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Mayor's Roundtable Episode 2 : The Budget
04/15/2025
Mayor's Roundtable Episode 2 : The Budget
The second episode of our Mayor's Roundtable podcast features Former Mayor Gleam Davis and activist and researcher Juan Matute. While the focus of this podcast is the city's annual budget, there's also a really interesting mini-discussion at about the eighteen minute mark where we discuss the future of the Civic, Airport (and Airport Park) and how either or both of those properites could be part of the solution for the city's ongoing budget deficit. A full, but lightly edited, transcript of the podcast can be found below. Damien Newton - I'm here with Juan Matute and Gleam Davis, and we are going to be talking about the Santa Monica budget. Let's start off with just a very brief overview of how it works. I admitted in the pre-show that last year when I was covering the budget, I didn't quite understand why we do a two-year budget every year because obviously you're going to be making changes the following year. I was embarrassed to ask anyone why because everyone else seemed to think it was normal. But let's just assume that I know what I'm talking about today, but still think it would be great for people listening to the podcast to hear why is it that Santa Monica passes a two-year budget every year? Gleam Davis Well, maybe I'll start and Juan can add in. And thanks, Damian, for having us. When Rick Cole was city manager several years ago, it was decided that going through the entire budget process every year was tremendously inefficient. The budget process requires every department to do a work plan, and submit a budget to the city manager's office. The city manager then has to deal with it. The idea was that, and best practice really among a lot of governmental agencies is to do what is effectively a two-year budget so that the work plans were only really being revised every couple of years. Also, the heavy duty lifting in terms of council study sessions about the budget only had to happen every two years. Unfortunately, under California state law, the city is required to adopt a budget every year. So they budget in a two-year cycle, but they still have to adopt a budget on an annual basis. And that's just a legal requirement. And simply because circumstances change, you adopt a budget, say, in an even year and you go to adopt a budget in an odd year: revenues may be up, revenues may be down. So there always have to be some annual adjustments. And that's what happens in the annual budget cycle. Juan Matute That is for the operating budget, which is the current expenses, staff, staff contracts, supplies, et cetera. ah The city also has a capital improvement program, a five-year capital project budget, and it can work on those needs in the off year. And so this idea of having the operating year and then the capital year, the capital year is less intense because there's really a long-term need there with the capital projects. It's a long-term investment plan. It allows the city to shift its focus between those two things in a way that, so the City of Los Angeles does not do a citywide capital improvement ah programming process, capital budget, and they lose sight often of the capital needs. They are ending up doing a lot of deferred maintenance and underinvestment in infrastructure in the City of LA that, prior to our current budget situation, was less of a problem in Santa Monica and something that was very much reflected in the quality of infrastructure and the built environment in Santa Monica versus the city of Los Angeles. DN - So they pass a two-year budget, but they still have to look at the budget again every year just because there's going to be changes and all of that. When I report on it, I haven't tried to look out and do the second year. Am I doing a disservice? Do I need to change my style? GD - Well, no, because, you know, the situation on the ground changes and there are budget adjustments constantly. One of the procedural things about the city council is once it adopts a budget at the end of June every year, to make any intermediate changes between the adoption of the new budget the next year takes five votes of the city council. The reason is that you don't want to be changing your budget too frequently on the fly. And I'll be honest, in some of our political times in the last few years, that requirement has saved us from potential problems. People still tend to think of the budget as just being the year ahead. It really is just a methodology that allows staff not to have to do what is a very intensive process every 12 months, break it out every 24 months, and then really just do adjustments depending on if revenues go up, revenues go down, expenditures go up, expenditures go down, that sort of thing. So I think looking one year in advance is probably the most accurate way to do it. It really is more of an efficiency issue than a policy issue, if that makes sense. JM - And there's a built-in mid-year budget review in December to do minor course corrections as needed. It's not like 24 months, set it and forget it, or 12 months, set and forget it. There's an established process for when revenues are down, revenues are up. There's this need that we have accepted this grant and so that moves this funding from X to Z. DN - Let's talk a little bit. Santa Monica has some unique things in its budget, some challenges from lawsuit settlements and all sorts of other money that's set in stone and then it's got some flexibility. But in reality, there's not a lot of maneuvering that can be done with the budget, as I understand it because there's a lot of payments that have to happen. The city is facing some significant budget challenges because of tourism dropping off. It looked like it was rebounding. But I keep hearing that foreign tourists aren't all that interested in coming to America these days for some reason. Let's talk about the challenges and some of the things the city has to deal with. GD - The big challenge is there isn't much discretionary money. Like most human institutions, the vast majority of the city's budget, the operational budget, not the capital budget, goes to pay the salary of staff. Even though our staff is significantly reduced from pre-COVID times, that is still the bulk of the budget. We have the overhang of the Eric Euler sex abuse settlements and some other potential larger liabilities