THIS IS THE FOURTH
Version of this column. Number three was pretty good, I thought. Some context, a little storytelling. But it wasn’t what I intended. I tend to overthink these things. And many times, a piece of writing gets its own mind and just runs away with you.
But I learned a long time ago that the reader does not care about your process. Not two figs. So let’s get right to it.
We have a really consequential election Tuesday. Nationally, of course, but locally too. Many of you have already voted. I apologize that for various reasons I didn’t get this out sooner. Life. No excuses.
I’m not going to run through the entire ballot. Others have. Ask your well-informed, holier than thou neighbor. They will be glad to enlighten you.
The two most important things on the local ballot are City Council, and that horrible (in my opinion) half a billion dollar school bond. Maybe a couple more bear mentioning.
VOTE BLUE BUT NOT DODGER BLUE
No matter how big a Dodger fan you are, don’t vote for Steve Garvey for the U.S. Senate, over veteran, impeachment prosecutor Congressman Adam Schiff. Not even to be cute. Garvey is a cruel MAGA. In my opinion.
I would never vote for Gascon for DA. His so-called progressive policies on incarceration, in my opinion, have tied the hands of our SM police, who are now reluctant to even arrest for some crimes when they see the perp back on the streets almost before they can complete the paperwork. Our mayor was physically attacked a while back by someone with several arrests in the previous month. But Gascon’s opponent, Nathan Hochman, is a conservative lawyer. The devil I don’t know…? (Both are former Republicans. Yes, these days, that is a bad thing. In my opinion.)
If you don’t know Ted Lieu is one of the best members of Congress ever, you probably shouldn’t even be voting.
A MEASURED RESPONSE
State Measure 3, Constitutional Right to Marriage – of course, yes. Measure 4, protection against climate change – it’s expensive but we are literally burning up in CA. This is a needed bond. Not like our SMMUSD school bond, in my opinion. Measure 6, no – if you’ve murdered someone, I think the least you can do is make my license plate. Measure 32, Raises Minimum Wage, yes – expensive, will unfairly hurt some businesses, but CA has always been a leader in a living wage, time to tip the scales more to working people. Measure 35, Permanent Funding for Medi-Cal, yes, pre-emptive move to block Trump’s plan to take away health care for the very poorest. Measure 36, yes, now the jerk who walks off whistling with $949 in stolen goods, can be arrested.
CITY COUNCIL
In the 2020 election there was an unprecedented, seismic shift. For 40 years Santa Monicans for Renters Rights (SMRR) controlled who sat on City Council. Only two exceptions: Bob Holbrook, and Bobby Shriver (a Kennedy doesn’t need anyone’s endorsement). Then two Santa Monica-born, longtime community activists, Oscar de la Torre and Phil Brock, teamed with fed-up local mom and Culver City Disaster Coordinator Christine Parra on the Change Slate, and won three seats. Great! But not a majority, so they have been limited in what they could get done. But in my opinion, after thousands of hours of observation and reading, they did a lot more than most people are aware of. I had one insider tell me, Phil Brock should be recognized for all the bad stuff he prevented, but that doesn’t show up. It takes a lot of effort and a long time to change the course of a huge ship, especially if half the crew are pushing in the opposite direction.
Brock and de la Torre’s Safety Slate added two longtime residents, SM-born Dr. Vivian Roknian and 30-year resident and business owner John Putnam. I have sat in on lengthy interviews with both and I think they are excellent, pro-resident choices. We need a majority. Don’t be confused by ads you may have seen that left Putnam off and “replaced” him with SMRR’s Ericka Lesley. Those are ads placed by the boards of reputable local interest groups (but not their rank and file) in what I would call a misguided effort to defeat the other slate. You need to vote for all four if you want change: Putnam, Brock, Roknian and de la Torre.
This Council election is that clear. If you don’t like what you see happening in Santa Monica, don’t vote for the slate that is backed by SMRR and Forward, their new ally funded to the teeth by developer money. More development, more renters, continued power for SMRR. They are the ones who got us here, in my opinion.
The anti-Safety Slate slate is Barry Snell, Dan Hall, Natalya Zernitskaya and Ellis Raskin. Please don’t vote for even one of them. We need a pro-resident, anti-overdevelopment majority on our City Council.
SCHOOL BOND: NO ON QS
My entire previous column dissected this. Please go read it. Here’s the long and short of it.
It’s a political given that school bonds always pass. But most people are not aware that: 1) the money can only be used for construction or renovation; 2) there is no language in the bond saying what it must be used for (one option this time: to buy property); 3) there is no real oversight; 4) if we say yes to QS we will have given SMMUSD more than $1.6 BILLION since 2006, and they have been, in my opinion, terrible, careless stewards of all that money.
A $200,000,000 Discovery Building with AC and water fountains that don’t always work. A new gym for tens of millions of dollars that is only a practice gym, and now they still need a competition gym. (They tried to take our historic Santa Monica Civic and make it into a gym.) And a cherished History Building torn down unnecessarily, despite preservation experts and their own studies cautioning against it, not to mention hundreds of residents. In my opinion, the School Board often operates in an insular bubble, without transparency, without acknowledging outside input. The only way to change this is to finally say no to yet another outsized bond request.
2006, Measure BB: $268,000,000…..2012, ES: $385,000,000…..2018, SMS: $485,000,000…..2024, QS: $495,000,000…..total: $1,633,000,000, in 18 years. Not counting interest. For a city of 90,000.
With no accountability. The only way to stop this is to vote NO on QS, until we can get accountability. Some transparency and community input that is taken seriously, in my opinion, would be nice, and reasonable. We want to give our schools all they need to be excellent, but this is off base. Are they expecting some huge increase in student population? We are filling Santa Monica with thousands of new housing units, but very few of them are two bedrooms, and almost none are three bedrooms. So we are building for well off single transients, it would appear, not families.
Steve Massetti, whose firm is being paid $4M/yr to award those large construction contracts, has been stumping for QS at neighborhood meetings around town. That doesn’t seem right, to me. And an error was made on the ballot, to include both SM’s and Malibu’s bond measures on every ballot. That’s confusing enough that I think this bond should be delayed. The decision was made to just sort out the ballots by city.
One more thing. Most people, even property owners, shrug off school bonds as being low numbers over a long period. Have you looked at your property tax bill lately? I got mine recently, and I’m paying $1,376 on a yearly bill of $2,064. That’s a lot. I say, enough, until we get oversight and accountability, and reasonable spending.
Charles Andrews has lived in Santa Monica for 38 years and wouldn’t live anywhere else in the world. Really. Send love and/or rebuke to him at therealmrmusic@gmail.com
