initiative passing is if the aviation industry can whip up fear to persuade the anti-development element of Santa Monica politics that if the airport closes it will be replaced with development. Most anti-development residents live far enough from the airport that they don’t care if it closes.

Speaking for myself, as someone who for 30 years has pushed for Santa Monica to build more housing, the airport is simply not a good place for housing. Housers should look elsewhere. The airport land is never going to be convenient for transit or walking to shopping. Meanwhile, residents need parks, and every square foot of open land at the airport is a special and precious resource, purchased a century ago with a parks bond. While it would be possible, under LC, to convert existing structures into housing, those structures are better suited for what they are being used for now: offices that the City leases to businesses. The City will be able to use the revenues from the leases to build and operate the park. (See my prior blog on how to do this.) Affordable housing is needed in Santa Monica but it will not generate revenues to build a park – affordable housing needs its own subsidies.

My advice to housers who insist on locating housing at the airport: talk to the Santa Monica College (SMC) Board. SMC not only owns the Bundy Campus, but also owns land along Airport Avenue that is not subject to LC. Over the years, heedless of the impact on the local housing market, SMC has expanded by enrolling many international and other out-of-district students who need housing because they can’t or don’t live at home. SMC can build dormitories without parking for students, who can be connected to the SMC campus and to transit by SMC shuttles. They would thus neither add to traffic nor need a direct connection to transit.

My advice for the City Council, aside from not making decisions in the wee hours – please, help dial down the rhetoric, don’t amplify it. You are supposed to know better. The City is embarking on the biggest infrastructure project in its history. It is a great opportunity. It will not succeed if elected officials play into the fear game.

• • •

Meanwhile I want to report on something inspiring. When in Rome a couple of weeks ago I did what the Romans do – I took a long stroll in the Villa Borghese Gardens. The Villa Borghese is one of the great parks of Rome – of the world, in fact. Originally an aristocratic estate, built out over centuries, the government purchased the property in 1902 and turned it into a park.

A map of the Villa Borghese

How big is the Villa Borghese? About 198 acres, not too much bigger than the 160 or so acres of open land at Santa Monica Airport.

The Villa Borghese, in the middle of Rome

The Villa Borghese demonstrates that a great park need not be over-designed. Most of the park consists of winding paths through a landscape that is beautiful but, so far as I could tell, not irrigated. (The Roman climate is similar to ours.)

Playing fields at the Villa Borghese

Within the park are several museums, including the world famous Borghese Gallery and the Villa Giulia, Italy’s great Etruscan Museum. There is also a reconstruction of the Shakespeare’s Globe Theater, and a cinema, and Rome’s zoo. There are playing fields and playgrounds. But in no way does the park feel cramped or over-programmed – 198 acres is a lot of land (as is 160).

Families in pedal-powered carts roam the park.

There are a number of lessons to learn from the Villa Borghese. As I already said, but I’ll repeat it, a great park need not be over-designed. When it comes to the Airport Great Park, let’s keep it simple, and get it built. As I wrote in my previously-mentioned earlier blog, establish a budget first and stick to it.

And, yes it’s Rome, and you can get a snack.

Another lesson is that great parks can evolve over time. The Villa Borghese has evolved over centuries. Let’s get a basic version of the Airport Great Park built, and let future generations make decisions about whether they want to add features.

Thanks for reading.

Final thoughts on the voting rights case: there’s no right without a remedy

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To summarize my previous two posts about the California Supreme Court’s decision in the Santa Monica voting rights case, it seems that:

(i) To prove that an at-large voting system unlawfully discriminates against a protected class of voters under the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA), plaintiffs must prove (A) that racially polarized voting exists among both the protected class and the white majority; and (B) that the at-large system dilutes the political power of the protected class compared to what would be the case under a lawful alternative system;

(ii) If the proposed alternative is district elections, plaintiffs do not need to show that protected class voters need to be numerous enough and geographically compacted enough to be collected in a majority or near-majority district;

(iii) A proposed system would not be a reasonable alternative if it reduces the overall electoral power of all members of the protected class, regardless whether they would live within districts established to enhance the voting power of the protected class; and

(iv) Determining whether a valid CVRA claim exists entails a “searching evaluation” of the “totality of the facts and circumstances” in the jurisdiction where the case arises.

If you have read my first two posts on the case, you know that I do not believe, based on the facts and circumstances, that racially polarized voting exists in Santa Monica; and that therefore the Court of Appeal should dismiss the case. Furthermore, even if the plaintiffs can prove racially polarized voting, if the proposed remedy is district elections, then dilution cannot be proved because district elections would weaken the overall political power of Latinos in Santa Monica. If the only possible remedy is districts, then the Court of Appeal should dismiss even if it finds that there is racially polarized voting in Santa Monica.