hanging down there. And the city needs to be financially prudent. And that means protecting its reserve fund and what it calls the rainy day fund. Should there be some sort of catastrophe, an earthquake or what happened in the Palisades with the fires, that the city has the resources to address an unanticipated but costly catastrophe. The big challenge is not having enough money. We have a council, which for the most part, I think is very smart and has some really good ideas. You have a couple of council members who unfortunately had their hands tied for a couple of years. Now that they have a more sympathetic council, they would like to do some positive stuff. And there isn't really the money to support that. And you have four new council members who got elected because they want to do good things for the city. And, you know, they're being told by staff there isn't money for a lot of those good things. So that's really the challenge they're facing. But I think they're trying to adopt some policies and procedures that might make it possible to do some innovative things even in this current budget crisis. JM - On a multi-year decadal cycle, Santa Monica's budget is really related to tourism, retail activity, and associated activities. And so with the rise of the Promenade in the 80s-90s, the city's budget increased substantially in the 2000s and 2010s, primarily due to the transient occupancy tax, which is a tax on people staying in hotels. That ebbs and flows with the, both the global economy, visitors, tourists, and also just the strength of “Santa Monica as a great place to go.” That's been challenged post COVID and continues to be challenged with the fires and other things. Fortunately we're in a mega world city and we're right near one of the top five airports in the world for people getting off the plane and actually staying in the city. There is an opportunity to grow tourism in Santa Monica and improve the financial footing of the city. But the city was doing a long-term planning exercise prior to COVID. about whether tourism or some other economic sector would be worth supporting into the future. And that got about 80, 90% done and it remains unfinished. Now we guess it's not tourism, but maybe we could make it tourism again, but maybe it ends up being biotech or creative industries or other things. And so the city is kind of in this period where it's trying to figure out where that revenue growth is going to come from in the future based on underlying economic activity in the city. But we haven't figured it out yet. GD - Tourism is really the bedrock of the Santa Monica economy. The most recent estimate is that if we didn't have tourism, there would be a deficit of about $1,300 to $1,500 per household in terms of the city budget and nobody in the city wants to cough up another $1,300 to $1,500 to pay for a basic level of services. There is some optimism on the horizon, and whether you call it tourism or just regional events…SoFi Stadium is a beautiful big stadium. The Intuit Dome is big and beautiful and new and exciting. And there's all sorts of attractions around us. The good news is that while there are many attractions, there aren't that many pockets of places for people who are going to expensive events to stay. Nobody who's paying $5,000 to go see a World Cup game is probably going to stay in Inglewood. In Marina Del Rey, the hotel situation there has deteriorated over time. So even with international tourism down, Santa Monica remains well placed to benefit from that. I will tell you, revenues went up dramatically when Taylor Swift and Beyonce played at SoFi. People stayed in the hotels and when they stay in our hotels, they eat in our restaurants and they shop in our stores. While we want to obviously continue to promote tourism there are external factors, as you pointed out, Damien, like a president who's hostile to people who want to come here and ah concerns about visa issues. There are ways we can work around it. And as Juan points out, we can look for other opportunities as well. But it's just going to take some effort. And I think that's one thing the city really needs to work on more is being more thoughtful and intentional about what it wants its economy to look like. DN - Is there anything that's sticking out as sort of the big controversial item or items that the council is going to be tackling in the budget? Or do we expect that for the most part, this is going to be a smooth-ish process with a council that has been on the same page for the most part for a lot of the early discussions, not just about the budget, but about other issues as they come up. A lot of 7-0 votes, 6-1 votes. JM - I think there's really interesting stuff going on right now that not neither of us know about because it's one of those things that under California's Brown Act can happen behind closed doors. And that is the collective bargaining agreements with the various employer groups for the city. Those are all labor negotiations that happen in closed session with the city attorneys and labor negotiators. Some of those contracts are very good for the people who are working under them, but perhaps less great for the people in Santa Monica who want a certain level of service ah per per dollar that the city has. I know one of one of the things that's cited amongst people I talked to is that the Santa Monica Police Officers Association that represents the line sworn police officers has had a clause in their contract for about 40 years where they're the second most highly paid officers of a group of 10 or so police forces in Los Angeles County. So as other places that have other sources of revenue besides tourism and sales tax, are able to offer raises to their police officers in Santa Monica. We've also had to give them raises, even if we haven't had the money. That creates some of these challenges. Of course, it compounds with the legal settlement from the sex abuse at the Police Activities League in the 90s. Those are settlements that happen in closed session. So I think we see seven no votes and a lot of alignment ah in public meetings. But there are very important and consequential things that are going on right now that will affect the ability of the city to use some, potentially some money or no money on meeting current priorities as the budget comes to final adoption. GD - I do think there could be some controversial things. I think it depends on what the