UPDATE! Council grants "ENA" (Exclusive Negotiation Agreement) to five-member group proposing to preserve Civic and turn it back into premiere event venue.

Dear Mayor Davis, Council members, City Manager,

I'll be brief. Do not sell the Civic or the land it's on and most certainly do not sell or lease it to the School District. (We all know where they get their money) Instead, exhibit some real leadership and commit to recreating a new Civic Auditorium for the 21st Century that retains its beautiful, landmarked North face, is versatile enough to host a variety of events and welcomes the best entertainment the world has to offer. And have it all done in time for the 2028 Summer Olympic Games.

Do it in the most public way possible and begin TONIGHT.

Address whatever state law obstacles need to be addressed and direct the City Manager and staff to begin the process for the new Civic. 

--A new Civic that revitalizes international excitement about our city.
--A new Civic that draws the finest entertainment anywhere.
--A new Civic that draws film fests and conventions and hosts city events.
--A new Civic that revitalizes everything south of the 10 freeway.

DO NOT BE REMEMBERED AS THE COUNCIL THAT SURRENDERED THE CIVIC AND SOLD OUR CITY'S SOUL.

Be the Council that saves it.

Thank you!

John Cyrus Smith,

Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commissioner
JohnCySmith@gmail.com
john.smith@santamonica.gov

P..S. 
I've attached a video (below)shot in May of 2013 of the LAST LIVE MUSICAL PERFORMANCE at the Civic Auditorium... the Santa Monica Symphony performing tchaikovsky, Guido Lamell was conducting. 
​

​https://smdp.com/2022/06/07/letter-24/
Santa Monica Daily Press
​This is personal.
It also affects all of us looking for real solutions to homelessness.
Someone in my family was homeless. He was mentally ill with a history of drug use. The turnaround came five years ago in part because of the care he’s received at the group homes he’s lived in since then. The most recent one provided 40 men with beds, meds, meals and medical care. Most had some sort of government assistance or SSI to cover the modest cost. Without this group home, he and 39 others might be homeless.
Group homes are just one of many efficient ways to reduce homelessness at relatively low cost.
The sad part is this: He and those 39 other men just lost their group home. It was one of the most affordable housing options available to anyone anywhere in Southern California and now it’s gone. Someone bought it and will probably tear it down and build pricey, market-rate housing in its place. In fact, developers and real estate interests are buying up these group homes and residential lots more than ever, thanks to SB 9 and SB 10. These two new laws essentially make it legal (and profitable) to split one lot in two and build more housing units on each lot. Wonder why home prices are soaring? Why you can’t find your dream home? Why you keep getting outbid? One big reason is bigger fish are now outbidding you and everyone else, thanks to state lawmakers such as Scott Weiner and Toni Atkins, who introduce and support such bills while raking in campaign donations from real estate interests.
But they’re not the only problem. A recent audit showed that the “affordable units” L.A. is building for the homeless cost up to $837,000 each.  That’s absurd. You could buy four houses in some states with that much money. Building costly units in pricey zip codes such as Santa Monica will never move the homelessness needle. Group homes, tiny homes, trailer homes and Conestoga Huts (Google them) are so much more cost-effective and can house a lot more people a lot faster. Another fast and cost-effective solution would be efficient arrays of quality tents, soft structures and basic facilities on surplus land in the valley, on the Westside and elsewhere. It was this strategy that was recently used to quickly move dozens of homeless vets off the sidewalk along San Vincente and Wilshire Boulevards and onto the West LA Veterans complex.
We need to start finding hundreds of places for hundreds of people at a time instead of just a few dozen. If Poland can take in 2.5 million homeless Ukrainian refugees over several weeks and provide every one of them a place to sleep, food to eat and care if they need it, Los Angeles County can and should be able to handle it’s 70,000 or more homeless people.   
Truth is, homelessness won’t go away or get better until we manage it better. People with no place to go cannot simply be wished away. They are everywhere because they don’t have anywhere or somewhere to go. We have to create more places for people and we have to do it for a lot less than $837,000/unit. A recent RAND study shows L.A. County could create more than 100,000 new residential units through the conversion of underused hotels, offices and other commercial buildings. A recent audit by the California State Auditor also shows the Regional Housing Needs Assessments foisted on cities like Santa Monica contained seriously-flawed methodology when used to dictate how much housing our cities should be mandated to build. Such questionable methodology should be challenged instead of blindly followed.   
If we want to solve homelessness, it’s time to start protecting group homes and create more of them. It’s time to buy every motel we can and turn it into basic housing. It’s time to buy under-used warehouses and convert them into hundreds or even thousands of mini apartments with shared, basic facilities. It’s time to build larger tracts of tiny homes and trailer homes. It’s time to create a few tent towns on vacant city, county, state or federal land and create incentives for people to live there. It’s time to address the unintended consequences of laws such as SB 9 and 10 and Props 47 and 57. And it’s time we stopped politicians from passing new laws that produce mostly expensive market-rate housing while lining their pockets.
Bottom line: It’s time to start realistically managing this crisis instead of pretending we can “solve it” by building our way out of it, $837,000 a person at a time.  
As for our family member, we got lucky and managed to find him a new group home to live in.  It’s not fancy, but it’s clean, safe, provides all the basics and most of all, it’s a “home.”
Time now for politicians to stop bragging about what they’ve done or plan to do and actually create some.
John Cyrus Smith, Santa Monica