However, what would be the case if plaintiffs can prove racially polarized voting and there are remedies other than district elections? It is under this scenario, which may or may not be the case in Santa Monica depending on whether there is a finding that racially polarized voting exists, that the court broke new ground and extended the possibilities of the CVRA.

When it comes to remedies for when an at-large system dilutes the political power of a protected class, the CVRA specifically refers to only one, district elections, but it leaves open the possibility that courts can be creative and find others. Here is the language from the statute: “[u]pon a finding of a violation [of the law] the court shall implement appropriate remedies, including the imposition of district-based elections, that are tailored to remedy the violation.”

The meat of the court’s decision revolves around the possibility of “tailoring” such remedies. In doing so, the court implicitly shows skepticism that district elections would work in many jurisdictions where majority-minority districts cannot be drawn (even as the court holds that under the CVRA it is not necessary for plaintiffs to show that majority-minority districts can be drawn). As if to counterbalance that skepticism, the court emphasizes the possibility of other remedies that counteract dilution of the protected class’s political power, but preserve at-large voting. (At least as evidenced by this article, the voting rights legal community seems to be seeing this decision by the California Supreme Court as a major milestone in voting rights jurisprudence because of its focus on alternative remedies. The case reminds me of an adage you hear constantly in law school: “there’s no right without a remedy.”)  

The court repeatedly mentions three voting systems that courts might use to remedy voter discrimination: cumulative voting (whereby voters can allocate some or all their votes to favored candidates); limited voting (whereby a voter has fewer votes than there are candidates to elect); or ranked choice voting (voters rank candidates in order of preference, and votes are added to candidates’ totals until candidates achieve majorities).

From the perspective of a potential plaintiff in a CVRA case, the court “taketh away and giveth.” On one hand, the court has made it more difficult to prove discrimination because by making dilution “comparative” it has made proving dilution more difficult, but on the other it has expanded potential remedies to give plaintiffs reasonable alternatives against which to judge an existing system. The court also took a more expansive view of political power, consistent with language in the CVRA, recognizing that the goal of CVRA litigation can be to enhance the power of protected classes through the use of alliances and coalitions even when electing members of the class is problematic, such as in jurisdictions where protected classes are small minorities or dispersed geographically.

While the court pointedly expresses no view about whether plaintiffs in Santa Monica have proven the elements of a CVRA case, and sends that determination back to the Court of Appeal, it seems as if the court is suggesting to the lower court that if it finds those essential elements, it could end the case by imposing an alternative other than district elections.

What about a settlement? This case has gone on a long time and cost the City a lot of money. I suspect that a reform like ranked choice voting would be popular among Santa Monicans. Many of us have been watching how ranked choice voting in places like Alaska has led to more moderate candidates being elected. Perhaps the City could agree to that and settle the case.

There are, however, obstacles to a settlement. One is attorneys’ fees. If the plaintiffs can win the case, proving racially polarized voting and dilution (compared to a remedy), then the City would be on the hook for what are now many millions of dollars in attorneys’ fees. The City is unlikely to agree to pay those fees if it still has a good chance of persuading the Court of Appeal to dismiss the case. There is also the question whether to settle a lawsuit the City can agree to amend its charter, something that would normally require a vote of the people.

For these reasons, I am not optimistic that the case will be settled. The next act of this drama will probably play out in the Court of Appeal.

Thanks for reading.

Next question: does racially polarized voting exist in Santa Monica?

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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 is to do what the court said was necessary: to undertake a fact-specific and “intensely local” evaluation of (i) whether a violation of the CVRA potentially occurred, and if so, (ii) whether a remedy can be tailored so that the remedy does not make the protected class “worse off.”

To prove a violation of the CVRA a plaintiff must prove (i) that “racially polarized voting” exists and (ii) that an at-large voting system dilutes the votes of a protected class of voters. In the Santa Monica case, the trial court determined that racially polarized voting existed, but the Court of Appeal never evaluated that determination. It dismissed the case without ruling whether racially polarized voting existed because it found that the plaintiffs did not prove dilution and that was enough to dismiss the case. As discussed in my previous blog, the California Supreme Court rejected the Court of Appeal’s interpretation of “dilution,” sending the case back to the Court of Appeal to consider both whether the plaintiffs showed that voting in Santa Monica was racially polarized, and whether, under the standard the court articulated in its opinion, dilution had occurred. Again, plaintiffs need to prove both polarized voting and dilution.

