Bay City Mystery: Who Stuck
the Knife in LUCE?
By Frank Gruber
I don't know if City Council Member Pam
O'Connor is prescient enough now that
she is Chair of the MTA Board to tell
us where the money will come from for
the Subway to the Sea, but she sure showed
predictive powers back in 2004 when Santa
Monica began the process to update the
land use and circulation elements (LUCE)
of its general plan.
At the Oct. 26, 2004 joint meeting of
the City Council and the Planning Commission
that kicked off what was supposed to be
a two-year process, Ms. O'Connor said
that it would be crucial to complete the
job in that timeframe. (see
story) Why crucial? Because delay,
she said, would allow a vocal minority
of residents to thwart the development
of an inclusive plan for Santa Monica's
future.
As Ms. O'Connor stated it, "'We
need more time' is a code phrase for people
to use to hijack the process."
I have ruefully recalled those words
often as the LUCE process has dragged
on, most recently when I read the story
last week about how various SMFCs
(Santa Monicans Fearful of Change), including
the Santa Monica Coalition for a Livable
City (SMCLC) and other self-appointed
neighborhood groups, are now complaining
that development is proceeding in Santa
Monica before the LUCE process has been
completed.
The SMFCs want a citywide building moratorium
until the update is finished -- except
that if the past is a guide, they will
do their best to make sure the update
remains in limbo forever.
The update is unfinished, almost a year
after Ms. O'Connor and her colleagues
voted to have it completed, not because
of the machinations of developers, as
the SMFCs would have you believe, but
because the same SMFC's who are complaining
now about lack of progress on LUCE persuaded
the City Council to put the brakes on
LUCE more than a year and a half ago.
At the January 24, 2006 City Council
meeting the City's planning staff asked
the council to give guidance for the next
steps in the process. At that time the
process was essentially on schedule. Staff
and consultants had released two important
reports -- on "Emerging Themes"
and "Opportunities and Challenges"
based on extensive public outreach and
analysis.
The meeting was well attended. According
to the minutes,
39 residents appeared to speak. That's
a lot. Enthusiasm was high, and most of
the speakers made constructive suggestions
and encouraged the council to keep the
process going.
But a small cadre of SMFCs and other
no-growthers of various levels of intensity,
including Jacob Samuel, Geraldine Kennedy,
Darrell Clarke, Ted Winterer, Arthur Harris,
Ellen Brennan, Zina Josephs, Lorraine
Sanchez, and Emmalie Hodgin -- SMFCs you
regularly see at public meetings -- persuaded
a majority of four council members (Ken
Genser, Robert Holbrook, Herb Katz and
Kevin McKeown) that they should not continue
with the LUCE process until they had pre-judged
how much growth the plan should plan for.
(see
story) (Ms. O'Connor and Richard
Bloom voted against stopping the process,
and Bobby Shriver was absent.)
The LUCE process ground to a halt --
hijacked by habitual complainers. It was
not to be resuscitated in any meaningful
way until the City hired a new Planning
Director, Eileen Fogarty, who has restarted
the process using a new program of engaging
residents.
Contrary to the SMFCs who told The
Lookout last week that LUCE is a
lost cause, the Planning Department only
last month hosted one of its best-attended
events, the workshop on industrial lands,
which was, by all accounts, a huge success.
(see
story)
Ms. Fogarty has announced that the department
will present a draft plan by June 2008
-- the process may stagger to a conclusion
two years late.
Just as Council Member O'Connor predicted,
a minority of residents used delay to
thwart an inclusive process that had reached
beyond the usual disgruntled suspects,
who have the time to testify at meeting
after meeting, to gather the opinions
of a wide sample of Santa Monicans. The
SMFCs didn't and don't like the public's
support for sensible growth, support that
was and is readily apparent from both
large public meetings and survey data.
They are determined to thwart the general
plan update.
Now, complaining that the City is responsible
for the delays, or for hiding data about
traffic or population, the SMFCs are trying
to create a presumption that the "residents"
want a moratorium. They have no evidence
for this other than their own hysteria.
Take the latest fishing expedition by
the SMCLC. The so-called Coalition has
filed vague document requests for population
data that the City is supposedly hiding.
This was a tactic the Coalition used in
2006 to fish for staff emails that the
Coalition assured everyone would show
corruption in connection with the renovation
of Santa Monica Place.
The Coalition sued and got the documents,
none of which they've ever shown to the
public as evidence of any corruption.
But the Coalition got the City to pay
its lawyer, and that's likely what will
happen here. The Coalition will sue, there
will be a settlement, and the Coalition's
lawyer will get a taxpayer-funded payday.
The whole population data request --
and the idea that staff is hiding something
-- is a red herring in any case. Planning
staff published an extensive analysis
of various population projections for
the city in 2005 as part of the Opportunities
and Challenges Report (beginning on
page 4-1) , and there's even a
link to a page of demographic data
on the City's homepage. The idea that
there have been radical changes in two
years because of a few hundred new housing
units (out of a total of near 50,000)
is silly.
Anyone with knowledge of past Planning
Department practice knows that the problems
with the department's past attempts at
projecting population -- along with those
of the California Dept. of Finance and
the Southern California Association of
Governments -- have not involved underestimating
population growth, but the opposite. The
department has consistently overestimated
Santa Monica's population, only to be
brought back to reality when the Census
comes along and shows that for yet another
decade, Santa Monica's population has
held steady or declined.
In the 90s, for example, the City posted
signs at the entrances to Santa Monica
said that the population was 92,000, but
then the 2000 Census counted only 84,084
and the signs are gone.
In my opinion, the demographers, in trying
to calculate net migration to and from
Santa Monica, consistently underestimate
the number of high school seniors who
graduate and leave Santa Monica, rarely
to return and seldom to be replaced by
new toddlers. Few children of Santa Monicans
can afford to return and live here as
young adults, and few young families can
afford to live here either. That's why
our schools face a demographic/financial
crisis.
In any case, what really bugs the SMFCs
is traffic, but Santa Monica's traffic
problems are not a function of its resident
population. The traffic that keeps us
locked in our little burg until 7:30 every
weekday night is not caused by the people
who live in Santa Monica, but by the people
who don't.
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