Originally published in Santa Monica Daily Press
​https://smdp.com/2022/03/10/letter-to-the-editor-32/

I recently took a midnight stroll to the foot of Wilshire Boulevard and looked out from the Palisades Park bluffs at the always inspiring Pacific Ocean. To many of us who live here, the ocean is our front yard and the most beautiful sight in the world. Such sights are the reasons we have a California Coastal Commission, and the reason I’m writing.
Let me sum it up in one sentence: “The California Coastal Commission should vote to delay the Miramar makeover for four reasons: The size and questionable design of the project, conflicts of interest, it’s controversial approval  and  the geological risks the project poses to the fragile bluffs in Palisades Park just 50 paces away across the street.”
The Project Itself
Miramar owner Michael Dell is one of the world’s richest men, but claims he needs to pay for his super-sized hotel by packing 60 luxury condos worth millions apiece into a giant cruise ship shaped like a boomerang above the bluffs. Every other luxury hotel in the city has somehow managed to profit without such condos. Also, moving the main entrance off Wilshire and onto Ocean, Second and California Avenues will clog up the city’s ONLY direct route to and from PCH via the California Incline. It will also create a new quagmire of downtown traffic on Wilshire because hotel visitors will have to turn right onto Second before they turn left into the hotel’s new entrance against opposing traffic. This unnecessary re-engineering will also funnel record numbers of vehicles directly into Santa Monica’s densest and most-populous neighborhood. The underground parking scheme is another anomaly. Spaces will somehow be parceled out between condo owners, hotel guests, employees and others, but silly you if you think any of the hotel’s expansive food, maid or service staff will ever be allowed a spot. All that underground parking (and three solid years of constant construction) will also encroach on and turn the city’s most-treasured (and landmarked) Moreton Fig tree into the world’s-biggest potted plant, while challenging its very existence. All for a bare-minimum amount of affordable housing built as cheaply as possible across the street. 
Conflicts of Interest
The city’s longest-serving Council member and former mayor decided (rightly so) to recuse herself from voting on the project, because it was uncovered that her husband had been working for Michael Dell for several years, including during the project’s most formable stages. Yet this obvious conflict of interest was never disclosed publicly until just before the vote. Such a lack of local government transparency should never have happened. But it did. Also, many of the lawyers working on the project  as well as their family members, made substantial donations to two Council members and the city’s most-powerful (and development-friendly) PAC.  We all know some of these same cheerleaders are the ones writing letters and emails of support for the project to the Coastal Commission and paying others to do so as well. If you listen in Thursday as the Commission debates the project and I do hope you will, you will also hear more people being paid to sing its praises.
Please believe residents instead. No one pays us. We won’t make money off this project. We just love our city.
The Vote and the Will of the People
The Santa Monica City Council approved the Miramar redesign two weeks before Election Day in 2020 by a vote of 4-2, with one recusal. Had the vote happened AFTER the election as so many residents had suggested, the project most likely would have never been approved. On that Election Day two weeks later, three of the four Council members who voted for the project LOST. Voters soundly replaced them with a “change” slate of three responsible growth candidates. The fourth vote in favor was cast by a Council member who had just been APPOINTED a few months before.
Geologic Risks
Please don’t take chances with the fragile bluffs just across the street from the current hotel. Imagine what kind of pounding three or four years of rumbling trucks, heavy cranes, tons of dirt and materials and constant construction will have on the fragile Palisades Bluffs. This risk was NEVER adequately addressed in the EIR for the project. Coastal Commissioners know all too well about the fragility of such bluffs up and down our coast. I remember moving here 25 years ago when the city had to close almost all of Palisades Park to replace the wall along the edge because the cliffs below much of the old one had eroded away. Our fragile bluffs demand and deserve the scrutiny only a through geologic examination ordered by the Commission can provide. To neglect to do so is counter to everything the Coastal Commission stands for.  
At that very foot of Wilshire I spoke of earlier, just five or so steps from the edge of the bluffs, stands a statue of Saint Monica, our city’s namesake. Out-of-towners probably don’t know she stands on a grass pedestal shaped like a heart. Others may not be aware of the Catholic belief that she sheds a tear for her errant son. That edge of the bluffs where she stands is closer to Ocean Avenue than at any other point in Palisades Park. It’s just a few feet away. Go there and see for yourself. The huge Miramar Mega-Hotel-Condo/Retail Complex would be just 50 paces away.
For this reason and others above, the Miramar makeover should never have been approved by the City Council. Its construction jeopardizes the bluffs that support one of the most beautiful coastal parks in the world. The project should not be approved by the California Coastal Commission as it stands.
Please, Coastal Commission. Delay this project. Examine the geology. The EIR neglected to do so adequately, as you will discover. Please protect our fragile bluffs. Protect our part of the coast. Protect our landmarked Park overlooking the Pacific. And protect the statue of Saint Monica that stands so perilously close to the edge of those bluffs. What a tragedy it would be to give her more reasons to cry should something preventable happen to the very ground she stands on… Thank You.
John C. Smith, Former Chair and current Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commissioner