“Racially polarized voting” is a term that the CVRA defines with reference to case law under the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA). This is legislative malpractice: appellate decisions themselves need to be interpreted and case law changes. The legislature could have done everyone a favor by defining the term in the text of the law itself. I am not an expert on that VRA case law and therefore if you skip the next section of this blog, go ahead, as my views might have nothing to do with how the Court of Appeal will analyze the issue. However, I have been a close observer and participant in Santa Monica politics for more than 30 years and I can say with confidence that racial and ethnic identities play a minor role in Santa Monica elections.

Over the past 40 years many Latinos have been elected to office in Santa Monica. True, as the plaintiffs pointed out in their pleadings, until recently few had been elected to the Santa Monica City Council, but many had been elected to the boards of the school district and Santa Monica College. The frequent election of Latinos began when Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) began running slates of candidates in the 1980’s. SMRR’s inclusionary tactics were a great example of how political communities (not only racial or ethnic communities, but also communities of interest, such as renters) that might not be able to win elections on their own can do so if they form alliances. This use of “crossover” voters is something that the court in its decision referred to as a reason not to require majority-minority districts in the definition of “dilution,” but crossover voting and coalitions also bespeak a lack of racially polarized voting, because coalitions prioritize issues.

A great example of the power of alliances in Santa Monica is the career of City Council Member Oscar de la Torre, who is, incidentally, the husband of Maria Loya, one of the plaintiffs in the current case. De la Torre was elected many times to the school district board as a SMRR-endorsed candidate. He ran for City Council in 2016 without SMRR support and lost. In 2020, however, after making new alliances, and joining the “Change Slate,” he won. So, tell me: when De la Torre won election to the school board with SMRR backing, voting in Santa Monica was not racially polarized; when he lost for City Council without SMRR backing, voting was polarized; but then when he won as part of the Change Slate, voting was not polarized?

Alliances with non-Latino voters have enhanced the power of the Latino community. These alliances were effective because Latinos, like all Santa Monicans, get to vote for all seven councilmembers. Candidates wherever they live need to pay attention to the needs of the Latino community.

De la Torre himself became a power broker in SMRR, bringing groups of constituents to the SMRR conventions to vote on endorsements. They were joined by other heavily Latino organizations, most notably the hotel workers union, Unite Here. SMRR-dominated city councils adopted policies that reflected these constituencies. Rent control and other tenant protections, such as anti-Ellis Act laws, benefited Latino renters. Pro-union policies benefited Latino workers. Support for affordable housing benefited Latino working families. Social and after-school programs, a new branch library, and new parks in the Pico Neighborhood; these and other progressive policies came about because of liberal coalition politics.

The Latino community in Santa Monica is itself divided over the same issues that divide the city as a whole: development, housing, homelessness, crime, etc. Arguably De la Torre became electable to City Council when he dropped his anti-police politics and joined the law-and-order Change Slate. De la Torre’s ethnicity didn’t change, only his politics. Not long before the 2020 election he received a late but timely endorsement from the anti-development group Santa Monicans for a Livable City when he expressed opposition to the proposed development at Fourth and Arizona and to development agreements.

To show in a voting rights case that racially polarized voting exists plaintiffs need to show that it exists in both directions, among the protected class and among the white majority. Anyone who has observed (or participated in) Santa Monica politics knows that the majority white population is (often bitterly) divided, and not over racial or ethnic issues.

Again, I don’t know if my practical analysis of Santa Monica politics would necessarily persuade a court looking at VRA precedents that racially polarized voting does not exist as a matter of law in Santa Monica. But a determination that there is racially polarized voting in Santa Monica would elevate form over substance.

If plaintiffs can prove the existence of racially polarized voting, then that brings on the second element that plaintiffs in a CRVA case need to prove: dilution. For reasons discussed in my previous blog, dilution requires that the remedy, the alternative to the existing system, must not make things worse for the protected class overall. (Remember, dilution “compared to what?”)

Whether this problem with the remedy would exist depends, needless to say, on the remedy. The CVRA case in Santa Monica has been all about replacing the at-large system with districts. With respect to districts, the court held that if the proposed remedy is to convert an at-large electoral system to districts, the plaintiffs “must show not merely that the protected class would have a real electoral opportunity in one or more hypothetical districts, but also that the incremental gain in the class’s ability to elect its candidate of choice in such districts would not be offset by a loss of the class’s potential to elect its candidates of choice elsewhere in the locality.” (Emphasis added.) This is particularly relevant in a jurisdiction like Santa Monica where the population of the protected class is a small portion of the whole. If you concentrate that population in one district—in Santa Monica, one of seven—the protected class will lose power in the other districts given that candidates will have many fewer constituents who are of the protected class.

Under the best district map the plaintiffs could come up with, most Latinos in Santa Monica would live outside the “Latino district.” Meaning that to give a minority of the city’s Latino population the ability to vote for one councilmember every four years in one district where Latinos comprised 30 percent of voters, they and all other Santa Monica voters, including all other Latino voters, would lose the right to vote for seven councilmembers over two election cycles. Would this be a fair trade? A trade that increases Latino voting power?

