1. Slow growth to sustainable levels: We need to pursue means to pace the rate of development in our already built out city. Options include an annual limit on the number of new water meters and making the LUCE’s goal of “no new net annual trips” a law, so that if traffic increases we stop issuing permits for commercial development until traffic mitigations and mass transit increase our mobility. 2. Make development pay its fair share: For too long in Santa Monica developers have not contributed enough public benefits in exchange for the privilege of building here. We need to enact these changes: a) Development agreements: In these deals between builders and City Hall, developers get to exceed our existing zoning and build larger structures in return for providing public benefits. The catch? We’re supposed to audit these agreements annually to assure the negotiated public benefits are indeed being provided but we don’t! So we need to make these audits a mandatory part of City staff’s work plan every year and deliver a report to the City Council. In addition, DAs used to be unusual and only negotiated for large projects on unusual sites – they are now becoming commonplace. What’s the point of rewriting our zoning if we too often allow it to be exceeded? Instead, we should require all projects within our zoning to provide substantial and genuine public benefits and enter into development agreements only in rare and exceptional situations and those agreements should be approved by a vote of the people. b) Developer impact fees: In 1991 our City Council passed a law to impose a fee on new commercial development to fund improvements to offset the traffic increases associated with growth. Over $100 million of improvements were identified, including traffic signal synchronization. However, City Hall goofed and never collected the fee! Tens of millions of dollars were not collected. So now we have to make amends and immediately impose on new commercial development substantial fees which will finance various measures to increase mobility in our city. 3. Maintain our beach town character: We need to revise the update to the LUCE, the blueprint for growth in the next 20 years, to reduce some of the allowed heights and densities. We have sufficient density to support more mass transit and to meet our sustainability goals and residents want our city to look and feel much the same in two decades. It is also important to continue to develop our Historic Preservation Program by adding more meaningful incentives for Landmarking; and creating a training program in Historic Preservation for staff, in all relevant departments, to help build a culture in City Hall of respect for our historic resources. 4. Preserve our existing affordable housing: For every new unit of affordable housing we build in Santa Monica, we lose a rent-controlled apartment to Ellis Act Evictions, so we have no net gain in affordable housing. We need to curtail these evictions and the demolition of our older affordable housing stock, which is invariably replaced with larger, more obtrusive condos which negatively impact neighborhood character. So we need to take two steps: a) create conservation districts which will make demolition of older buildings more difficult; b) change our development standards to reduce the size of condos which can be built once rent-controlled housing is demolished, thereby decreasing the profit potential from these projects. 5. School funding: The City’s contract to provide over seven million dollars annually to our public schools comes up for renewal in January. Of course we should renew this contract – we need to assure the continued quality of our public education. In addition, we need to find a way to increase that funding so that our schools can do an even better job of teaching our kids. And in order to provide the school district the means to make long range plans without the uncertainty associated with the renewal of this funding by the City Council, we should make half of the funding permanent and continue to make the other half discretionary at the will of the Council to allow for changing City budget scenarios. 6. Increase our commitment to sustainability: Santa Monica is a leader in promoting sustainability, but that doesn’t mean we can’t do more, including: a) Install solar power on the roof of every municipal building: Currently City Hall buys 100% renewable electricity. But we can go one step further and generate our own renewable energy by adding rooftop solar to all government buildings at no capital cost to taxpayers through power share agreements with vendors of these services. That’s how Community Corp of Santa Monica, our largest affordable housing builder, provides solar electric in its buildings and there’s no reason City Hall can’t do the same thing. b) Introduce a citywide energy efficiency retrofit program: Solar Santa Monica is a fine program to help residents and businesses install solar power, although as a participant as I’ve added a photovoltaic system and solar thermal to my own home I have ideas about how to improve it. But for many the cost of installing solar is out of reach. Insulation and other energy efficient measures, however, are comparably cheap, so we should study the Cambridge Energy Alliance, a public-private partnership in Massachusetts to enable people to reduce their energy consumption, and affect a similar program here. c) Bike paths and cycling infrastructure: For over two decades there have been plans to make Santa Monica more hospitable to cyclists but they’ve never been effected. The LUCE update will provide yet another plan for a bike path network and ideas for storage of bicycles, etc. However, in advance of the completion of these plans, we should raise the funds to implement it by increasing our commercial parking tax. A modest increase from the current level of 10% to 15%, so that on a $5 parking tab you paid 75 cents instead of 50 cents, would yield an additional $2.5 million in revenue per year which should be allocated solely to cycling improvements. It’s the sustainable way to go: make it more costly to drive and easier to bike. d) Adopt a green streets ordinance: I’ve said many times I wouldn’t have voted for the 2nd and 4th Streets improvements downtown even if no ficus trees were removed as the plans don’t include bike lanes or measures to treat storm water runoff. In the future we should spend no money on street improvements unless the projects further our sustainability goals. e) Expedite solar: Time and again I hear from residents and businesses that they had problems at City Hall, particularly with Building and Safety, when their plans to put in solar power – and I know I encountered my own hassles when doing so. We need a series of charettes with solar providers and individuals who have installed solar to identify the bureaucratic obstacles they encountered and then we must remove them so no one else faces any impediments. f) Adopt a series of smaller sustainability measures such as: Selling bus passes as local merchants; providing smaller trash cans at a lower cost to residents so there’s a financial incentive for recycling; adding recycling bins to our beaches, parks and other public spaces; etc. 7. Homelessness: In recent years we’ve pursued a new strategy in Santa Monica to reduce homelessness and it’s proven effective: we’re now targeting for services the chronically homeless, those who are the most vulnerable on our streets and who have the greatest impact of our quality of life. However, we have much more to do to create supportive housing for those in need: it costs taxpayers more to provide services to people on the streets than it does to house these individuals and to provide them a new direction in life. 8. Reducing the growth of government and increasing its responsiveness to residents: Did you know the size of City staff has more than doubled in the last 12 years? We simply cannot continue to grow our government at this rate. And during this time, most residents to whom I’ve spoken have found that City staff has become increasing interested in its own agenda and less aware of the community’s needs and desires. In particular, we need to reform our Building and Safety Division, as no citizen has a pleasant experience dealing with that department and we must introduce reforms to make City Hall more directly accountable to the people: they are public servants and should serve the public graciously and enthusiastically.
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