BOBBY SHRIVER

GENERAL QUESTIONS:

1. Who are you? Describe yourself in 100 words or less.

My occupations, in chronological order from the mid-seventies, have been newspaper reporter, attorney, venture capitalist, and currently organizer/financer/manager of nonprofit charitable organizations. I produced eight Very Special Christmas albums, which generated $60 million for the Special Olympics (www.VerySpecial.com). With Bono, the singer for the Irish rock group U2, I founded DATA (www.data.org), a group that works to alleviate AIDS and poverty in Africa. I get results. When I see a project that needs to be done, I bring together diverse groups of people and resources and don’t stop until our goal is met. I have a lot of energy and drive.

2. What is your favorite book? Movie? Food?

Favorite book: Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass
Favorite movie: A tie between The Godfather and Finding Nemo
Favorite food: Coffee—strong coffee

3. How long have you lived in Santa Monica?

17 years.

4. Describe your history of community involvement, if any, in 75 words or less.

MULTIPLE CHOICE

Please choose the statement with which you agree most. Feel free to explain your answer in 50 words or less.

5. Tourism is one of Santa Monica's most important industries and has been almost since the city's founding. Yet, especially in the summer and on weekends, Santa Monica can appear downright crowded. Ignoring the economic benefits, with which statement do you agree more:

A. Tourism creates a major inconvenience for Santa Monica residents.

B. Being a world-renowned magnet for tourism is a tribute to Santa Monica and has made our city a more lively, fun and interesting place to live.

6. Over the years, the City has received two kinds of complaints about traffic. Some residents complain that there is too much traffic going through their neighborhoods, often going too fast, and have pressured the City to construct various forms of "traffic calming." Other residents complain that our streets are clogged with so much traffic that it takes too long to drive around town. With which statement do you agree more:

When it comes to traffic:

A. The most important thing is to protect neighborhoods by slowing down and discouraging cut-through traffic.

B. The most important thing is to find ways to speed up the flow of traffic.

The most important thing is to protect neighborhoods by slowing down and discouraging cut-through traffic. But some drivers are cutting through neighborhoods in order to avoid “traffic calming” measures on through streets. The best way to protect neighborhoods is to keep traffic moving on major arteries.

7. Over the past decade, more than a thousand apartments have been built or approved in downtown Santa Monica in response to City incentives. With which statement do you agree more:

A. Santa Monica needs more housing to be built, downtown is the best place to build it and the City should encourage more housing to be built there.

B. Downtown is too crowded already and the City should do what it can to discourage more housing development there by increasing regulations and/or downzoning.

8. It's generally acknowledged, within and without City government, that navigating the building and development permit process in Santa Monica is a nightmare for developers and homeowners alike, and much more complicated and time-consuming than in other local jurisdictions. With which of the following statements do you agree most:

The major cause of the problems with the building process in Santa Monica is:

A. An incompetent bureaucracy suffering from high turnover and bad training and supervision.

B. The Planning Commission, which has demoralized planning staff and made them fearful of approving projects and has slowed down the approval process itself by applying vague and varying standards.

C. The City Council, which over the years has enacted an overly complex set of laws governing zoning, environmental review and building standards.

9. Preferential parking districts are controversial in Santa Monica. With which statement do you agree more:

When it comes to street parking in residential neighborhoods located near commercial districts or boulevards,

A. The rights of the residents come first, and no resident should have to compete with a non-resident for a parking space on a resident's street at any time of day.

B. In designating preferential parking districts, the City needs to be more cognizant of the needs of employees and customers.

C. The streets belong to everyone, and the City should get out of the business of designating preferential parking districts.

10. True or false: The Third Street Promenade has become primarily a destination for visitors and does not cater to local residents. Explain in 50 words or less.

True. There aren’t many locally owned businesses left on the Promenade. It’s hard to develop “local” relationships with so many chain stores. Especially on weekends and in summer, local people know to avoid the traffic and parking problems in the downtown area.

11. Pick one and explain in 50 words or less:

The City's policies attract an influx of homeless who would not otherwise come to Santa Monica.

The homeless come to Santa Monica for reasons outside the City's control.

Homeless people know to go to a city that is safer and offers more services. Anybody would. But you have asked us to choose which statement is true when both are. If we had no homeless services in Santa Monica, people would still come here because they can sleep on the beach.

12. With which of the following statements do you agree most. Santa Monica's traffic problems are the direct result of,

A. City policies approved by the SMRR majority, including traffic calming, the development of the Promenade and the fostering of tourism.

B. Major developments -- such as the large office complexes in the city's industrial corridor -- approved in the mid-1980s by councils controlled by non-SMRR pro development factions.