There is no way that district elections will enhance Latino electoral power in Santa Monica. However, the court’s decision emphasized the availability of other remedies besides districts. Looks like I’ll need a part 3 to discuss the implications of those possibilities.

Thanks for reading.

Santa Monica and the California Voting Rights Act: the case continues

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The California Voting Rights Act (CVRA) case brought by lawyer Kevin Shenkman on behalf of plaintiffs the Pico Neighborhood Association and Maria Loya against the City of Santa Monica has been in the courts for seven years. The long-anticipated decision this week by the California Supreme Court did not end it. While the court reversed the lower appellate court’s ruling in favor of the City, it also rejected the plaintiffs’ interpretation of the CVRA. The court therefore neither reinstated the trial court’s decision in favor of the plaintiffs that called for splitting Santa Monica into seven city council districts nor affirmed the dismissal of the case by the Court of Appeal. Instead the Supreme Court told the Court of Appeal to reconsider the City’s appeal based on the court’s decision interpreting crucial language in the CVRA. The court did not send the case back to the trial court for additional proceedings.

From reading the opinion it seems clear that the Supreme Court had to take the case because the court had never explicated the CVRA. Many CVRA cases have been brought, often by attorney Shenkman, against cities with at-large elections, but Santa Monica was the first with the resources and the will to defend its at-large system. Like it or not, this was the first opportunity the California Supreme Court had to interpret the CVRA; in the court’s words, the case presented definitional questions that were “a pure question of law that we review de novo.”

The CVRA uses terms that it did not define, and the meanings of those terms were particularly ambiguous because of overlap with provisions of the federal Voting Rights Act. Specifically, there were three terms that the court said it needed to interpret: (i) “dilution,” and the ability (ii) “to elect candidates of [a protected class’s] choice” or to (iii) “influence the outcome of an election.” The terms are used in this provision of the CVRA: “An at-large method of election may not be imposed or applied in a manner that impairs the ability of a protected class to elect candidates of its choice or its ability to influence the outcome of an election, as a result of the dilution or the abridgment of the rights of voters who are members of a protected class.” The court disagreed with both the plaintiffs and the City when it came to defining these terms.

The disagreement with the plaintiffs was over dilution. Plaintiffs contended that to prove dilution of voting rights, they only needed to show the existence of racially polarized voting. (“Racially polarized voting” is a defined term in the CVRA; for now just consider it to mean that voters both within and without a protected class vote in accordance with racial or ethnic categories—think Mississippi, for instance. Under the CVRA, a finding of racially polarized voting is a prerequisite for a court to order a remedy such as district elections.) The court did not agree. The court ruled that in addition to showing racially polarized voting, to prove dilution plaintiffs need to be able to compare the existing system to a benchmark consisting of an achievable alternative. In other words, dilution is not an absolute: it is always, dilution compared to what? The court said that dilution under the CVRA cannot be proven unless plaintiffs can identify a “reasonable alternative voting practice.” The court did not accept the trial court’s decision to impose districts as such an alternative.

However, the court did not agree with the Court of Appeal’s definition of the ability “to elect candidates of [the protected class’s] choice,” and thus reversed that court’s dismissal of the case. The Court of Appeal’s mistake was to apply the standard the U.S. Supreme Court has applied to the federal Voting Rights Act (VRA). This standard requires that if plaintiffs want to dismantle a voting system that dilutes a protected class’s voting power with districts (or redrawn districts), they have to show that the protected class is “sufficiently large and geographically compact” to make up a majority in a voting district—a so-called majority-minority district. This is something the plaintiffs in Santa Monica could not do. The Latino population in Santa Monica is only 14 percent of the whole and it is distributed widely enough so that the highest concentration that could be achieved in a district was 30 percent.

However, the U.S. Supreme Court rule for the VRA does not apply to the CVRA, which explicitly states that geographic compactness is not necessary to prove a violation (although it may affect the available remedies). The California Supreme Court ruled that the Court of Appeal erred not only because the CVRA explicitly dispensed with the majority requirement, but also because the CVRA applies specifically to at-large, non-partisan elections, where candidates are often elected with less than a majority. (As has often been the case in Santa Monica.) The court pointed out that notwithstanding that the parties in the Santa Monica case had focused on district elections, the trial court had found that there were alternative voting systems other than district elections available to “enhance Latino voting power.” Specifically these alternatives were cumulative voting, limited voting, and ranked choice voting. None of these systems require a straightforward majority vote for a candidate to win, and therefore the court held that importing the VRA’s majority-minority requirement was not appropriate under the CVRA. (Note that district elections, typically after a top-two primary, usually require a majority to win election.)

