Sorted by date Results 101 - 125 of 879
Mayor Sheds Crocodile Tears While Ruining Santa Monica Permanently for Residents: Letter from Santa Monica Voter Boo-hoo-boo, Mayor Himmelrich. Cry me a river with your comments. If you and this City Council were doing your jobs for the people who voted for you, the citizens of Santa Monica would not be upset with your inadequate performance. You close off Parking Structure 3 so no one can park there, especially on Wednesdays during the Farmer's Market. People can't go to the Promenade from...
As background, I have lived in Santa Monica for almost 50 years and served on the Board of Friends of Sunset Park neighborhood group for over 10 years in the 1990’s and 2000’s. Back then, we felt that developers might overrun the city with projects to the detriment of the residents. Never could I have imagined the current state of Santa Monica. Until January 11, 2022, I had never attended a community meeting about a development (Zoom or Live) that limited the time and amount of people in attendance, started late, ended early and had sound iss...
Our city wifi has been off in the Sunset Park area between 21st and 26th Streets on Ocean Park Boulevard, the Pico corridor and the Montana Avenue areas since May 26, 2021. this is a valuable service that we, the tax paying voters depend on in those communities. Seniors, low income families, students and people who now work from home depend on city wifi as it is their communication lifeline to the world. I brought this to the attention of Mr. Joseph Cevetello who runs the information systems dep...
By Alyssa Erdley Observer Staff 2/2/22 - Squalid conditions downtown and on the Third Street Promenade appear to be causing much of the vacancies in retail spaces visible there today. The downtown and Promenade area were already ailing before the lockdowns of 2020, with an increasing presence of vagrants who appeared to need drug rehabilitation or mental health services. But once the Covid-19 lockdowns closed all retail businesses that weren’t labeled essential and after the riot on May 31, 2020, the situation worsened considerably. The v...
I was unable to speak tonight after taking the time to log onto the meeting, I want to list the items that need to be addressed. 1. How does the Culver City Council intend to pay for the infrastructure needed to take care of the additional people who would inhabit the units that you are voting on tonight? That includes more police, fire firefighters, installation of sewer lines, etc. Does Culver City have a slush fund to pay for these costs? If new schools are needed, does the District have the...
Letter to the Editor, Culver City’s Proposed Housing Element Upzoning Perhaps future historians will, with the advantage of hindsight, be able to look back and dissect how a small group of clever, organized, and powerful interests engineered the transformation of Culver City from a lovely town of idyllic, family-oriented neighborhoods into a soulless, overcrowded, overpriced version of greater Los Angeles. These same historians will marvel at this group’s ability to cloak their actions in obt...
Hello Council, I have to chime in on the lack of accessibility of these ongoing online Council meetings. I’ve lost count of how many of these e-mails we’ve received at Protect Culver City complaining about inability to join the Council meeting to speak. And that’s among people with enough computer access to send an e-mail. I also get calls from people who don’t have computers. Furthermore, these Council meetings get harder and harder to join. We used to be able to send people a link to registe...
By David E. Mastagni and Taylor Davies-Mahaffey In the recent City of Tahlequah v. Bond decision, the United States Supreme Court revisited the protections officers should receive through qualified immunity (City of Tahlequah v. Bond, 2021 U.S. Lexis 5310 [2021]). Qualified immunity provides immunity from certain lawsuits raised against government officials acting in their official capacity. It is important to note that qualified immunity not only protects peace officers but any federal, state...
Dear City Council: Last night’s City Council meeting was an atrocious embarrassing mess. I have lived in Culver City all of my life, and never have I been so embarrassed by such a kangaroo Council. It did not even let Vice Mayor speak about the Housing Element before the vote, a decision made by the Council that will irrevocably harm the City. I am used to being muted and muzzled by the YIMBY Council majority, but it was painful to see it being done by Mayor Lee to Vice Mayor Vera so he could c...
John Alle Santa Monica Property and Business Owner For the first time in over a quarter century, the organization designated to manage Santa Monica's 3rd Street Promenade and Downtown, will have a new Director. What began as a volunteer business owner organization, and later became one of the first "business improvement districts" funded by property owners, has since become a bloated quasi-City agency. The business owners on the Promenade pay a higher percentage of assessments than other members of DTSM, yet the City selects a majority of its...
Dear Editor, The volunteers collecting signatures for the petitions to recall Alex Fisch and Daniel Lee have repeatedly been asked one question by the community: “How many signatures do we still need to get?” We decided to answer the community inquiry with an open Letter to the Editor, and hope you will publish: Dear Culver City Residents, We. Are. Still. Counting… and will continue counting to the very last minute! We are the 5 sq. mile town of Culver City. Our fight is to preserve that uniqu...
AUTHOR: OLGA ZURAWSKA The City Council is expected to attempt again on January 11, 2022 the appointments to two seats on the Housing Commission: a 2-year designated seat for a Section 8 program participant with lived experience of homelessness (currently held by Chair Buchanan who has been on the Commission for a decade), and a regular 4-year seat. The second attempt is necessary because on December 7, 2021 the Council made two errors during the appointment process. Those errors, or as some believe, strategic moves by Mayor Himmelrich and...