C. Regional growth outside the control of the City Council.

Regarding choice B: SMRR leaders are responsible for a considerable amount of major development themselves, because non-SMRR people have only controlled the City Council for two of the past 25 years. It’s not really an either-or situation, as your A. and B. suggest.

13. With which statements do you agree. You can choose more than one.

Affordable housing:

A. Creates blight.

B. Pays back hotel and restaurant union workers for their political support and creates more tenants to vote for Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights.

C. Addresses a legitimate need, especially in Santa Monica.

14. With which statements do you agree. You can pick more than one. Community input in planning and building design,

A. Improves Projects

B. Is overly skewed towards pleasing nearby neighbors as opposed to
meeting the interests of the community as a whole.

C. Unreasonably slows the process and is a way for opponents to
eliminate new development.

D. Needs to be streamlined.

15. With which statement do you agree most. Santa Monica tenants in rent-controlled units,

A. Need more protections from harassment by landlords eager to re-rent units at market rates.

B. Are being subsidized by landlords who can't charge fair rents and make
a profit.

C. No longer need strong rent control policies because vacancy decontrol
has given landlords more opportunity to make a fair return.

D. Should not have majority control of the City Council.

16. In the past two years, the number of laws passed by the City Council has increased from 32 in 2002 to 41 last year. This is:

A. A reasonable response to the concerns of residents.

B. A council that tries to please everyone.

C. A council that believes it knows what's best for the City and likes to impose its will.

GENERAL QUESTIONS

17. What would you do to improve Santa Monica? (50 words or less)

I would give residents safe access to our parks by encouraging strict enforcement of our panhandling and no-camping laws. I will help Santa Monica lead a regional effort to secure federal funding that will move chronic homeless people living on our streets into housing, connected to medical, social, and occupational services.

18. What is your "wish list" for Santa Monica? (Maximum of 5 items)

• Make our residents feel safer in our parks and on our streets by moving homeless people into permanent supported housing
• Replace the adversarial behavior at City Hall with an attitude of respect for the people of Santa Monica.
• Create more parks—turn the Fisher Lumber site into a park. Restore 415 Pacific Coast Highway (the Sand and Sea Club) for use as a public beach club.
• Keep traffic from driving us nuts.
• Get the bacteria out of our bay. We can’t have people continuing to get sick from swimming there.

19. What is the best thing about Santa Monica?

The people.

What is the worst thing about Santa Monica?

The heavy-handed City Council.

21. What is your favorite place in Santa Monica? Your least favorite place? In 30 words or less give your reasons.

Favorite place: The bike path on the beach. All kinds of people, of all ages, go by on the bike path. It’s a place of constant motion and vitality, like the ocean beyond it.

Least favorite place: 415 Pacific Coast Highway. It’s sad the way the City has let this place—which could give so many people pleasure—deteriorate. In 30 words or less give your reasons.

22. A measure on the November ballot calls for increasing the City's hotel bed tax. Do you support or oppose the measure?

I support Measure N. It makes our rate the same as those of Los Angeles and Beverly Hills.

23. Do you support the $135 million Santa Monica College bond measure on the November ballot?

I support it, but with two caveats: That we make sure two provisions in the measure are strictly followed: Any development that results from the bond measure adheres to City zoning laws (even though the College is exempt from them), and the concerns of the affected neighborhoods are given real priority.

24. An analysis by The Lookout found that Santa Monica spent $1,906 per resident to provide basic services in fiscal year 2003-04. By comparison, Culver City spent $1,349; Pasadena spent $1,244 and Torrance spent $1,005. Do you think the City can cut back on its spending or is spending the right amount? (See analysis)

I think the City can cut back, but I need further study of the budget before I can say how or where.

25. Over the course of more than a century, Santa Monica has had many personalities, usually more than one at any given time depending where you are standing. A tony resort and haven for the rich and beautiful; a honky-tonk beach town known for the Pier and P.O.P. and Muscle Beach for everyone else; a blue-collar factory town and arsenal of democracy; the wide-open "Bay City" of Phillip Marlowe; a "leafy suburb"; a working-class city of dingbat apartments and little bungalows; a conservative bastion run by real estate and business interests; the "Peoples' Republic of Santa Monica"; and other historical realities you can probably think of, not to mention today's reality of regional center for retail, entertainment and white-collar employment. What historical era or personality of Santa Monica do you most identify with, and how does that relate to your vision of Santa Monica's future?

You have given a list of all the elements that add up to create Santa Monica today. Our eclecticism is what makes the city so vital and appealing. I identify with the “leafy” aspect of the city. Santa Monica is known for its trees—we are one of the National Arbor Day Foundation’s 150 Tree Cities in California, because of the way we value and care for our trees.

But my main vision of Santa Monica—now and in the future—always involves our diversity—all those different types of people associated with the many faces of the city you described. They are the reason I moved to Santa Monica in the first place.