The court’s analysis did not end, however, with its finding that the Court of Appeal applied the wrong standard on the majority-minority question. In fact, that is where the court began its analysis of how to apply the CVRA, because that is where the court began to connect dilution (remember, “compared to what”) with the ability to elect candidates or influence the outcome of elections. The court held that while plaintiffs do not need to show the VRA standard of a majority-minority district, plaintiffs have the “burden” to identify a proposed lawful alternative system that creates the potential to elect candidates and improve a protected class’s overall political power. While there are various ways to show this potential, the court emphasized systems like cumulative or ranked choice voting. According to sources the court cited, these systems have the potential to allow communities to elect representatives with less than a majority of votes.

The court ruled that to determine these potentialities, and any potential remedies, courts had to appraise the specific facts and circumstances present in a given locality. These include not only the number of voters in the protected class, but also the potentiality for forming alliances with “crossover voters,” and whether there is in fact racially polarized voting.

In a “part 2” to this blog later this week, I’ll consider how the facts and circumstances in Santa Monica might be thus analyzed.

Thanks for reading.

To build a great park, start with a budget

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It has been a few weeks since the Santa Monica City Council voted to begin planning a great park to replace Santa Monica airport, and I have been thinking about how best to do it.

As the staff report prepared for the City Council says, the right first step is to evaluate all aspects of the site, including environmental conditions, infrastructure, transportation, cultural assets, etc.

However, beyond that evaluation I am concerned that in the interest of planning something for the ages, the process may deliver a plan that makes it harder or even impossible to build something in the near term. Everyone loves to quote Daniel Burnham’s “make no little plans,” but Santa Monica has not had success in recent years realizing “big plans.” Consider the 2010 LUCE, or the Bergamot Station plan, or the Fourth and Arizona plan, or the abortive planning for the Civic Auditorium site. Going back further, consider the 1994 Civic Center plan, which was approved overwhelmingly by the voters, but then scaled back and only partially implemented.

What typically happens is that the City begins a planning process by hiring consultants to run it. The consultants research the issue and organize lots of outreach. The consultants present their research and analysis and receive all kinds of visions from the public. The Planning Commission usually oversees the process, sometimes in consultation with other commissions. There are many hearings, spread out over years.

Ultimately the consultants write up a beautiful plan. (The plans often win awards.) There are more commission hearings. Then the City Council approves the plan after extensive hearings of its own, often with substantial modifications.

But when it comes time to implement the plan, all that will get thrown out the window when a vocal contingent, who either ignored the process or didn’t get what they wanted, objects. The council, whose members may have changed during the (many) years it took to develop the plan, backs down and doesn’t approve anything to be built, or scales the plan down drastically. (Note to those council members who admonished staff to devise an open and inclusive planning process: no process can be inclusive enough to include those who are going to oppose the plan no matter what.)

I am concerned that the same fate could befall plans for the great park on the airport land.

My fear is that the process will put design first (“no little plans”), and budget second, resulting in a plan that is doomed from the start. You see this lurking as a major concern in the staff report, which is full of worries about how the new park will be financed. We should not be building Tongva Park at 30 times the scale, yet I suspect that is where we will end up once everyone says what they want.

This concerns me because (A), I want to see a park built in my lifetime (and I’m 70!), and (B), I know that the aviation industry is waiting to jump in with a ballot measure to preserve the airport if they see confusion and worry about the park and if they can scare the public into thinking nothing will be built unless there is hyper development to fund it.

A poster from the 2014 campaign to defeat the aviation industry’s plan to make the airport permanent.

These worries about financing the park are unnecessary. Santa Monica already has enough money to build a fine park. The airport properties generate $20 million a year in income for the City, mostly from non-aviation businesses that lease office space in buildings that the City owns. The City has owned these buildings forever but until 2015 they were under the control of aviation businesses that subleased to non-aviation businesses. So long as the airport functions as an airport, these rents can only be used at the airport. Once the airport closes, they will be available to fund a park.

The staff report suggests the need for public/private partnerships, which is bound to scare residents concerned about development. The City, however, already has a lucrative public/private partnership: the public part is the City’s ownership of the land and the buildings, and the private part is the revenue the City receives from its lessees.

How much money does the City have already to build a park? Let’s assume that there is $20 million a year to work with. (This amount will increase when aviation uses are replaced by businesses that pay higher rents, and because of inflation, but let’s deal with today’s numbers.) If the City issues a 20-year $200 million revenue bond at 3% interest (typical for a municipal bond), the annual payment to amortize it would be approximately $14 million. That would leave $6 million a year for maintenance of the park.

