Mid-City Neighbors Elects New Board; Sets Priorities

By Jorge Casuso

At the Mid-City Neighbors 18th annual meeting attended by nearly 100 residents and city officials this weekend, the moderate group embarked on a path that could put it more in line with the city's more anti-development neighborhood organizations.

The group voted overwhelmingly on Saturday to add five new members to its 15-member board, several of them residents who had not been involved in the organization for years. The new board members are Christina Chan, Mike Brourman, Maryanne Solomon, Susanne Cole and Joan Charles, a member of the City's Architectural Review Board and a slow growth advocate.

"Our newest board members are dedicated community members who will lobby well and hard for what is right and fair," said David Cole, the group's president. "What's really wonderful is that it brings people that have taken a break back into the community. Mid-City Neighbors just keeps getting bigger and better."

Traffic congestion, parking shortages and increased development were the main concerns expressed by residents of the city's central corridor during the three-hour meeting. The group also approved resolutions that will guide the organization's work over the next year. The general membership voted to:

· Change the by-laws to limit the group's executive board members to four years in the same post.
· Ask Santa Monica College officials to hold a meeting about the potential impacts to the community of a proposed theater on the campus' Madison site at 11th Street and Santa Monica Boulevard.
· Request that the city limit the hours that trash trucks can operate on weekends and holidays.
· Continue to support the residents of the Village Trailer Park in their efforts to preserve and improve one of the city's two remaining mobile home parks.
· Support the proposed Santa Monica Residents Protection and Homeownership initiative, which would allow tenants to purchase their units.
· Ask city officials to refer individuals or groups proposing projects to talk to the neighborhood group whose area would be impacted.
· Reaffirm a resolution urgently calling for the city to revise its Circulation Element and for the Planning Department to establish a schedule for the release of the draft document before the end of the year. The resolution also calls for the city to delay approval of any Environmental Impact Report until it is determined that a project's traffic evaluation is consistent with the guidelines and goals of the City's Circulation Element.

The board, however, voted not to annex Neighbors for a Safer Santa Monica, a fledgling group near the city's downtown. Group leaders, who had gathered the necessary signatures to join Mid-City, decided to remain independent after the issue was placed on the ballot.

The resolutions, Cole said, reflect the group's commitment to slow growth in an area that has seen a building boom along Colorado Avenue and faces the major redevelopment of the city's two hospitals.

Mid-City Neighbors, Cole said, has always been either anti-development or slow growth." He added that "in some developments the best you can hope for is some mitigation.

"We are a group that is more considerate of all the issues, instead of automatically saying things are bad," Cole said. "I want the board to hear both sides, and I've caught a lot of flack for that."

An indication that the organization could be embarking on a more anti-development path came shortly before Saturday's meeting, when group leaders reversed a vote to recognize Councilman Paul Rosenstein for his service on the council.

After the board's Convention Committee voted 4 to 1 to give Rosenstein the award, several members who were absent called a special meeting, where they voted not to recognize the councilman, who was one of the founding members of the group.

Opponents felt that Rosenstein, who will not run for reelection in November, has been too favorable to development. Rosenstein also cast the swing vote to pull city funding to neighborhood groups (Some of the funding has since been restored).

"We told Paul he was going to be honored," said Cole, who has expressed interest in running in November for one of the four open council seats. "We had the plaque made. We were ready."

Cole said Rosenetein told him he understood the group's position, but he said there is a place for a dissenting voice on a council controlled by five members of Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights.

"I appreciate the fact that when you have a council of similar mind," Cole said, "you need a devil's advocate."