Neither drizzle or cold could stop the Exchange Club of Culver City from participating in the Backpacks for Kids Holiday meal giveaway to 150 families in need at Farragut Elementary yesterday afternoon . Our club provided the turkeys . Moments like this with the many volunteers giving is what makes living in CC special . Thank you to Kathy Vigil and the other leaders of the Backpack program for allowing us to participate. — with Tasha Lowitz and 2 others....
To the Editor: I'm writing in support of a campaign to significantly increase the number of new, affordable multi-family housing units in every neighborhood in town. My wife and I recently moved here from Arlington, VA. We moved to Fox Hills to be near her sister, and were dismayed by the rental price of the few apartments we could afford. Our income is above the CC average; we suspect that, excepting the most affluent, many families in town (especially those with children) are mortgaging their...
I acknowledge our presence on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples. When this is expressed, some people think, “so give your house back”. Maybe. Maybe we all do it so we live in a society that owns its atrocities. For now let’s start with more educational support for Native people and more just housing policy. When my kids were little I used to drive through Culver City to get them to daycare. Cruising at pedestrian safe speeds, I loved the trees...
Dear Editor, I acknowledge our presence on the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Gabrielino/Tongva peoples. When this is expressed, some people think, “so give your house back”. Maybe. Maybe we all do it so we live in a society that owns its atrocities. For now let’s start with more educational support for Native people and more just housing policy. When my kids were little I used to drive through Culver City to get them to day care. Cruising at pedestrian safe speeds, I loved...
Dear Culver City Voters, You may have heard about a proposed recall of Council Members Alex Fisch and Daniel Lee. The Culver City Democratic Club opposes this campaign. We urge you to not support it. If you have signed the petition, please consider contacting the City Clerk’s office at [email protected] to have your name removed. The California Democratic Party, the largest Democratic organization after the national party, passed a resolution on August 29 condemning recalls as u...
Dear Editor, My wife and I moved to Palms in June 2020. We were interested in the area's walkability and proximity to Culver City, and I was a big fan of the Expo Line access, since I was about to start the Master of Public Policy program at USC. Today, I'm close to graduating, and we are preparing to eventually buy our first home. After getting to know the area, we would love to put down more permanent roots in Culver City specifically. As I'm sure Culver City residents know, it's a great...
Dear Editor, In response to the affordable housing crisis, California’s lawmakers have changed single-family zoning as we knew it. In 2019, it became easier for owners to build both a full-size Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) (1,200 sq. ft) and Junior ADU (800 sq. ft) on residential lots. In January 2022, Senate Bill 9 (SB9) takes effect. SB9 allows for duplexes to be built on any residential lot. It also allows for lot splitting, in which a current lot can be divided into two. This means that i...
By Corva Corvax A Logical Opinion 12/7/21 - LA County District Attorney George Gascon proudly announced yesterday the charging of a Los Angeles man with the murder of Jacqueline Avant. This particular press release was a vast departure for the "criminal justice reform" DA, whose press releases rarely involve boasts about catching violent criminals. His more recent press releases include information about a restorative justice project, an anti-racism initiative, and moves to reform juvenile three...
By Maria Loya, Local Mom The CDC is discontinuing use of the test which returns too many false positives We have all gone through collective trauma as a result of COVID. In August the SMMUSD School Board approved the COVID Surveillance Program that included the required weekly PCR test along with the indoor and outdoor masking of our children in order for them to receive in person public education. Many parents felt coerced to consent to the PCR test in order to have their children return to in-person schools. The Covid Surveillance Program...
by John Alle Santa Monica Property Owner The following letter was sent to the entire city council, the city manager, and police chief. Chief Batista and City Manager White both replied with thanks to the author. It consists of a short-, medium-, and long-range set of solutions to the crime and vagrancy plaguing Santa Monica's downtown area: A. SHORT TERM (IMMEDIATE) Objective: Stabilize safety 1) Remove the requirement to renew the NO SITTING OR LYING IN THE ENTRANCE NOTICE. 2) Deploy pairs of...
Dear Editor, Have you ever wondered why there is a shortage of housing in Culver City? I own residential housing in Clarkdale and I wonder about this myself. When I purchased a newly-built fourplex in 1988, I didn’t realize it was nearing the end of a building boom in Culver City. In the more than three decades that followed, I have seen very few new housing units under construction. At that time, Culver City was a great place to build. There was no rent control. Taxes and fees were r...
By Corva Corvax, Satire Artist Ed Massey's statue titled "In the Image," of a seven-foot-tall homeless homeless man was knocked down by vandals around November 30, almost exactly three years after the supposedly temporary statue was erected at the corner of Wilshire Boulevard and 26th Street. The artwork took the place of a sculpture of a family of mother, father, and children dancing in a fountain, a work that stood for decades in front of the one-time bank building on that corner. Mayor Lou...
Have you ever wondered why our rush hour traffic seems backwards? Morning rush hour is heaviest leaving Downtown LA and afternoon rush hour is heaviest going towards Downtown LA. This is very counterintuitive and very confusing for people from out of town. But it makes total sense for LA because there are so many more jobs than housing units on the Westside of Los Angeles, which means people going to work travel East to West and people going home travel West to East. This traffic does not stop at the borders of Culver City – it is why there i...
