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The Matrix

 By Frank Gruber 

I’ve been writing this column for four years; in fact, this is my 200th column.  I started writing in 2000 just before a hot City Council election and a Presidential election that got even hotter in, to borrow from sports, the “post election.” 

Yes, it’s déjà vu, especially with regard to City Council (let’s hope it’s not regarding the Presidential election), as all the winners from 2000 are running for reelection. 

It’s been a long time since a Council incumbent has lost a run for reelection in Santa Monica.  Partly it’s name recognition, partly it’s access to money, partly it’s the happiness level of the electorate at large. 

But this year, incumbency itself appears to be under attack.  Some of this is the usual attack from the “loyal opposition” against the Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights (SMRR) majority that’s run the City for a long time, but there also is a more general attack, personified by Bobby Shriver, against “a City government that has lost sight of the reason it exists.” 

So who are these incumbents and exactly what do they stand for?  To help answer that question, I have prepared a spreadsheet, a “matrix” if you will, setting forth 20 key issues of the past four years on which the City Council members either voted or took positions.  In each case I have listed how the current City Council members stood, along with the result. 

The idea is go beyond the banalities of the campaign (e.g., “We need to fix traffic!” or “I support education!”) and take a look at how the different incumbents actually voted.  And as part of a survey The Lookout is sending to all the candidates, The Lookout will ask the non-incumbent candidates to reveal how they would have voted on the same issues. 

The 20 votes in the matrix are not all the important votes of the past four years, and some of them are not even so important.  The votes themselves don’t reveal every important nuance.  But I chose these issues either because they were controversial and contested, or because they illuminate important attitudes and ideologies. 

If any reader or any candidate believes I have missed a vote that illuminates an important distinction, let me know what it is, and I’ll publish that vote in a future column. 

I did not, however, include budget votes, because they tend to incorporate a lot of issues all together, and they repeat from year to year.  Instead, I will, in a future column, discuss the budget by itself. 

Here’s the matrix: 

 People can draw their own conclusions, but one that I draw is that the council members are less ideologically consistent than you might expect from all the rhetoric about SMRR.  There are issues where the council members line up predictably, but otherwise they are all over the map.  To consider the SMRR candidates particularly “liberal,” you have to do a lot of picking and choosing. 

Take social policy.  While there has been a clear distinction over the living wage between SMRR council members and the opposition, three SMRR council members provided all the opposition to fluoridation.   

Why is it an important “progressive” SMRR issue to set minimum wages for poor adult workers but not to protect the teeth of their children? 

The same goes for education.  It’s the “conservatives” on the Council -- Herb Katz and Robert Holbrook -- who have a perfect record of supporting education, while four SMRR members failed to support the 2003 Santa Monica College bond issue.  (Not to mention Mike Feinstein’s and Pam O’Connor’s diatribes against the school funding agreement; fortunately O’Connor came around to vote for it.) 

I know that in certain circles it’s considered consistent with progressive politics to oppose jobs and housing and mixed-use development in favor of the comfort of thems-thats-already-got, but four SMRR council members vote against good smart-growth type developments with absolute or at least fair consistency. 

Richard Bloom and Kevin McKeown voted against Target, not to certify the Boulangerie EIR, against Lantana (in 2002), and in favor of lowering the downtown development threshold; Feinstein and Ken Genser voted anti-jobs/housing/smart growth on three out of the four issues. 

But inconsistency is not only a SMRR thing.  If you are a pro-business Chamber of Commerce type, what do you make of both Katz and Holbrook not voting for Target? 

As I said, draw your own conclusions, but I don’t see how the SMRR tag makes anyone a liberal saint. 

I would be interested to hear from any reader who agrees with any incumbent candidate 100 percent of the time (and who is not related by blood or marriage).  Otherwise, in evaluating the incumbents, which will be the first step many of us take in deciding how to vote, it’s a matter of weighing the votes we like against those we don’t, and whether there are certain votes that are absolute deal-makers or deal-breakers. 

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Even during an election, the wheels of government grind on, and next week the City Council will hear proposals to change the zoning relevant to Santa Monica’s automobile dealerships.  (Staff Report)

This is an important issue.  Although Santa Monica is far from Detroit, its dealerships are a collective billion dollar business, producing one-quarter of the City’s sales tax receipts and more than a thousand jobs.  But the dealerships, located in cramped quarters mostly along Santa Monica Boulevard, face tough competition from dealers in the region’s sprawl with typically three to five times as much land. 

At the same time, the low-density development along our boulevards, featuring many parking lots both along the street and behind the dealerships, abutting residential areas, contribute little to the cityscape. 

What the dealers need is the right to build up and to dig down, to provide for more parking, vehicle storage, and other facilities in enclosed structures.  These structures will then better insulate neighbors from dealership operations.  With good planning, they might also provide a better streetscape for the public. 

For several years the dealers have been discussing plans with planning staff along these lines, and although they did not reach agreement on all points, it’s a pleasure to report that when the Planning Commission reviewed these ideas earlier in the year, the Commission “got it” and made a series of good recommendations to the City Council. 

In some cases, the Commission went further than staff.  For instance, there is an issue of what to do with residentially zoned lots adjacent to dealerships that are now parking lots.  Staff does not want to allow dealerships to build structures on these lots, so as not to set an anti-housing precedent. 

But, realistically, and as the Commission understood it, these lots will never be used for housing.  A better approach would be to allow the dealerships to build on the lots, better insulating the existing neighbors, but then, in the context of the update to the land use element of the general plan, make up for the loss in residential zoning by encouraging “boulevard housing” in commercial zones along our east-west corridors. 

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Would you like to help design a park?  The City has a new small park site at 1525 Euclid Street, a little south of Broadway.  The Community and Cultural Services Department is seeking ideas and comments from the public by way of the internet.  Here’s the link.