appetite is of the city council for that level of controversy. The fact of the matter is that ah the city's already exploring on the upcoming agenda…they have a item to enter into a contract with a brokerage to sell a couple of city properties that will raise some money for the city, but selling, for example, the city TV property on 19th Street will raise a few million dollars, but isn't going to solve the $100 million dollar hole in the budget. There are ways to address that. The one that gets spoken about occasionally is the Civic Center property. The Landwatch building on it, that property is of marginal value to the city economically. I understand a lot of people are attached to it, have a tremendous amount of nostalgia, and attach a value to it. But monetarily, the presence of that landmark building really causes the value of that property to be much lesser than it would be if it were just a blank piece of land. If the building were not there, it's my understanding the property would be worth three times what it is with the civic sitting on it. And it's a valuable enough piece of property that if you were to put it on the market without the civic, you could probably go a long way towards filling the budget hole the Eric Euler settlements have done. It's similarly true with the airport. Depending on who you talk to there's 190-200 acres out there. 15 acres of it is within the city of Los Angeles and subject to city of LA zoning. So as people are envisioning what they want to do at the airport, there's 15 acres that may not really be readily available for whatever vision they have. And maybe it's worth exploring selling that off. We have had offers for it in the past. You sell off that 15 acres. I don't know what it's worth, but again, it's worth a substantial amount of money. But we have a relatively new and inexperienced council and it really is a question of how much risk are they willing to take? Because either of those two actions would clearly engender a lot of controversy among certain quarters of the public. I don't know that a majority of people would really care if voters in Santa Monica would care. But there would certainly be a loud vocal minority who would oppose either one of those actions. DN - I think there are definitely loud groups that would be upset about changes to the Civic, especially with the agreement being signed the other week, and then or changes to the airport. JM - Yeah, but it is probably on a two-decade cycle, right? Our options are maybe one of those. Airport Park, there's Substantial Park at the Airport, Save the Civic. And if we want both, we're talking about large tax increases, like a parcel tax to fund some of the lost revenues from those decisions or added expense of converting the airport or maybe even contributing to some vision for the Civic. If there was a $2,000 per year parcel tax, which is very substantial for Santa Monica, that would generate $45 million annually. And that's kind of what we're talking about in terms of the annual gap that would be needed to do these things. It's really hard for people to understand the extent to which we have these trade-offs between “Let's do the Civic” and “Let's do the airport park” and “let's do basic city services” that are already in deficit. But like there is a consequence and a price tag associated with that. And it is substantial. And I don't know if the people of Santa Monica would vote for an increase in their property taxes or other types of taxes that would be that substantial. DN - You know, I did this podcast wrong. We should have opened with let's sell the Civic and a big chunk of airport property instead of putting it here at the end of the podcast. We definitely…I definitely did this wrong. JM - You have your teaser for your intro. DN - “Join us at the 16 minute mark when Gleam suggests that we just sell the airport.” JM - You'll put all the ads in about whatever it is that I don't know who's selling ads on your podcast, say. And then they'll get through several ad cycles. I know as a former board chair, Santa Monica Next is a big profit-making enterprise for it. DN - Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I'm sure you know that very well. I was in Feinstein's Facebook group ah the other day, i posted something nice about the Corsair winning a bunch of awards. I don't really know a lot about SMC's academics, but their journalism department is great. They win awards for their newspapers. Kids go on to Annenberg. Like, it's really fantastic, which is... also kind of ironic for reasons I won't get into here, involving the state of local journalism in Santa Monica. And someone writes, “You only write that because SMC pays you to write good things about them.” You can go to any news website in this city and SMC has bought ads… except for one. JM - I hear that Don Gerard's retiring and maybe once he does his replacement, they’ll buy ads with Santa Monica next. DN - (grumbling)- I think they even have two ads on Surf Santa Monica. I don't know. JM - I think that's a very astute observation about the college's role in the community. DN - Yeah. So yeah, the last five minutes of this podcast were fire. GD - Hopefully that fire won't translate to someone trying to burn down my house. DN - You didn't actually suggest selling the airport. You just pointed out that there's 15 acres of it that could be profitable to the city as part of dealing with the larger issues they face. That's a fair observation. GD - To circle back to where we are, the fact of the matter is that if people want to renovate the Civic, if they want to build a substantial amount of parkland out at the airport, whether it's 100% or 50% or whatever, they're going to have to find some significant source of revenue. Selling, for example, 15 acres at the airport could go a long way towards funding the building of the rest of the park. Sadly, Santa Monica used to pride itself on being one of the few fit cities that had a AAA bond rating. No more. Because we depleted our reserves to a point where we no longer qualify for a triple A bond rating. So reinvigorating, replenishing those reserves would not only be good from a bond rating standpoint, but it actually saves the citizens money because the higher bond rating, the less we have to pay on bonds. JM - If we do some sort of project at the airport with less than a AAA bond rating, there’s going to be a lot of challenges, for sure. So we have to get...