Meaning, that without raising any more money, Santa Monica has $200 million to build a park and $6 million a year to maintain it. Note that the City would not have this money but for the fact that it is closing the airport, meaning that the money does not deplete some other line item in the City’s budget. (The City will also have accumulated significant cash from these leases by the time the airport closes, but the disposition of these funds depends on negotiations with the Federal Aviation Administration. To be conservative I am not including them in my calculations.)

If by 2028 there are additional committed funds, such as from other governmental agencies for environmental clean-up, or transportation or other infrastructure, or from philanthropic donors, then those funds can be added to the pot. When the City Council next visits this topic, however, it should direct staff to plan for a park that costs no more than the money that can be raised from a revenue bond or is otherwise committed. Nothing speculative.

This doesn’t mean that the future park would be limited to this amount. Parks evolve over time, and you never know what other governmental funds (county, state or federal), or philanthropy, might become available in the future. The City, however, must begin the process with a plan it knows it can realize with the money it has. The City should tell residents, that no matter what fears the aviation industry arouses, the City can have a groundbreaking for a fully-financed park on Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2029. (See you there!)

In other words, keep it simple. I was impressed with something Mayor Gleam Davis said in her recent State of the City address, namely: “We can accomplish great things but only if we spend our limited time and resources in a disciplined and targeted way. If we let ourselves get distracted, we set ourselves up for failure.” That should be the footnote when anyone quotes Burnham.

Thanks for reading.

Legacy time in Santa Monica

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“All politics is temporal” is not as well known a phrase as “all politics is local,” but in these times I suspect it is more accurate. Voting has become more nationalized, but elections seem more and more to turn on voters’ immediate fears.  

Yet we best measure the achievements of governments in the long term because the success of government matches the success of society. Did we establish systems to feed, cloth, house, educate, and care for everyone? Did we protect the environment? Did we make our localities and the world a safer place for all? Did we build the bridges we need both physically and metaphorically? (One bright note, however, is that our oldest president ever is focused on building infrastructure for the future.)

I bring up the long term because at the Santa Monica City Council meeting Tuesday evening city staff will ask the council to begin a process the fruits of which will likely be harvested after many if not all the councilmembers have completed their tenures on the council. But fruits that will, if our civilization otherwise survives, be a legacy from our generation to those of centuries to come.

I am referring to a great park at the current site of the Santa Monica Airport.

Delayed almost three years by the pandemic, staff will ask City Council for authorization and funding to begin a process with the goal of having a shovel-ready plan ready when the City closes the airport on January 1, 2029, the earliest date the City can close the airport under the City’s 2017 agreement with the Federal Aviation Administration that settled the numerous then pending court cases and administrative actions between the City and the FAA. (Since entering the FAA agreement, council has voted to close the airport.)

I urge everyone, especially those who are new to the airport history, to read the staff report for Tuesday’s meeting. Then click on Attachment P to download and read a more detailed “Airport Conversion Report” that consultants prepared in March 2020 as part of the general update to the City’s Parks and Recreation Master Plan. Because of the pandemic, staff never published or delivered the report to City Council.

One schematic from the Airport Conversion Report

Regarding the history of the airport and the efforts to close it, I have written many posts over the years trying to explain the twists and turns. By way of disclosure, not only have I written about converting the airport to a park, but also, I am on the board of the Santa Monica Airport2Park Foundation, and I helped organize the campaign to win approval of Measure LC in 2014. This blog, however, is not written on behalf of the foundation or any other group.

Ahh, Measure LC. “LC” for local control. Under a 1984 agreement with the FAA the City had the right to close the airport in 2015, but as 2015 approached the FAA repudiated the deal. (Observing how the FAA functioned was the first time I had any comprehension of the hatred that some businesspeople have for “government regulators.”) The City fought back against the FAA. Fearing the FAA could lose in court, the aviation industry decided to make an end run around City Council with a ballot measure that would have perpetuated the airport. Once their paid signature gatherers had collected enough signatures to put their measure on the ballot, City Council responded with Measure LC. LC would perpetuate the City’s control over the airport, but mandate voter approval of any use of land removed from aviation purposes other than for parks and recreation. The City won when the voters passed LC with a 60-40 vote in 2014.

An artifact from the battle against the aviation industry in 2014.

The staff report and the 2020 report cover a lot of ground in terms of alternatives not only for what kinds of parks are possible, but also for how to pay for the park. It’s too early in the process to go into the substantive issues in depth, but there are a few points I want to make as the process begins.

