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City Hall calls for cuts, increased fees to balance budget

CITY HALL — Life in Santa Monica could get more expensive for residents, visitors and businesses as City Hall works to close a potential $13.2 million budget gap that looms within the next four years without cutting services residents have come to expect. The City Council will get its first crack at proposals next week, which include new programs that officials hope will net $1.1 million as well as increased fees that could bring in $1.45 million in new revenue. [...]
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Featured Government News
UC hospitals say patients safe despite strike

LOS ANGELES — Thousands of workers at University of California medical centers began a two-day strike on Tuesday that prompted the postponement of dozens of surgeries amid reassurances that patients were safe. A union representing some 13,000 hospital pharmacists, nursing assistants, operating room scrubs and other health care workers began the walkout at 4 a.m. at medical facilities in San Diego, Orange, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, San Francisco and Sacramento. Nurses were not on strike, emergency rooms were open, and about 450 [...]
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Featured News
Softball: Rout ends Pacifica Christian’s surprising season

CLOVER PARK — Pacifica Christian was just bounced from the playoffs 12-0 at the hands of Academy for Academic Excellence, but there wasn’t a long face to be found. Instead of pouting over the loss in the second round of the CIF-Southern Section Division 7 softball playoffs on Tuesday at Clover Park, the Seawolves came together for one last cheer before packing it up for the off-season. The first-year team exceeded everybody’s expectations, including those of head coach Mike Dolan. [...]
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Featured High School Sports
Rockers help raise $125K for arts

Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame inductee Jackson Browne headlined the 10th annual Artists for the Arts benefit concerts this past weekend at Santa Monica High School’s Barnum Hall, helping to raise $125,000 for arts programs. Browne shared the stage with fellow rock icon Gary Wright, known for “Dreamweaver” and other classic rock hits, and local rock band Venice, a touring group with more than 20 years playing with some of the biggest names in music, officials with the Santa [...]
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Education Featured News Public
Experiencing death too soon

“I saw a man die,” Amina says as she explains why she’s not smiling in her passport photo. We are sitting in the teenager’s modest living room — which doubles as a bedroom and dining room — in Damascus, to where she and her family fled after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. I have joined Abdullah, whom I met in Baghdad in 2003 just before the war, and his teenage daughters at their spotless, spare two-bedroom flat that they share [...]
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Columns Opinion
Legislature’s assault on Prop. 13 begins

Last week we alerted California taxpayers as to the immediate threats to Proposition 13 being heard by a California legislative committee. As fully anticipated, the Senate Committee on Governance and Finance approved all six of the anti-Prop. 13 proposals. All of the bills in question would gut one of the most important provisions of Proposition 13 — the two-thirds vote requirement for additional “add on” parcel taxes. These “add on” parcel and bond taxes are on top of the property [...]
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Columns Opinion The Tax Man
Letter: Clogged by commercial greed

Editor: I am more than a long-time Santa Monica resident. I was born in Santa Monica Hospital, as was my father and my brother. My family has remained here for over a century because of the lifestyle it provides. Yes, growth is a natural aspect and we’ve all seen the steep rise in foreign visitors, which helps our local economy. But I’m stating the obvious to point out that what now attracts those visitors and dollars is threatened when access [...]
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Letters Opinion
Letter: Santa Monica’s Trump Tower

Editor: We’ve already lost our beach town. If the Miramar expansion goes through, it will be for the residents living around the Miramar, their worst nightmare. One of my friends living near Sixth Street and Wilshire Boulevard has fewer visitors due to the parking situation. There are times she can’t find a place to park, and she has a permit. I got hit by a bicyclist on the boardwalk and suffered injuries. My friend was hit by two skateboarders on [...]
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Letters Opinion
Health worker strike set at SM-UCLA Medical Center

MID CITY — Patient care workers at the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center will join thousands of others at UC hospitals across the state in a two-day strike to protest what they say are unsafe staffing levels while administrators rake in fat-cat salaries and pensions. Members of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees union will walk off the job between 4 a.m. Tuesday until 4 a.m. Thursday at both the Santa Monica-UCLA Medical Center and the Ronald Reagan [...]
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Featured News
New state standards may cut advanced math course

SMMUSD HDQTRS — A proposed shift in the progression of math classes at the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District could eliminate the highest level course taught in the district, which some parents feel put students at a disadvantage when applying to top-tier universities. The class, Calculus DE, focuses on multivariate calculus, a class not often taught until students go to college. To take it in high school, a student must have taken algebra in seventh grade, a year earlier than [...]
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Education Featured News Public
To cash in or let it ride?

It seems to me that a lot of people that buy and sell stocks are a lot like the people that go to the racetrack. When you are at the track you are investing — some call it betting — on a short-term result, which horse comes in first in the next few minutes. Of course you do your research. How did this jockey (the CEO) do in the past? How did the horse (the enterprise) perform recently? How is [...]
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After The Bell Columns Opinion
Remembering those who sacrificed so much

As we close in on Memorial Day, the time America has set aside to honor the men and women who have given their lives for our freedom, a controversy rages. Politicians are using yet another tragedy to once again try to make political hay for their party. The Republican Party is aghast that on-duty diplomats were killed in Benghazi. The Democrats are fighting back by saying that attacks on our embassies have occurred under both parties’ control of the White [...]
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Columns Opinion What's the Point?
Letter: Demise of Downtown

Editor: To the City Council, commissioners and city staff, Winston Churchill simply described “civilization” as the subordination of the ruling class to the will of the people. In this regard, the development agreement process has been more like a game of monopoly than one of environmental and urban planning for the benefit of the community. What’s been proposed and supported to date is going in the wrong direction. (Will it take rallies and bonfires of the 1960s free speech movement [...]
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Letters Opinion
Calling for rain

Dear EarthTalk: Could it really be true that we are in the midst of the worst drought in the United States since the 1930s? — Deborah Lynn, Needham, Mass. Indeed we are embroiled in what many consider the worst drought in the U.S. since the “Dust Bowl” days of the 1930s that rendered some 50 million acres of farmland barely usable. Back then, drought conditions combined with poor soil management practices to force some 2.5 million Americans away from [...]
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Columns Earth Talk Opinion
Curtains for the Civic

The future of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium was debated at a community meeting held at the Main Library last Monday. The late 1950s era, multi-purpose facility has been operating in the red for years. City officials plan to mothball it on June 30 then decide whether to renovate or demolish it The auditorium was a major show place when it opened in 1958. It hosted the Academy Awards from 1961 through 1968 and was a major regional concert and [...]
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Columns Featured My Write Opinion
Road advisories

Expo Light Rail Line Project Note the following activities: 1. Colorado Avenue between Fifth and 17th streets: Expect westbound and eastbound lane closures during day time hours. Expect reduction of travel lanes during the non-peak day at Ninth Street at Colorado and 10th Street at Colorado. 2. Colorado Avenue between Fifth and Sixth streets: Night time (9 p.m.-6 a.m.) Colorado Avenue closure, through Thursday. 3. Olympic Boulevard between 20th Street and Cloverfield Boulevard: Westbound and eastbound lane closures during non-peak [...]
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Featured News Transportation