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Mayor's Roundtable : Santa Monica in the Age of Trump
02/14/2025
Mayor's Roundtable : Santa Monica in the Age of Trump
The first episode of our “Mayor’s Roundtable” series at Santa Monica Next features Former Mayor Ted Winterer and local activist Chris Guitierrez to discuss what the city can do to protect its residents and the environment during a Trump presidency. In 2017, Wintermer was mayor at the start of the first Trump presidency. Winterer led Santa Monica's response focusing on protecting undocumented residents and maintaining local climate action. The city organized meetings, created safety networks, and provided legal referrals to support undocumented residents. Santa Monica also joined the "We Are Still In" initiative with other local and state governments representing 50% of the US GDP, to pledge to continue to reduce carbon emissions. “Our policy at the time was we were going to “box, not brawl” with Donald Trump,” Winterer explained. “ We did not declare ourselves a sanctuary city because we did not want to draw attention to our efforts, by putting a label on everything even though we were doing much of the same thing that the sanctuary city would do.” Guitierrez highlighted the need for local climate action, community building, and overcoming bureaucratic hurdles to implement sustainable practices. She also recounted the local efforts and groups that sprung up in response to Trump in 2017. “I see our effort now is to both protect the vulnerable and protect our vulnerable planet,” she said. Transcript: Damien Newton I'm very excited to be here for our first podcast with former mayor Ted Winterer and with Chris Gutierrez, and we're just going to get right into it. So it's 2025, we're a couple weeks into the second Trump presidency, and Ted, you are were the choice for our first podcast from our former mayor bullpen that we're using here, because you were the mayor when President Trump took office for the first time. And since we're talking about what the city can do to protect its citizens and to continue to be a progressive leader, you seemed like the natural person to lead off with. What did we do in 2017 and what should we be replicating this time around? , Ted Winterer In January 19 of 2017, I was in DC for the US Conference of Mayors, and got out of there as fast as I could that day, so I would not be around for the first inauguration of Donald Trump… which, of course, was not attended by the millions of people he said were there. I was well aware that we're going to have to react as a city to the new administration, which was going to be hostile, downright antithetical, to a lot of our values. I think the one of the most important things we did was to deal with our local undocumented population. They were hearing back then, the same cries to remove them from our country as soon as possible from the administration that they're hearing now. Clearly this time around, the tenor is even less compassionate, more hostile, but better organized. So, we did a bunch of things. I think what was most important was to actually organize a gathering, a meeting at the Thelma Terry Center at Virginia Ave. Park, which was led by city staff. But the primary speakers were myself and police chief Jacqueline Seabrooks, to let those undocumented residents, and some of them came down from Malibu, because the word it got by word of mouth, right? It was intended for Santa Monica residents, but we opened up the door to anybody that is concerned. The chief would explain that, "if you are worried about being pulled over by the Santa Monica Police Department for a broken tail light or whatever reason ,that the Santa Monica Police Department will never ask you about your immigration status, will never ask for any citizenship papers, etc, you don't have to worry about them working hand in club with ICE on the deportations, we will not be assisting ice in any deportation rates." We made it very clear that the police department had their backs. They're going to be treated just the same as our residents who did have citizenship. And then I just helped along with city staff, particularly a wonderful woman named Carla Fantosa who has recently left the city. We created various safety valves for families, particularly those with families where maybe one of the parents was undocumented. One major question was, "what do you do if you come home and dad's being hauled away by ICE?" "What if you come home and your kids and both parents are being taken away by ICE?" You created a phone tree network. This is who you call. You call your aunt, whoever, and she's going to be able to house you. We created a legal referral network so that people knew what their rights were. We hand out paperwork explain to people what to do in the event of an ICE raid, how to legally challenge any attempts to incarcerate them, and explain this is where you can get some free legal help. That pretty much covers that. That was particularly useful because for so many people, and I think particularly for for undocumented residents, who have to live a little bit below