Letter to the Editor: The Climate Action Plan
Dear Mayor, Council, City Manager,
Excuse me for being so blunt, but there is no other way to say this so I’m just going to say it…
$800 million dollars for a Climate Action Plan over ten years?
Are you serious?
In a city with a staff far bigger than most which still farms out so much to consultants?
In a city with a budget already forecast to dip into the red over the next few years?
In a city facing a half-billion dollar pension liability?
In a city with an annual budget of roughly $800 million, the same cost as this plan?
In a city with some of the state’s highest tax rates and whose revenue from tourism has been plateauing for years and shows signs of diminishing marginal returns?
In a city already spending upwards of $140 million on an over-priced city hall annex, monument to sustainability that will likely become the most expensive building of its size in the country?
In a city already helping build what is essentially a huge day care center which will primarily serve 110 children of city, Santa Monica College and Rand employees, most of whom are highly-compensated and don’t even live here?
In a city that cannot afford even ONE POLICE OFFICER dedicated to Reed Park to handle the impacts of crime and homelessness which are hurting our city and killing any hopes of the activation you keep saying is necessary to keep our parks vibrant and safe?
Sorry. 
Enough already.
I love this city. I want it to be vibrant and clean and beautiful. I also believe California and our city should be a leader when it comes to climate change and Sustainability, but this is an outrageous sum of money to spend on a pie-in-the-sky, vanity plan. If you disagree, then put it to a vote of residents.
Get real. Stop over-spending huge sums of money and cut our budgets by at least 2 percent every two years for the next ten.
When your friends keep telling you you’re screwing up, you should probably listen.
John C. Smith
Chair, Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commission

You can’t make this stuff up.
A venomous, 67 minute tirade in Phoenix that has even top Republicans questioning his sanity.
​A prime-time address on Afghanistan that says nothing and is really an attempt to divert attention away from Charlottesville and Russia. 
An administration finally forced to ballast Steve Bannon, only after triggering widespread disbelief over the President’s comments about racism and hate.
A White House that has shown an ignorance and ineptness unheard of before in America.

