Concern for the Homeless in Santa Monica

By Michael Davis

City Politics

Santa Monica’s homeless situation was the focus of attention last week as the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California, or the ACLU/SC, declared an end to its one-year federal lawsuit against the City. In this lawsuit it filed with the law firm of Munger, Tolles & Olson, it accused Santa Monica of hostile policies toward the homeless, especially the mentally ill homeless. But who actually won this battle is a matter of debate.

The City and the ACLU/SC last week issued dueling press releases, each one declaring victory. The ACLU/SC claimed it had scared the City into changing its policies so that it became a better caretaker for the homeless. The City said it has always been kind, and the ACLU/SC’s lawsuit did not change anything, and was in fact a complete waste of time.

“When it comes to addressing homelessness, Santa Monica is the regional leader,” Mayor Bobby Shriver said in the City’s press release. “We believe the lawsuit was unnecessary and a distraction. Everyone needs to focus on regional issues to solve homelessness in Los Angeles once and for all.”

The City’s press release focused on the fact that the deal to end the lawsuit involved no financial payments or change in City laws or policies, and most importantly “no admission of any fault whatsoever.” It then went on to describe various programs the City has to help the homeless, including its Action Plan to End Homelessness in Santa Monica, which it described as “a focused strategy developed by the City with local service providers and other agencies to ensure the most vulnerable and chronically homeless people on the streets are served.” The City also boasted that it has 450 beds for homeless people, which it stated are more than most cities can say.

“Santa Monica is known nationwide for its long history of responding to homelessness with compassion, innovation and funding,” the press release stated. “For these reasons, the ACLU/SC’s lawsuit was a waste of their resources and a failure to understand Santa Monica’s extensive work.”

When one reads the press release from the ACLU/SC, you might think you are reading about a totally different case.

“As a result of Santa Monica’s de facto policy of criminalizing the mentally ill homeless, we filed suit -- similar to our successful lawsuits in Los Angeles, Laguna Beach and Santa Barbara -- in an attempt to get the City to direct its efforts to eliminate homelessness, not the homeless,” said Mark Rosenbaum, chief counsel for the ACLU/SC. “Almost immediately after our filing against Santa Monica, we documented that the practice of using the City’s vague anti-camping ordinance to harass the homeless had ceased, and that therefore the objective of the litigation had been met.”

The ACLU/SC’s press release went on to say it will be monitoring Santa Monica to make sure things continue to go smoothly. It also described some alleged cases of mistreatment of the mentally ill homeless people in Santa Monica. Among them was a paranoid schizophrenic woman who claimed to see flying saucers. She was allegedly arrested and jailed multiple times for sleeping on the sidewalk. Also a recovering addict was supposedly sleeping outside a shelter that did not have enough beds. The ACLU/SC claims the man lost his job because he was in jail after this arrest.

“We urge the City to focus its efforts away from criminalization and toward constructive supportive services aimed at eliminating homelessness, not the homeless,” said Jonathan Altman, an attorney with Munger, Tolles & Olson.

The two sides did agree on something. They reached a resolution on a “Joint Statement of Mutual Principles” on how homeless people should be treated. The principles are as follows:

All communities need to provide a reasonable amount of shelter beds and services;
No one should be forced out of any community because he or she is homeless;
Merely sleeping and homeless status should not be crimes anywhere;
Communities need to engage in outreach to their most vulnerable; and,
Public safety personnel must be adequately trained.

City Politics

By Michael Davis


The City Council is having a busy several weeks. Aside from its regular meeting duties, last week it began hearings on the Land Use and Circulation Element, better known as the LUCE. Those hearings are expected to continue through next month. This week it must vote on a budget, which includes some minor cuts and increased fees for City services along with some use of reserves, all made necessary by a $13.2 million deficit. Meanwhile, the council still found time to call for an election on rent control issues.