the radar to hear voices from government speak with compassion and kindness to them about their situation. That really resonated with that community. We've got this lunatic at DC who's telling us we're horrible people, but in our local government, we're just like the rest of us, and we have your backs to the best of our ability within, within the limits of the municipality's ability to resist federal law enforcement. And it's still, a grave concern. Even more of a grave concern is that Trump pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords, and has done so for the second time. And the City of Santa Monica became part of a resistance program which was called in. Mayors and governors and legislators from states around the country representing 50% of the of the US is gross domestic. Product. Went to the upcoming Climate Change Conference, you and climate change change conference and bond and to so other countries in the world. Look, the US itself is pulled out, but 50% of the US is still with you, and we are still going to do local and state efforts to reduce carbon emissions. So don't give up, right? You shouldn't just throw in the towel. We all know that the US is the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gasses. So if the US is not pulling its weight, why should other countries do so? We wanted to get out there and assure them that we are going to do all we can to reduce our carbon emissions. And of course, the city has had a very aggressive, sustainable city plan and a climate action and adaptation plan, so we did our part there. It was significant to let the rest of the world know. "Hey, don't give up.: Hopefully the city will be able to do something like that again. I know this time around, they're doing much of the same things on the immigration and undocumented residents front. Our policy at the time was we were going to "box, not brawl" with Donald Trump, right? We did not declare ourselves a sanctuary city because we did not want to draw attention to our efforts, right by putting a label all even though we were doing much of the same thing that the sanctuary city would do. The concerns are even greater this time about lying below the radar the Trump government. They just, they just went after Chicago and Illinois, right? Those are big targets. We're a city small, fewer than 100,000 people, so we're not as big a target, but there's this guy, Stephen Miller, right? He probably reads Santa Monica news every now and then, just out of curiosity. So we've got to be very careful about not poking the bear in ways that have nefarious repercussions for us. Damien And Elon Musk, of course, famously likes to retweet the Santa Monica Observer, which is the city's number one purveyor of misinformation. So that's a nice feather in our local media hat. You said a lot of different things that the city can do. I did get to see Mayor Lana Negrete speak last week. Chris, you were there too. I think I was actually standing next to you when she spoke at a rally held by students where they were asking the city to basically do something and do more to protect us and to protect the environment and to protect our undocumented friends and neighbors and to protect our LGBTQ+ friends and neighbors, you know, all across the spectrum of different things you could ask for help for. First off, Mayor Negrete was there, which I wasn't expecting, not as a reflection of her. I just not used to Mayor showing up to this sort of thing. And she had on a Santa Monica High School sweatshirt. She didn't get the microphone to say, we're going to do XYZ, ABC, but she did speak compassionately about the importance of students being able to voice their opinions and how the city should respond to that, and how the city will talk with them, and even work with them on resolutions, and create "a student city council." I thought she did a really good job. You were talking about respect and compassion from a city leader, a government leader, and I heard that from our last week. I wanted to see if, Chris, if you heard the same thing as me and Ted, if you had any other sort of thoughts about that? Because the mayor really is a city council member with extra powers in the city. You know, as far as running the meeting and showing and the symbolic powers, it's not really like it's not a strong mayor system. Chris Gutierrez It's not a strong mayor system, but Lana Mayor Negrete did have a strong presence, a kind and supportive presence at the at the walkout last week, on Thursday, the sixth of February. I was really pleased that she also stepped back to let all the youth speak first and for very long time, and when she did have a chance to speak, it was welcoming, affirming and strengthening for us to know that we're all looking out for each other. And with respect to her position, as you've already said, she really invited them to stay in good touch with her, as well as her paying attention to what the requests are. And I think the council will duly follow that. I love that Ted started with the challenge to our vulnerable, diverse community, and I think in conjunction with that, with the