Like so many Americans recovering from the hangover of a President whose beliefs are as shocking as they are ignorant, I find it unfathomable he can stand and defend the cabal  of abhorrent  white extremists who brought weaponry and hate to a city for the soul purpose of inciting violence and spewing a reprehensible message.
What is even more unfathomable are the Republican leaders who continue to stand silently by as a president mocks and discards the very values upon which our nation is based.  And many in the religious community, as well, continue to stand with him, as if the brain-washing of political intellect is complete. The Republican “leadership” in Congress does nothing.  Their legacy will be shame, left by Senator Mitch McConnell , House Speaker Paul Ryan and others of the Republican party, should they continue to fiddle while our Rome burns. The Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s words have never cried so clearly:  “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies but the silence of our friends.”
The President is also a pathological liar, who lies on a Daily basis. Most everything from his mouth and his aides is designed to deceive, deflect, deny and distract from the alternative facts he tells himself and the rest of us. He does not even care that most of us know this, because he knows his ignorant, deplorable base still cling to his every Orwellian word. Yes, our biggest enemy is the mass ignorance swallowed as snake oil from a small-minded huckster with an even smaller vocabulary. That Donald Trump currently occupies the White House stands as the biggest collective blunder our nation has ever owned. Such a stain so many relish as he spews bluster and lies to hide the truth and facts when they don’t serve his interests. Truth becomes fake news only because he tells his followers and everyone lies. To quote Jack Nicholson from ‘A Few Good Men’, he cannot handle the truth.
He is despicable and his Presidency a disgrace and it is time to end it for the benefit of us all. Before he starts another World War with his 5th-grade blundering. Our nation is too precious to allow a spoiled and average intellect call the shots.
He courts and encourages by his words and actions the worst elements of hate in our nation. He is completely devoid of the “Emotional Intelligence” so necessary for any capable leader. His vocabulary is high school level at best, the product of a life lived as a privileged teen who five times engineered an excuse not to serve the country he now presides over. President Obama was the first African American chosen by his mostly white peers to serve as the Editor of the Harvard Review. Donald Trump’s family paid others to do his college work for him. After all the honest concern that the one-percent controlled too much American wealth, He riled up the most ignorant among us make sure that 1% can lock away the inequality forever.
The man who vowed to drain a swamp has filled it with snakes and enlarged it, kicking a few out along the way like a Bannon as he train-wrecks his way through the government which is now a circus of his own creation, a circus in which the ringleader clown cannot run. His government, our government, is now the circus, for a barking huckster who tweets nonsense while even his wife, family, aides and accomplices look away, muttering in disgust. The most vile and unqualified person ever sent to the White House, slowly killing our nation with his ineptness, turmoil, and yes, hate. This person who holds the title of President has pulled out and courted the worst of us and from us, for he simply knows no other way. He has divided us to a whole new level, not since the Civil War.
The vast majority of Americans were reviled when they saw video of white supremacists marching with torches at night across the University of Virginia campus chanting hate. But not Donald J. Trump, elected with the help of America’s most-dangerous enemy, Russia, and an ignorant subset of Americans with a collective, average intellect easily exceeded by most high school graduates. A populace so disenchanted by their own sorry lives they are so easily charmed by a Wall Street bigot who cares nothing about them.
We have such a President because nearly half of us, 48%, did not bother to vote. A quarter of us, 25.6% voted for Hillary Clinton, slightly fewer, 25.5%, voted for Trump. Note that the very reason the Electoral College was created was to protect us from such a candidate and election and failed us miserably. As a result, about 62 million Americans out of 320 million, about one-fifth of us, gave a despicable man the keys to the White House.
Our only solace, is the reality now closing in on him and his, because of people just like you who won’t stand for such impotence, greed, incompetence and, yes, evil. It is clearly now up to us, to take those keys away, and disregard all the noise from the deplorables who support him and the lemmings who blindly protect him.
It’s all about November of 2018 now. Turn up the volume.