• Don’t ever be discouraged. It’s not a walk in the park to build a great park, but we have the most important element: the land. Land worth conservatively $2 billion. Land that could never be assembled again on the Westside of L.A. for any purpose, particularly a public one. We also have time. The park’s final design and construction do not need to come all at once like Athena from the head of Zeus, but can evolve and take place, and be paid for, over decades. During the planning process, there will be furious arguments among equally well-intentioned people. That’s normal. Again, don’t be discouraged.

• Santa Monica is not a big city, but it has shown that it can do big things. Santa Monica operates Santa Monica State Beach, possibly the busiest beach in the country. It built the Annenberg Beach House with major philanthropic support. Forty years ago, it rebuilt the Pier. Santa Monica voters are public-spirited. Our local community college, which owns land adjacent to the airport, and our school district, have raised hundreds of millions of dollars with bond issues. Santa Monica voters have supported bonds for libraries and other public purposes. In addition, there are revenue streams currently flowing from the airport ($20 million/year according to the staff report) that could support revenue bonds and pay for maintenance and operations. (These revenues come from non-aviation sources.)

• Don’t ever let this become a fight between two goods, parks and housing, which are not in conflict but complement each other. The open land at the airport is irreplaceable and is needed to provide open space and recreation for the population of a more dense, post-sprawl city. There is room around that open land, in the already built-up parts of the airport land and in the adjacent business park, for housing, if that’s what the process yields. But a fight between park builders and housers will only help those who don’t want either. Which brings me to my most important point:

• Be prepared: the aviation industry is probably not done with us. As the process continues, and 2029 approaches, expect that at some point the industry will attack with another ballot measure. No doubt they will base their attack on fear of whatever is being considered – whatever it is. Again, good people are going to argue during the process of planning for the airport land. Let’s not let our arguments give fuel to those few who want this multi-billion-dollar public asset to remain in effect their property.

• Remember: this is our legacy, our bequest to the future.

Thanks for reading.

Will advertising come to the streets of Santa Monica?

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Congratulations to Lana Negrete, Caroline Torosis and Jesse Zwick on their election to City Council, and congratulations to Gleam Davis and Phil Brock on the council’s choosing them to share mayoral duties for the next two years. Congrats too, to Negrete for being chosen as Mayor Pro Tem.

While I am in the congratulations business, let me make up for something I should have noted in my recent post on the election as more evidence of how liberal the Santa Monica electorate still is. Congratulations to outgoing Mayor Sue Himmelrich on passage of her Measure GS, which will increase the transfer tax on sales of properties of $8 million or more to fund schools, homelessness prevention, and affordable housing.

But now to business. Tomorrow night the City Council will consider awarding a 20-year franchise, worth tens of millions, possibly hundreds of millions, of dollars, to a company, BIG Outdoor (BIG), to construct and operate up to 50 kiosks on plazas, sidewalks and other public real estate throughout the city. These kiosks will be interactive, so that passersby can access information about “wayfinding” and local businesses and government services. They can also use the kiosks to call for services (like the police or services for homeless people in distress) or take selfies. They will also be Wi-Fi hotspots. Think of a kiosk as a giant smartphone.

The main purpose of the kiosks, however, will be advertising. As a corollary to that, the main purpose from the City’s point of view is generating revenue. This program got rolling in 2019 when City Council directed staff to investigate raising money through public-private partnerships as an alternative to raising taxes and fees.

Whether in 2019 the City in fact needed the money, since notwithstanding years of fretting about future deficits the City had accumulated a huge reserve, was a good question. But that question became moot when Covid hit. The City fell into a real budget crisis as we learned how much our City’s budget depended on tourism. In June 2020, in the depths of the post-Covid financial debacle, the council authorized a study to evaluate the use of advertising, naming rights, and sponsorships to raise money. This led in December 2021 to the City’s release of a Request for Proposals (RFP) for a kiosk program that would combine “digital wayfinding” with advertising.

Santa Monica has a long history of limiting off-site advertising. Because of laws passed decades ago you don’t see billboards in Santa Monica other than a few old ones. New signs for businesses need to be part of their business’s building. Standalone signs (“pole signs”), other than those deemed “meritorious,” were all supposed to be removed more than 20 years ago. The City sells ads on buses and trash trucks and made a deal with Hulu to pay for the Breeze bike-sharing program, but that’s about it for commercialization of City property.

Santa Monica historically has had among the highest per capita tax receipts in California. Now, like British aristocrats renting out the country manor to America tourists, Santa Monica trying to make a buck wherever it can. It’s going to be in the position of telling property owners that they cannot put third-party advertisements on their properties, but the City can have them on its. Sic transit whatever.

I am not opposed to off-site advertising, but like all economic activity it needs rules and limits. I heartily support Santa Monica’s ban on off-site ads, but I love Times Square and Sunset Boulevard, too. There are times and places for everything including advertisements. A few years ago, I advocated for the City to use “off the rack” bus shelters that would be paid for by advertising, rather than design and build its own “special for Santa Monica” bus shelters. (We know how that turned out.)