climate. We don't have a healthy community without diversity among ourselves and we don't have a healthy planet without biodiversity being strengthened. I've always been impressed with how Santa Monica can meld those two together, and I see in the second madness of the regime in DC. that will become even stronger. Ted, we look to you so much. I will always remember we began the Climate Corps in 2016 just before the first Trump regime started. And when we had the training, we assured the young people, because even though Trump was going to pull out of the Paris Agreement. We were ready. And then 2017 we reaffirmed that. And you all were at the climate mayors, you did what you you said you were going to do. And frankly, climate is a local matter. Yes, we need the macro policies. Yes, we need the investments like the Inflation Reduction Act, investments that are now threatened, and many of us are going to work to protect them. But on clean energy, those get emboldened by national policies, but we did a lot on clean energy. We started in 2018 the Clean Power Alliance, and Santa Monica was one of the foremost agencies in climate action. Santa Monica helped kick that off, to make that a reality, from the state law office being facilitated to us creating the Clean Power Alliance, and that immediately helped us reduce 17% of our greenhouse gasses. We have equally managed to continue that reduction.We're at, I think, 35% below our 1990 emissions and that Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, which the city approved in 2019 after we in the community, with city council and leaders. From the staff, we issued climate summits. We had all sorts of engagements. We helped people realize climate is a personal matter. It isn't this abstract, elusive thing. It is how you move your body on a bike versus a car, how you concentrate more on a plant based diet. how you have clean energy. How, when you're getting a new appliance, it might be an electric appliance, like a water heater? Those are personal decisions. And Ted, I remember the council was also highly promoting transit and with with all sorts of "two for ones." And while that preceded Trump, it continued throughout, throughout and and we continue that today. So I see our effort now is both on protecting the vulnerable as well as protecting our vulnerable planet and how we all... Hey, we all breathe, we all eat. We're all part of nature. So how we work together locally on that is critical, and I'm proud to say, Climate Action Santa Monica, Safe Streets, Alliance, all sorts of organizations are much more intensified. Closing the airport even becomes a significant opportunity for a resilient, stellar, great park. And those are the ways local communities such as Santa Monica...I love your idea of boxing Ted. I think it's also boxing him in because we are going to stand up for what is a sane and humane community and the way we work together to ensure we all have a healthy planet. Ted Chris is absolutely right about all this stuff, but I've had some sobering realizations lately about the issue of local carbon emission reductions. The city's budget is still not fully recovered from the COVID pandemic induced budget cuts. The office of the sustainability and the environment is not staffed to the same levels that it was, and there's not the money for the grand sort of projects like this SWIP, which is part, major part of the city's climate mitigation strategy. Make sure that we have local water supplies for decades to come. So there's that. And then I've been somewhat dismayed by the response of some of the Palisades Fire refugees. I have not met any of the ones from Altadena, but I've talked to a lot of ones from the Palisades. I don't think there's any self awareness, any connection being made between these fires being caused by climate change? Maybe it's not enough for me just to drive a Tesla and feel good when I go tonight, because I drive a Tesla. Maybe I should have been doing more and maybe if I move back and I rebuild, I should be doing more to reduce my climate footprint. Some of the decisions made in the higher levels of government. I understand Karen Bass has said, "Well, if you want to rebuild your homes, you can still put in those old gas appliances you had, even though the city code says it has to be all electric." and Gavin Newsom suspended the state requirement to have solar rooftop panels to generate local clean energy. I don't understand that. I don't understand that at all...the disconnect between the fact that it's carbon emissions that cause your houses to burn down, so why shouldn't the next round if you're going to rebuild this community and make sure those carbon emissions are reduced, I find that very disappointing. Chris I do too. Having grown up in Palestinians, I know a lot of friends and family members who lost homes. My sister lost her home completely…everything. I waited about a week before on a family thread that I raised the issue of our climate conditions, and one of my siblings smacked back at me. I said, "No, this is not about politics. This is about physics, and let's just get real on