City officials are considering a new fee on developers to pay for future parks to serve residents attracted to the city.
So, this week Q-line asked:
Do you think it is wise to impose another cost to develop property on Santa Monica and why?
"Only in the city of Samolicious can somebody come up with asking developers to pay for a fee. Last time I checked, parks are supposed to be for everybody. So I don't think that a fee should be placed on developers at all. If you gotta do it, let everybody pay."
"We don't need no stinking developers. We don't need no stinking new fees, which is just another tax passed onto the taxpayers. Santa Monica was played out by development 25 years ago. Developers are like sharks eating the carcass of Santa Monica for their own enrichment. Who cares about some small park across town if you have to live in the vicinity of a 20-story building or a low-income, mixed-use slum. Fees are more taxes that City Hall can spend to get votes to stay in power. The problem in this town is spending, mostly on stinking bicycles, low-income housing, light rail, plastic bag removal, free lunches. Just like in Rome towards their end, they had a lot of stinking fees. My apologies to the film ‘Treasure of Sierra Madre.' Greed and power was the main focus also."
"I think it's a great idea to make developers pay for future parks, because the more development we have the more parks we need. And if the developers get crazy over the fees and don't want to pay the fees, that's great because Santa Monica's got too much development anyway and it'll slow down on development and make it better for everybody."
"Absolutely not. I thought we wanted affordable housing? The city's continued increase in fees has made Santa Monica one of the most expensive places to live. How about not approving all of those single unit apartments in the first place so we wouldn't need additional parks. Or perhaps we shouldn't have spent $50 million on a single park and instead used it to fund lots of parks!"
"They should raise the fees, keep raising it until these developers stop wanting to build junk."
"I say hell yeah! The only reason we will need more parks is because these developers are constantly putting up more apartments and commercial space. I know that we need some new housing to meet demand, but the number planned is outrageous, so yes, they should be charged, not only for parks, but to help maintain our roads, keep our water clean and our trash picked up. I say tax them."
"I believe a reasonable fee is warranted since new development ultimately brings more people, who will want to use the parks we currently have now. I have no idea where we are going to build new parks since there doesn't seem to be a single square foot left in this town to use, but collect the money and perhaps use it to better maintain what we have."
"I see why we need to charge fees on new development to help make up for its impacts, but I also don't want it to become so expensive that it further drives up rents, making it even more difficult to live in Santa Monica."
