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.