this." Those of us who can pressure leaders…so called leaders…like Bass and Newsom to realize that frankly, if we rebuild the old way...as the LA Times had a good article earlier this week on what we didn't learn from the Bel Air fires. I remember those Bel Air fires when I was seven years old standing on top of a chair in my father's shop, watching those houses burn, and that's why I've always been afraid of fire, and so watching Palisades burn again, and then to not learn those lessons, again. I think that's where community leadership, local leadership, like Santa Monica's, really is necessary. We cannot back pedal on this. This is a big test if we miss this opportunity with Palisades. I'm just one voice, but you better bet I'm talking to people that I know that you can't, we can't just take the easy road, because the easy road is a road of doom. Damien Let's be honest, there's probably going to be more climate related disasters in the next four years, and unfortunately, some of them will probably be more local than we would like. I don't know if we'll have evacuations inside the city's borders, like we did with this particular case, where it was very, very close and there's some businesses that never reopened after evacuations, and there were lots of secondary impacts. Hopefully, we don't see anything that has a primary impact in the city. But you're talking about, how does a city and how does leadership learn from these situations, and arguing that in the meta sense we haven't learned about thinking about long terms. Does that make it harder you think, for people though, to think locally about this sort of stuff, "What is my plastic bottle versus, you know, having a refillable glass bottle really mean, if we're not doing anything about these meta issues? Chris Community building is number 1-2-3-4, all the way down to number 10, the most important part of climate resiliency. If we don't build a strong community understanding - both the personal as well and the interpersonal - as well as the city policy work together then, then we, frankly, don't take good care of each other right now. I was happy to see how people really reached out during the Palisades fire, and that's how we have to capitalize. In my conversations with people, on different platforms and in person, sharing knowledge and understanding is critical, but also giving each other a pat on the back for taking some risk and how we model our lives. I think it does matter, Damien. I just think it's harder sometimes to feel that it would matter, but it's even more important. You know, we had a big garden gathering last week on herbal plants and native plants, and I was impressed that there were like 45-50 people at the community garden on Saturday. And I know that was not just the workshop people wanted to be together. People wanted to be doing good work. We had lots of volunteers come out when we didn't even expect them. So I think community building is essential to how we approach these problems together. Ted To your point, Damien, you're talking about people trying to acknowledge that little decisions they make on a daily basis do have significance, right? We're out of the Paris Climate Accords. The world's going to hell on a handcart. Why does it make a difference if I am using plastic water bottles that are made from fossil fuels, as opposed to using something more sustainable that quenches my thirst on a regular basis. There's that old expression about death by 1000 paper cuts. People need to understand each one of those daily decisions is a paper cut into the future of our planet. So, don't look for other people to do things. We all need to do things at the same time. I've been a climate activist for years. Our house, we've got EV panels. We had a solar thermal panel situation. I've been trying to electrify my house as the old gas appliances go out of commission. We placed our dryer with an electric dryer, etc. Hot water heater is on the skids. The heat is on the skids. I've been trying to get through various state agencies. The first one that's called the switches on to try to get contractors to do these jobs. None of them ever came by and then they ghosted me. I went to a new organization. Signed up with them last summer. I still do not have, I still do not have a heat pump or water heater installed. I still don't have the split...
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Who's Next w/ Dr. Paul Drew
06/25/2024
Who's Next w/ Dr. Paul Drew
This week's episode of Who's Next features an interview with Dr. Paul Drew, familiar to Santa Monia Next readers as the editor/publisher of The Swish, the YMCA's youth basketball newsletter. Every issue, Drew profiles some of the people (players, coaches, refs, etc...) that make the hoops program work. We thought we'd turn the microphone around and point the microphone at Dr. Drew himself so listeners could meet Doc. Drew and find out more about the great program he runs at the Y. Signup for the summer session that begins on July 20th is underway. Boys and girls of all skill level ages 5-14 are invited to play. You can get more informaiton and signup, .
