The Dinosaurs at City Hall

October 7, 2004

Dear Editor,

Santa Monica’s unique and eclectic culture should be treasured and nurtured. But thanks to the dinosaurs at City Hall, the opposite has happened. Local, independent stores are leaving and big chains have moved in for good. Look around any street in the city – Main Street, the Promenade, Montana Avenue – and you’ll see fewer independents and more chains.

The bureaucratic and obstructionist City Council has driven independents and small businesses out of the city by making new business permits and building codes cumbersome, complicated and confusing, adding months – and years – to any new business venture. New businesses are dragged up to two years through the process of opening a new store in Santa Monica.

Horror stories include a small gourmet cookie store on Ocean Park and an Urth Café on Main Street, both testing the patience, and the bank accounts, of their owners.

This is so time-consuming and expensive that smaller businesses keep turning away and chain stores, with big enough wallets to wait out the bureaucracy, will keep moving in.

I opened a business in 1991, Patty’s Pizza on Montana. Back then, the city was known as the “People’s Republic of Santa Monica” for its anti-business attitude. I never would have made it through the permitting process without the assistance of a local architect, Herb Katz. Now Herb Katz is a City councilman and he seems to be the only one who sympathizes with the small business person.

Today, it’s even worse. I’ve seen firsthand the problems business owners must put up with to operate in Santa Monica and if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t be able to afford it. The council seems to take pleasure in making a business wait … wait some more …then after everything is done to the
specifications asked for …. The rules are changed.

Herb Katz, along with new council candidates Bobby Shriver, Kathryn Morea and Matt Dinolfo believe that independent businesses can operate side-by-side with independent citizens. That’s the type of common sense leadership the City of Santa Monica has lacked in the past and desperately needs for the future.