Dear City Council,

As a dedicated Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commissioner, I believe there are three things the City Council can and must do as it debates the future of our Civic Center:

 1)  Ensure the site includes a temporary field for use by Santa Monica High School and every resident and visitor to our city… 

 2)   Reconsider the construction of the Early Childhood Lab School, which is to be primarily used as a glorified day care center for the children of already well-compensated City, Santa Monica College and Rand employees, many of whom do not live here… 

 3)   Make sure the Civic Auditorium is run by a private entity and can be profitable as such, and if it cannot, consider ways to preserve the wonderful, land-marked facade and create something more utilitarian and culturally positive on the site…

Here’s why…

Santa Monica High is home to thousands of students. The 2005 Civic Center Plan committed to a much-needed field on the Civic site. Even before that, the plan included a wide swath of open public green space. The Council, by approving the temporary field, can deliver on those promises and create the open space the Civic Center site should have. That open space would also serve as the “glue” which connects and unites the Civic Center with SaMoHi facilities such as Barnum Hall and the Greek Amphitheater, which could be used to compliment any venue the Civic Auditorium might eventually become. 

The Early Childhood Lab School (formerly the Early Childhood Education Center) is a noble pursuit… Who would not support the creation of a facility that serves our neediest and most-vulnerable young residents? But the ECLS as conceived now is no such a place: It would serve primarily the children of three entities; City, SMC and Rand employees, many whom are not residents. The parents of those children, to be sure, are well-compensated. Surely, Rand can and should fund its own daycare on its own site, like other progressive companies. Surely, the City can and could utilize present space such as the Ken Edwards Center or the city’s Palisades Park facility for its daycare. And please don't tell me that SMC doesn't have room or the means for its own daycare. SMC just bought the old YWCA, which has a gym, dance studio, small auditorium, three playgrounds, office space, housing and parking. Adaptive reuse. The old YWCA should become the new ECLS and for much less cost. One final point: An expensive, new building on city-owned land at the Civic Center is not the key to better education for children. Dedicated teachers in any loving environment are. There are less-expensive alternatives to the ECLS and the Council must consider them.

Finally, the Civic Auditorium itself. I was part of the “Save the Civic” group which advocated for the creation of the Civic Working Group and for many of its members. I commend their efforts and dedication. But let’s be clear: History has shown that the city’s Department of Community and Cultural Affairs has proven to be a less-than-ideal Civic steward. I say this not as criticism but as fact. The City Council can and must allow a private entity to give the Civic a second life as a new cultural venue for a small King Tut exhibit, or Tom Petty concert, or AltCar Expo, or Santa Monica Symphony, or marquee movie during the AFI Convention. The new Civic must be all these things and must earn its place in the Civic Center’s future. If it cannot, then the best option might be to preserve its land-marked facade and create something on the site that will serve the above uses and much more. A white elephant serves no one and takes up a lot of space. The Civic must be reborn, or it must be allowed to fade gently into history.

These decisions are complex and difficult. But the right decisions outlined above can and must be made and the right actions taken. Anything less is to squander the opportunity to be truly “civic” to the Civic Center’s future.
​
Sincerely,
John C. Smith,
Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commissioner

If one were to believe some of the Chicken Little hysteria over the LUVE Initiative coming from the so-called “community” group Santa Monica Forward and a few others, one might indeed think the sky was falling, the anti-Christ had arrived and Santa Monica was about to fall into the ocean.

But you’re too smart for that.

So are the 10,000+ people who signed the Residocracy petition in opposition to pro-development profiteers and their cadre of supporters, who would love to pack a few thousand more mostly market-rate housing units in our city like so many college sophomores in a phone booth.