Last week the council unanimously endorsed changes to the tenancy laws that would require just cause for somebody to be booted from an apartment without rent control (this luxury currently only applies to those in rent control units). Also, the law would create a warning period before somebody could be given a three-day notice for eviction, increase relocation benefits for those evicted because the owner wants to move back in and allow those benefits to go to people who do not live in rent control units (they don’t have that right now). Also, seniors and terminally ill tenants could not be evicted.

Sometime this summer, Santa Monica officials will finalize the materials for the ballot. Rent control nemesis the Apartment Association has declared in other media they intend to file a lawsuit. So it should be an interesting showdown.

Also at last week’s meeting, the City Council strengthened its storm water management policies for developments and redevelopments. It passed a Low Impact Development, or LID, ordinance that makes it so projects need to capture and reuse runoff up to a certain size. There are other options as well if this is not possible, including treating the water and releasing it.

Mark Gold, executive director of the famed environmental group Heal the Bay praised the council action in his blog, although he had a few problems with some of the technical details.

“Santa Monica leaders deserve accolades for practicing what they preach and requiring developers to embrace LID technology,” he wrote. “The City has long been a leader in California on stormwater pollution prevention and LID requirements. Its groundbreaking 1992 ordinance included significant LID components, long before the coining of the term.”

However, the City does not have to abide by this policy for all of its own projects. If a project costs below $1 million, the City can decide whether it wants to fully comply with “all the bells and whistles” for what is called Best Management Practices, or BMP. This did not sit well with Councilman Kevin McKeown, who was the only council member to vote against the measure.

“My no vote reflects that I’m just not comfortable passing a law based on principles the City has championed, and then exempting us from them,” he said.

City staffers and some City council members defended their stance because this would only apply to street projects, which means there is no private person having to meet requirements the City does not have to meet. Also they said requiring excessive BMPs on a small project could create a situation where it doesn’t give “the bang for the buck.” Lee Swain, director of public works, said an example of this is putting a complex drainage system when the drainage area is too small to get any benefit out of it.

City Attorney Marsha Jones Moutrie noted that this ordinance was being approved on the first reading. If Heal the Bay or others have a problem with, they can speak on it for the second reading.

“If they think whatever you do is a mistake, I know they won’t be shy about saying so before your second reading, which is also a good thing,” Moutrie said.

Also last week at the first LUCE hearing, City council members asked some questions and made a few statements. But no real fireworks got started. That might occur as the council gets deeper into examining the document. More complex issues such as the City’s jobs to homes imbalance and how much community benefits are worth the extra development will be part of the conversation at future hearings. However, the council did hear from former Mayor Paul Rosenstein, who said if there is too much development, it could turn into a situation similar to battles of the past.

“I can tell you as somebody who has lived through the battles of the special office district and the other growth battles of the City, that it wouldn’t take much if the neighborhood realized the extent of the development that’s being proposed, the number of cars that would be added to the community, for a huge anti-development movement to be created and City Hall again embroiled in battles,” Rosenstein said.