Advertising can be art. For sure it communicates. There is a long and glorious history of poster art on city streets. Think of kiosks in Paris, or here’s a photo I took in Rome in 1973.

Okay, I like this picture of the couple talking. But note the posters.

I am told that the genesis for the current kiosk plan was the need to replace the existing kiosks on the Promenade. Replacing the existing kiosks with interactive kiosks would make sense. As would placing kiosks in similar locations such as near the entrance to the Pier, or where Ocean Park Boulevard intersects the beach. Places where there is a lot of space and a lot of tourists.

Old kiosk on Promenade. Due to be upgraded.

But dropping them in on regular sidewalks? I don’t know. Because these kiosks can be big. Here’s a schematic from BIG’s presentation of a large kiosk:

The size of the kiosks should be geared to pedestrians who approach the kiosks, not to the eyeballs in passing cars. And please, no videos. Let’s not take the next step to a “Minority Report” streetscape.

The council hearing tomorrow night is shaping up as a battle between BIG, which had in staff’s view the best proposal in response to the RFP, and the company, IKE Smart City (IKE), that staff rated in second place. IKE has informed the City that it will file a protest if the City awards the franchise to BIG, and in that connection IKE has a few points to make. The main one is that IKE, as opposed to BIG, has experience operating interactive kiosks connected to local networks. BIG is known for operating digital billboards that are not interactive, but it has on its team a company with experience with such software.

I should note that IKE not only has announced that it will protest if the City awards the franchise to BIG, but also has threatened legal action against BIG for infringement of trademarks, patents, and copyrights. I have no opinion about any of that. Nor am I qualified to opine on the tech issues. However one aspect of the BIG proposal that concerns me is that BIG pledges to have local architects design a special kiosk for Santa Monica. I love our local architects, but let’s remember what happened with the bus shelters when the council said Santa Monica had to be special. Santa Monica is not that special. For kiosks, the important design issue is size. Keep them as small as possible.)

Staff rated BIG’s proposal as best because it was way better financially. BIG went beyond the RFP, and offered a signing bonus of $4 million, predicted high future revenues, and guaranteed the City a minimum annual payment of $5 million against 50% of adjusted gross revenues. You can understand why staff focused on the money if you recall that this whole thing started when City Council asked staff to research how to raise funds without raising taxes or fees.

Over the term of the franchise, 20 years at least, BIG’s financial deal is considerably better than IKE’s. But this may turn out to be a problem tomorrow night: the City’s consultants, a company called Superlative, “question[ed] the feasibility” of BIG’s projection. Superlative raised this question in its final report, which was only delivered to the City last Wednesday. Superlative said that the offer was “clearly an outlier when compared to the other bidders’ proposals as well as Superlative’s revenue forecast.” For their part, representatives for BIG say that they can guarantee the big bucks because only they understand how lucrative the advertising market is in Santa Monica, because they operate the only digital billboards in Santa Monica, those in Santa Monica Place.

A BIB digital billboard at Santa Monica Place.

What bothers me is the process. The City Council is supposed to make this major decision—a 20-year franchise to use city sidewalks to sell ads—but the staff’s reports and presentations have amounted to staff’s promotion of BIG and BIG alone, because staff judged BIG to have best proposal for its financial package. In effect, staff’s recommendation becomes a council decision. At a minimum, the council should see all the information in the bids from both companies, get to ask questions of both companies’ reps, and see their products in operation. In Superlative’s report issued last week, Superlative advises more vetting of the proposals. Consider also, that of the current members of City Council, only Gleam Davis was on the council when this process started.

At the meeting on Jan. 26, 2021, when the council authorized staff to issue the RFP, then Council Member Kevin McKeown asked the maker of the motion, now Mayor Davis, if her motion included the reservations he had expressed that the kiosks not be too heavy on advertising. Davis assured him that it did. But there is no indication, other than language in the RFP saying that the kiosks must have blue lights to show that they are available for emergencies, that the public will know that these kiosks are interactive. Otherwise, it seems they will look like electronic billboards.

The City’s RFP says that the “advertising policy for the kiosks will need to be approved by the City Council before the franchise agreement is awarded.” Yet there is no advertising policy in the draft ordinance awarding the franchise. The RFP has language stating that the City will not allow certain categories of advertisements, but none of that is in the ordinance. Nor do the staff reports include any analysis of the First Amendment issues, even though those issues are flagged in the RFP.

The council should slow this decision down. Let’s get both bidders to answer questions. The council members had better be comfortable with the decision they make, because if things go wrong, they will be blamed for it.

Thanks for reading.