MEETING REPORT for September 1, 2020

Elizabeth Van Denburgh began the meeting by giving an overview of the Miramar project which is going before the Planning Commission on September 2. She showed an overview and an architectural rendering. 

Next, we were happy to have Mario Fonda-Bernardi, Christine Parra, Phil Brock, and Oscar de la Torre, the candidates on the Resident’s Slate, come and share their views:

​Overall, some primary concerns were shared by all the candidates:

• Crime, lack of public safety, concern about the extreme looting events on May 31st
• Putting residents first—preserving the “beach town” essence of Santa Monica, proving services for the residents, such as the crossing guards for our children – a local focus (Phil suggested a Museum of Beach Culture)

• Homelessness
• Reining in excessive development – affordable and workforce housing
• Fiscal restraint and Sustainability
• Long term vision: safety, sustainability, a police force that works with the community
  workforce and affordable housing –
• Education and Job development for residents

And they shared their individual views:

Mario:
1. Crime – different deployment of police
2. Stop the Plaza – a large development slated for 4th & 5th & Arizona, public land
3. Provide high-speed broadband city wide

Christine:
1.  Public safety and homelessness
2. Creating a full service senior center – more open space, dog parks
3. The budget problems, and the spending problem, which was not just started with Covid and the huge loss of jobs in the City Staff

Phil:
1. Public safety: cited his 92 year old mother afraid to walk the streets
2.Homelessness: inadequacies in Samoshell and the People’s Concern; have Park Rangers in Reed Park
3. Overspending: for example, the number of attorneys in the City Attorney’s Department

Oscar:
1. Restore public trust between the Council and the residents
2. Public safety:creation of a new public safety model; community policing-effective toward social, economic, environmental, and racial justice and dealing with the homeless with – “compassionate accountability” – dealing more pro-actively with drug use, mental illness, and vagrancy        
3. Fiscal responsibility, managing the budget – reducing salaries

Alissa Finerman did a good job of digging into the issue of homelessness, asking the candidates to “break it down” about what they would do.
​
Parra decried the loss of the position of a “homelessness czar” to the budget cuts.

Brock made the point that out of our population of approximately 1000 homeless people,
1.) a small percentage is intractable, they are “outside” people and will refused to be housed, even if housing were available to them, and
​2.) about 1/3 were Vets, often subject to PTSD, who could be housed at the VA, which was the VA’s original purpose, to provide an old soldier’s home. 

When asked if we “should allow” the homeless to “take over” the parks, especially Reed Park,
Oscar reminded everyone that just being homeless is not a crime. His model would be “compassionate accountability.” It was acknowledged that homelessness is not a simple problem with a simple solution—that it is a regional and national problem, and involves difficult mental health and drug addiction aspects that are not easy to deal with. But the sentiment is that Santa Monica has done more than it’s fair share to help the homeless. It’s time for our surrounding cities to do their part. But the Slate as a whole seemed energized to try to find new solutions.