Beast Factory

By Sam Bleiberg
Santa Monica is more of a beachside getaway than industrial grind house. But, this doesn’t stop Kermit Cannon from operating a “Beast Factory” on the campus of Santa Monica High School.
For the past 17 years, Cannon, a strength and conditioning coach, has been churning out faster, better, stronger professional and student athletes. His on-campus workouts have contributed to the success of athletes such as Geoff Schwartz (an offensive tackle on the Carolina Panthers), Max Forrer (a center at Oregon University), Jennifer Katona (a volleyball player at Pittsburgh University), James Cooper (signed by the New York Yankees) and, most recently, Tyler Skaggs (first round pick of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim).
“Beast” status is not required to attend Cannon’s workouts; on the contrary, it is acquired. He conducts workouts for “at-risk” youth from the Santa Monica Police Activities League and states that “any student who reaches out for help” can receive the same physical tutelage as these top-of-the-line athletes.
“My favorite aspect of youth training is having student athletes approach me after they have graduated and tell me how my training has changed their life or helped them achieve their goals,” Cannon said. “To watch someone you trained as a youth compete in a sport on television is a thrill.
And, in the near future, Cannon’s sphere of influence will grow drastically with the publishing of his book: The Beast Factory. According to Cannon, the book, which is intended for high-school-aged kids and includes airbrushed artwork, motivational aphorisms, diet advice, information about the dangers of drugs and steroids, exercise descriptions, and 12 weeks of training routines, is a rarity in the market.
The motivation for writing the book stems from Cannon’s war on obesity. His manifesto, so to speak, is “to help as many youth as possible to attain their goals and lead a strong, healthy lifestyle.”
For the furthering of this goal he joined Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! non-profit organization, which shares Cannon’s aim and can be investigated further at letsmove.gov. He also is a member of the magazine Men’s Health’s FitSchools program, which “gives schools schools, teachers, and parents the tools they need to help kids fall in love with fitness” and can be researched at menshealth.com/men/health/other-diseases-ailments/mens-health-fitschool.
Cannon leads by example, being in tip-top shape. His own fitness originates from two of his strongest traits: altruism and competitiveness (he broke five school records and was named Athlete of the Year as a track star as a track star at Culver City High School). In order to satiate his own competitive streak and push his student athletes to the limit, he participates in every workout.
“I get my sports fix by leading from the front,” Cannon said. “I do the exact workout that I have a group of student athletes do right along with them.”
Speaking of motivation, Cannon accepts nothing less than his subjects’ best effort.
“Everyone encourages everyone else,” he said. “We get in each other’s faces and yell if we have to. We like our music as hardcore and loud as our workouts.”
Cannon’s ultimate goal is to operate a non-profit organization that travels the world running fitness programs. In the mean time, he will be content to continue to produce beasts.

See more photos by checking out the Santa Monica Observer on Facebook!
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School District Update

By Michael Davis
The School District is tossing around ideas about how to boost revenue since the parcel tax, Measure A, went bust. The first priority is direct fundraising. The Board of Education last week established the rules for this new plan, which will take place through August. The Financial Oversight Committee also gave the board a whole host of ideas on new revenue sources, including increasing attendance (the state gives the district money based on daily attendance) and  using district properties for advertising. And there might be a plan to put a new parcel tax question to the voters in November.
With the fundraising plan people can donate as much money as they want to the district through the Santa Monica Malibu Education Foundation (SMMEF). And they can pick one of three “buckets” (that is the name the district used) they want to fill with their money. One bucket is for elementary classroom size reduction, which means hiring back some teachers. The second bucket is for counselors and secondary school classroom reduction. So if you give money to this bucket, you get a 50-50 split of your money going to each item. An additional bucket also has two items, with this one featuring elementary school music and elementary school libraries.
“It’s been a busy week,” said Linda Gross, director of the SMMEF, said at the board meeting. “The number of e-mails and phone calls I alone have gotten shows that there is enthusiasm and desire to reinstate these cuts.”
The District will try to collect as many donations as possible by August. Any money garnered in that time can be used for the 2010-11 school year. There is also a chance that a new parcel tax measure could be written, but this could not help the financial situation for the upcoming school year. The committee that created the last one is going to meet again. School officials were saying that it might be a good option to get this before the voters in November.
“We would really be doing ourselves and our kids a disservice by not being optimistic about getting this passed in the near future,” said Board member Ben Allen. He also quoted Rahm Emanuel in an attempt to get the crowd excited. “Never miss an opportunity that a crisis presents.”
Measure A was approved by 64.25 percent of the voters. But this was not good enough, because parcel taxes require two-thirds of the vote to win. This was the first parcel tax not passed in the SMMUSD since 2002. After that one failed, another measure was presented to the voters less than a year later, and it won, although not by very much.
Interestingly, while Measure A received enough votes in Santa Monica, it did not receive enough in Malibu, and that is probably why it lost overall. Laura Rosenthal, a City Council member from Malibu, mentioned this during a speech to the Board of Education at the meeting.
“Measure A lost in Malibu and it won in Santa Monica. I guess I am challenging the board again to look again at separating the districts,” Rosenthal said.
She referred to the need for Malibu to leave the District as the “elephant in the room.” She asked that the board support a resolution for the county to do an analysis. Allen said he favored that. No other board members said anything. 

