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Talk About an Agenda

By Frank Gruber

My major disappointment of the week was that the L.A. Times didn't review the Santa Monica High School Symphony Orchestra's concert at Walt Disney Concert Hall. But since the school's Science Bowl team got a write-up in L.A. Weekly the week before, maybe I was asking for a little too much outside recognition.

A public school usually needs a riot to break into the Times.

Samohi Orchestra Music Director Joni Swenson accepts congratulatory flowers at Disney Hall (Photo by Frank Gruber)

The concert was more or less phenomenal. It's worth mentioning that the other two youth orchestras in the L.A. Phil's "Sounds About Town" series this year are both ensembles of college-level musicians training to be professionals -- the Juilliard Orchestra and the American Youth Symphony.

So how, if you are a high school orchestra, do you get to Disney Hall? It's more than just "practice." It's having a music program that starts deep in elementary school that involves thousands of students of all abilities. It's having a program that simultaneously educates children at their own pace and challenges them to do better than they ever could have imagined. It's having a program that doesn't stop at the schoolyard gate, but that also relies on and involves the families of the children in it.

In short, you need a program that is a model for how good all education could be.

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The agenda the Santa Monica City Council will take up tomorrow night fills me with wonder. The Council plans to deal with half a dozen or so items, each of which could engender an evening's discussion, not to mention a column from me.

On the agenda (among other things): an item asking the Council to support a pilot program for an off-leash dog beach in Santa Monica (on the Consent Calendar!); a new program to allow businesses to park in preferential parking districts; the latest iteration of the downtown development, design and parking standards; the downtown parking program (a $98 million program with a huge EIR to consider); and the design of 415 Pacific Coast Highway (not to mention possible litigation related thereto).

I will try to hit the highlights.

The Off Leash Dog Beach. This is a bizarre item for the Consent Calendar. Two weeks ago advocates for a dog beach appeared before the Council in the public comment period of the budget priorities meeting asking for Council support. In response, Council directed city staff to prepare a letter in support of state legislation to establish a pilot program at Dockweiler State Beach, and to extend the program to Santa Monica.

Staff has returned with such a letter for the Council to approve, on "consent." But there has never been a noticed public hearing on the proposal, since Council's action arose from public comment on budget priorities.

I happen to like dogs well enough, and about 98 percent of dog owners. I know, however, from having attended a Recreation and Parks Commission meeting on the issue and from reading the staff report, that notable environmental organizations, such as Heal the Bay, the Audobon Society, and the National Resources Defense Council, oppose the dog beach. At the moment I don't have an opinion about the dog beach, but it would seem that before going on record supporting a dog beach in Santa Monica, the Council might notice a real hearing on the subject.

But what really irks me about the matter is that the resolution drafted by the City Attorney's Office in support of the state legislation uses the phrase "dogs and their guardians" when two years ago the Council voted against incorporating this new animal rights jargon ("guardians" instead of "owners") into our ordinances. (see story)

Most of the dogs I know would be humiliated to think that they are being guarded by their humans rather than the other way around.

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The plans to turn the old Marion Davies estate at 415 Pacific Coast Highway into a public beach club are on the agenda twice tomorrow night. In the closed session the City Attorney will report on litigation neighbors are threatening to oppose the project as a violation of Prop. S, which limited hotels and restaurants in the coastal zone. Then in the main session, the Council will consider schematic plans and financial projections.

What people need to know about 415 PCH is that despite nearly unanimous public support for a facility that would operate as a beach club, with facilities for social events such as weddings, as is typical in Santa Monica the scope of the project is at risk because of the City's compulsive need to appease a few whining neighbors with a exaggerated opinions about their rights over public resources.

After the Council in January directed staff to meet with these neighbors, staff has returned -- without the benefit of any other public workshop -- with revisions to the plan that drastically reduce the scope of what the public could do on the site.

For instance, the public event facility would be reduced by 1,000 square feet and although you might still have a wedding reception there, you better not have many friends. The capacity of the biggest room would be reduced from 200 to 100, and there would not be a real kitchen, only a staging area for food cooked elsewhere. Social functions, even at night, would be prohibited from June through September.

By all accounts, however, when the Council reviewed the earlier version of the plans in January, Council strongly supported the vision of active public use. Incidentally, without these uses, the facility is at greater risk of operating at a deficit.

The public needs to tell the Council to tell these NIMBY's that if they don't like living next to a public beach, live somewhere else. If there are any problems with Prop. S, the Council should put an amendment fixing them on this spring's primary ballot. The amendment would pass in a walk. When the voters passed Prop. S., and when they voted down the Michael McCarty hotel, it wasn't a public beach club financed by the Annenberg Foundation they were opposing.

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Should local employees be allowed to buy permits to park in preferential parking zones? The answer is yes. In this case the staff is proposing an overdue pilot program for the City to make use of only a portion of the huge number of curbside parking spaces that go unused each day in residential areas adjacent to commercial districts.

While preferential parking districts provide an important role in limiting parking and thus discouraging driving, they also provide a means for the City to start charging for parking to achieve the same result, without having to build public parking structures.

What the City should do, following the recommendations of UCLA parking guru Donald Shoup, is to use the revenues derived from street parking permits to improve the pedestrian environment -- trees, sidewalks, etc. -- in the residential neighborhoods and adjacent commercial districts where the revenues are collected.

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The Downtown Parking Plan has been in the works for six years, and which has engendered a huge environmental impact report. The plan calls for rebuilding and retrofitting the old structures on 2nd and 4th Streets and building two new structures on 5th Street, for a possible net increase of about 1,700 parking spaces.

The EIR identifies numerous unmitigatable traffic impacts, but because this project involves parking, which increase driving on a per capita basis, rather than housing or affordable retail, which decrease driving on a per capita basis, staff is recommending that the Council accept them by adopting a statement of overriding considerations. Go figure.

What everyone should know about this plan is that when the Council adopted it, Council voted to have it reviewed every two years to make sure all the parking was needed and could be paid for without tapping the City's general fund. Staff, however, is asking the Council to make the biannual review irrelevant and commit now to building about two-thirds of the spaces, including one of the new garages, and to buy the land for the second garage and use it indefinitely as surface parking, the absolute most retrograde use of downtown land.

This is unnecessary. The "environmentally superior" alternative identified in the EIR very reasonably commits only to the retrofits and rebuilding of the old structures, for a net gain of 712 spaces. Based on growth projections, and along with additional parking that's been added downtown already, these spaces should be enough new spaces for years.

If scheduled properly, the City could build the first two new structures quickly enough for them to provide new parking to offset temporary construction losses of parking downtown, so that the new parking structure behind the courthouse will not long be needed, and the parking lot at the Civic Auditorium can be developed into a park.

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Downtown Development Standards. Enough already.