Residents who packed a special City Council meeting Monday largely backed the city's pursuit of a certified Local Coastal Program but sharply questioned whether the council's sudden urgency was driven by genuine coastal stewardship or an effort to contain the political fallout from a controversial state bill that removes part of the Coastal Commission’s authority from the city.
The May 12 special meeting, called by Mayor Caroline Torosis and Councilmembers Ellis Raskin and Barry Snell, drew public comments that expressed broad support for bringing coastal permitting authority under local control, paired with deep distrust of the council majority's timing and motivations.
"You have gone too far this time," resident Karen Croner wrote in a public comment. "This land does not belong to you. It belongs to the people. And whoever on the council supports AB 1740 will face such opposition as you have never seen."
What Is a Local Coastal Program?
A Local Coastal Program is a two-part policy document — a Land Use Plan and an Implementation Plan — that local governments develop and submit to the California Coastal Commission for certification. Once certified, an LCP transfers day-to-day coastal development permitting authority from the state commission to the local jurisdiction, allowing cities to review projects for compliance with their own certified coastal policies rather than requiring applicants to seek a separate state permit.
The Coastal Commission was established in 1972 by voter initiative and made permanent by the state Legislature in 1976. It retains authority over submerged lands and tidelands regardless of whether a city has a certified LCP, and certain sensitive areas — including land within 300 feet of the beach and environmentally sensitive habitat areas — remain subject to commission appeal even under a certified program.
Santa Monica has a certified Land Use Plan dating to 1992, which currently serves as the commission's standard of review for coastal development permits in the city. What Santa Monica lacks is a certified Implementation Plan — the coastal zoning ordinance component. Without it, applicants must obtain city approval and then separately seek a coastal development permit from the commission, a two-step process that city staff said creates significant delays and uncertainty for homeowners, small business owners and major public and private projects alike.
Why Santa Monica Needs One
City planning staff told the council that the absence of a certified LCP creates real, ongoing costs across virtually every category of development in Santa Monica's coastal zone, which stretches roughly from the beach east to Fourth Street and, in some areas, as far inland as Lincoln Boulevard.
Commercial tenants looking to open or renovate businesses on the Third Street Promenade, homeowners seeking to add an accessory dwelling unit, transportation agencies pursuing street improvements and event organizers planning beach activations all currently must navigate the commission's permit process in addition to the city's own approvals.
"It's the homeowner, it's the business owner that just doesn't quite know how to navigate the process," city planning staff said during the presentation.
City Manager Oliver Chi said certification would be directly aligned with the city's economic recovery goals under its Realignment Plan. Council members added specific priorities they want reflected in any MOU framework, including streamlined approvals for commercial changes of use, bus-only lanes, protected bike lanes, outdoor dining, 100% deed-restricted affordable housing and adaptive reuse of vacant buildings.
A Decade-Long Effort
Santa Monica's LCP effort dates to 2014, when the city began a years-long community outreach process. The council adopted a comprehensive Land Use Plan update in October 2018 and submitted it to the Coastal Commission. Progress stalled in the years that followed, with city staff citing fundamental policy disagreements over how the Coastal Act should apply to an urban, transit-rich city. The 2018 LUP was eventually withdrawn before the commission was required to act on it. The city formally resumed the update process in May 2023.
Staff described the current moment as the most substantive opening the city has seen in years. City staff said it has been in direct contact with Coastal Commission Executive Director Dr. Kate Huckelbridge and senior commission staff, with discussions focused on reaching a mutually agreed-upon framework for LCP certification within a defined, near-term timeline. Staff said a complete MOU framework could be ready for council consideration by the May 26 council meeting.
The proposed MOU framework would recognize Santa Monica's track record as a coastal steward, use the council-approved 2018 Land Use Plan as a baseline, establish a timeline targeting Coastal Commission approval of both the LUP and Implementation Plan by June 2027, and explore a streamlined or "ministerial" coastal development permit process for certain low-impact projects.
Staff cautioned that staff-level alignment with the commission does not guarantee support from commissioners themselves at a future hearing, noting that apparent breakthroughs with the commission have not always materialized in the past.
The AB 1740 Shadow
Several public commenters and at least one council member made clear they viewed the special meeting as inseparable from the controversy surrounding Assembly Bill 1740, a measure authored by Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur that would exempt certain housing, transportation and parking projects in Santa Monica from Coastal Commission permitting requirements.
Originally applicable to more than a dozen coastal cities, the bill was narrowed in April amendments to apply only to Santa Monica. Supporters include the City of Santa Monica, the California Chamber of Commerce and several housing advocacy groups. Opponents, including the Surfrider Foundation, Heal the Bay and the Sierra Club, have argued the bill sets a damaging precedent by weakening Coastal Act protections.
Public comments reflected widespread opposition to AB 1740, with residents describing it as a measure designed to bypass local review and open the coast to market-rate development without adequate environmental oversight. One resident voiced support for the bill, arguing it would create needed housing near transit.
Councilmember Lana Negrete questioned why the LCP discussion became an emergency matter only after public backlash over AB 1740 and said she had been working on bringing a similar update to the council through the regular agenda process before being asked to wait.
“I'm obviously in support of a local coastal plan. I think that that's been clear,” she said. “I'm just a little befuddled as to how this became an emergency meeting. I think the community is right in asking how it came about, and I think it's extremely difficult to not reference the assembly bill before us, because it's very clear that that sparked this all of a sudden resurgence of expeditious conversations with Coastal Commission.”
She said the last minute approach creates public skepticism and that residents want to know that policy decisions are being driven by actually thoughtful governance and general collaboration, and not political positioning after the fact.
Torosis, Raskin and Snell all said the process to establish and LCP was an ongoing discussion with the Coast Commission and the emergency meeting was necessary to guide staff in those live negotiations.
Torosis said the city is trying to reach a deal framework with the Coastal Commission before the end of May in order to have an impact within the current legislative session. "We have a limited window in which to potentially get a deal," she said.
Chi confirmed that it was in recent weeks — as AB 1740 advanced and drew public opposition — that commission staff signaled a new openness to accelerate the LCP process. "Whatever the impetus was, certainly 1740 is probably one of the reasons that triggered an interest from Coastal," Chi said.
The council voted unanimously — with Councilmember Jesse Zwick recusing himself due to his employment with the Housing Action Coalition — to direct staff to continue negotiations with the California Coastal Commission toward a memorandum of understanding that could set a defined path to certification.