LUCE

By Michael Davis
City Politics
If you were searching for a good way to torture yourself sometime in the past couple months, you might have found it by watching the recent series of Planning Commission hearings on the draft version of the Land Use & Circulation Element, more commonly known as the LUCE. The LUCE is a part of the City’s General Plan and will set the vision for traffic and land use planning for the next two decades or so in Santa Monica. The commission finally concluded those hearings last week.
The commission was tasked to make recommended changes to the document, which was created by City staff over a six-year period of public hearings. Some allowable heights to buildings were increased. But for the most part they did not make many changes to a document that limits development in residential neighborhoods and puts a halt to increased traffic.
The LUCE has not been updated since 1984. The current updating process has been ongoing since 2004. The 1984 document is blamed by many for creating significant commercial development and near-gridlock traffic in Santa Monica.
The City Council will hold its first LUCE hearing on Thursday. A second meeting is scheduled for June 15, at that same time council will vote on the 2010-11 budget. The City is facing an eight-figure deficit, but no significant reductions are proposed. LUCE hearings will continue into July. This is significant because July also marks the month when the City Council race gets started, although slowly, and then speeds up in August. City staff had hoped the LUCE could avoid becoming a political document.
Now that the Planning Commission is done talking LUCE, it can return to some regular Planning Commission items. The most interesting one is the upcoming presentation scheduled for next week on Wednesday on the proposed AMC movie theater on Fourth Street off Arizona Avenue. This item is being shown to the Planning Commission as a float up, which is the name the City gives to initial presentations seeking commission input. The float up for this theater was supposed to take place a couple months ago, but the item was mysteriously removed from the commission’s agenda.
The plan is for an AMC theater to be built on the site currently home to Parking Structure No. 3. The City owns the property, so AMC and Santa Monica will need to go into a development agreement and AMC must lease the property. Details of those contracts are currently under negotiation.
The theater will have 12 screens, one of them IMAX. The complete structure will be 83,000 square feet and also contain 2,100 square feet of retail. A restaurant that will be open to the public whether you go see a movie or not will also be included.
Santa Monica is only allowed to have a certain number of theater seats in the downtown. It is not clear what that official number is, or if it even exists. AMC plans to reduce the number of seats at its Santa Monica 7-plex and close the Broadway 4. AMC submitted a letter to the City in November saying it could close the Broadway 4. But recently, some people have questioned whether this is possible.
Since this is a development agreement, public benefits must be offered. What those will be are still under negotiation. An additional float up will go before the City Council. Then it should be about a year or so before the project will go again before both bodie

Boys & Girls Clubs' "BE GREAT" Los Angeles vs. Boston Fan Fundraising Challenge

By Karlyn Webb

Support Boys & Girls Clubs’ “BE GREAT” Los Angeles vs. Boston friendly fundraising challenge! The historic rivalry between Los Angeles and Boston basketball fans spins off the court and into the stands this year. The Boys & Girls Clubs throughout Los Angeles and Boston area are launching a mobile text and online giving challenge to extend the fan experience during the NBA playoffs. Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Boys & Girls Club Alumnus, announced a friendly challenge toward Boston Mayor Thomas Menino and Boston fans to see who can raise the most “smiles and support” for local Boys & Girls Clubs.
In Los Angeles, fans can text “BeGreatLA” to 20222 for a $5 donation beginning today or donate online at www.BeGreatLA.org through June 20 to show their support for the home team, and home Clubs. Boston fans can text “BeGreatBos” to 20222 to show their support. Monies raised by LA fans will go to the 130 Club sites and 120,000 Club Kids throughout LA County. Sign up to follow the challenge at www.twitter.com/BeGreatLA, or sign up as a Facebook fan at www.BeGreatLA.org. Look for posts and tweets from special guests and updates on who’s leading.