Oh how they blather on about the need for more housing, yet fail to admit that the vast majority of units they yearn to build would be unaffordable to the people they claim to care about. Have the units built the past few years lowered housing costs even a penny? Nope. Yet these pro-development carpet-baggers continue to peddle their trickle-down housing scheme as our savior and our duty. They claim LUVE will hasten Ellis evictions and the destruction of current housing while displacing seniors and lower-income residents. But just who do you think buys up those properties and takes apartment buildings off the market, then kicks out those seniors and lower-income tenants so they can construct more market-rate units few can afford? Who do you think pushed and pulled and paid to get laws like Ellis and Costa-Hawkins passed in the first place? The same people who can’t give any real-world examples of where intense market-rate density has made housing more affordable.

Ask them. All you’ll get is the sound of silence.

The urban sprawl that is present-day Southern California is in many respects the result of promises made by developers who’ve spent decades building in farther away places such as Riverside, Rancho Cucamonga and Santa Clarita, promising then, as now, that they are the answer to our housing needs. And now that the easiest money has long since been made, they claim we must no longer build out, but up toward a higher and denser Santa Monica.

Nice try.

Here’s a simple truth: Developers always build where profit potential is highest. They’ve chosen Santa Monica because they think they can make a killing. Here’s another: LUVE will not cause more traffic in our city. What has and will is development. The pro-development cabal pretends it’s all about diversity, affordability, inclusiveness and sustainability, “feel-good” terms they toss around like so many Frisbees at the beach. What they’re really about is greed. Their housing crisis call-to-arms is merely the mask they hide behind to make money.  Do you really think Mr. NMS cares about affordable housing? Then why does he not build a higher percentage of affordable housing units in every project he plops down in our city?

A stampede of market-rate housing will not make Santa Monica more affordable, any more than will additional lanes on the 405 reduce traffic. Developers and the people who support them are trying just trying to confuse you by claiming this is a debate about housing, when it’s really just about more development. They’re betting you’re too busy to notice.

But you already have.

Look. I bike all over town and will love riding the Expo to USC, where I teach journalism, in the   fall. But I’ve also worked in news and covered elections my whole life and know “political spin” when I see it. Developers have launched a concerted effort, via groups with names such as “Forward” and “Next”, to put a ”community” spin on their profiteering. If the Downtown “Community” Plan is approved as is, developers will push to fill Downtown as full and tall and as dense as zoning allows and then some, and will keep pushing for “development agreements” which produce higher and denser projects far beyond what our rubber-band zoning laws allow.  

If we let them.

What it boils down to is this: LUVE was created to put those development decisions in the hands of residents. I bet most think a 148-foot hotel-office complex with very little ground-level green space on PUBLIC land in the heart of our city at 4th and 5th and Arizona, is excessive. With a precedent like that, who knows what our city will look like long after the current Council is gone. Why not just put development to a vote and let residents decide? After all, it’s our city. Who do you trust more: Residents who’ve lived here all of their lives, or people and organizations whose sole purpose in life is profit?

One final point…

Santa Monica Forward seems to have some pretty deep pockets for a “community” group. If I were you, I’d wonder where they get their money. Someone is now paying people to go door-to-door and scare residents about the LUVE Initiative. Someone is paying for the phone survey calls many residents are getting lately. The seven REAL neighborhood groups, Wilshire-Montana Neighborhood Coalition, Northeast Neighbors, Mid City Neighbors, NOMA, PNA, OPA and Friends of Sunset Park, don’t have that kind of money. I know because I’m on the Wilmont Board. We meet at the Montana Branch Library. We’re celebrating our 20th year. We didn’t just pop up before an election. We didn’t just hold our kick-off party in a building owned by one of Santa Monica’s most-prolific developers. We also don’t offer anyone who shows up free drinks. But that’s exactly what one new “community” group did just a few short weeks ago.

Elections are always about choices. We all know how much money goes into influencing politics, policies and politicians. Some of that money is right here, right now and working to get its way so certain entities can get THEIR way and make money.

Let’s not let them.
​
Sincerely,
John C. Smith
Santa Monica Recreation and Parks Commissioner