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Who's Next Episode 2: SMMUSD Now Powered by Renewable Energy and What Our Guests Will Miss About Samo (and Samohi) as They Head to College
05/02/2024
Who's Next Episode 2: SMMUSD Now Powered by Renewable Energy and What Our Guests Will Miss About Samo (and Samohi) as They Head to College
Damien welcomes back Maya, Emery and Willa for our second “Who’s Next” podcast. The three guests are all seniors at Santa Monica High School and leaders of the environmental group Team Marine. On Wednesday, SMMUSD celebrated becoming a school district completely powered by renewable energy, and in the first ten minutes or so of the podcast, we talk about what achieving that goal means for the District and what these three leaders did to push the district to make that change happen faster. The second two parts of the podcast are more fun. Emery, Maya and Willa are departing for college in the fall and we talk about some of the things they enjoyed about growing up in Santa Monica and some very specific things that they’ll miss about their hometown. 00:00.78 Damien So we're back for our second podcast with Emery, Maya and Willa. It just so happens that earlier today they were part of a ceremony at Santa Monica high school, Samohi, for a big announcement about some of the school's environmental initiatives and their roles in it. Rather than me reading the press release,why don't one of you just explain what it was that today was about and what it was you all were doing up there and what it is you all did to sort of get the ball rolling on this project? 00:35.57 Maya We were at Santa Monica high school today celebrating the school district's transition to 100% renewable energy. We worked on just getting them or pushing them to transition in January through March of last year when they voted to transition. It took about six months to complete, and then by October we were running on 100 % renewables. Yeah it was really cool. We got to celebrate with board members, with city council members, with Team Marine which is the Samohi environmental activism organization that helped push for the switch and Human Rights Watch student task force was there. 01:34.37 Emery I feel like you 2 having actually spoken at the board meeting might have the most to say about that. I was there at the meeting. You two spoke ah excellently. I guess one of the takeaways from the celebration today was like how much we've seen this throughout our advocacy. How much student voices really matter when people like people really like listening to us. Because we have chosen to lend our voice to this cause it seemed significant in making it happen. 02:34.89 Damien So you mentioned going to the board. Can you describe the process? I know the district has made a commitment years ago to transition to renewable energy, and to become more carbon neutral and that what you guys did really accelerated the timeline. I think twenty thirty was like the earliest they were looking at until just a couple years ago so maybe talk a little bit about what actually did to push them to make this change faster. 03:03.63 Maya Well actually, the school district had what it called a climate adaptation plan or sustainability plan. They actually laid out for a switch to renewable energy by 2020 and so it was actually really interesting how it happened. I think it was in 2019 that the district switched to 100% renewable energy and then when covid happened and there were some things in transition in terms of staffing at the district level and the district switched to a new plan. The schools were receiving 40% renewable energy. But then Samohi and I don't know if it was the district offices or Malibu, which were the biggest consumers of energy, weren't running on renewable energy at all. So it was just this really interesting thing where we made progress and then we kind of took a step back. I think we just wanted to make sure that we kept the district accountable and went back to meeting that sustainability target. In terms of what our role was, I think we've been really lucky to have the privilege of working with Austin Toyama who's the sustainability manager and all of the sustainability people at the district level Carrie Upton. I think just meeting with them figuring out how we could convince the board…the board's transition to renewable energy. I think once we get in contact with them, it just kind of happens. Naturally, we got Team Marine folks out to board meetings to testify and to really push them in the right direction and I think the board was very receptive. I think we're lucky to live in a place like Santa Monica where people actually care about sustainability. We helped push for it but there were a lot of other people that were involved too. 05:18.40 Damien So Willa, Emery mentioned that you were one of the people that spoke at the board meeting. As I have never been to a Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board meeting…is it, is it I don't know, weird or intimidating? Do they have a dais set up? How is it to do a public comment there. 05:32.73 Willa I used to be a very outgoing person before the pandemic and then afterward I became extremely shy and now have a crippling fear of public speaking. So when Austin came to Maya and I and was saying, “we want to do this.” I felt this is so important. And then he said, “it would be really awesome if you guys spoke in front of the board.” I was thinking, “uh-oh” and alarm bells are going off in my brain. I always feel that if there's something that's important enough to me, I will overcome some sort of fear to do it. And by no means did that experience cure my fear of public speaking…I still do not like it. It really scares me. Bu, I did it and like there was a very positive outcome. I think I played it up a little too much in my head. Honestly, having spoken in front of the school board now multiple times, I feel like they're honestly…really lovely…and super supportive. So it's funny to look back and be, “oh my gosh like I was so scared of them like they were so intimidating” because they are just like the sweetest, most supportive people ever. Especially as a student, they are just so excited to see students getting involved in caring about issues. But I was very intimidated when I went up to that podium with Maya. So I was glad to have her there with me. It was very nice. 07:15.24 Damien Okay, oh and know and it worked out! I mean it. It is cool that you got to do the public speaking and you got to win out of it. It's always really depressing when you have to face down a fear and then you don't get a win out of it. But I guess it sounds like there had been a lot of work put in ahead of time too. So that's ah that that always helps. So is it just Santa Monica High School that's now hundred percent renewable or the whole district? 07:37.31 Willa This whole district. 07:39.72 Maya So yeah, the whole district. 07:51.95 Damien That's impressive. Well, thank you for that good work. Is there anything else you guys want to add about that? It's okay to say no. 08:00.32 Emery Yeah I mean at least for me I think that's it. 08:06.49 Damien So then I will transition. Originally when I first pitched this podcast to you guys back in March, one of the things I wanted to talk about was some of the advantages, or disadvantages if you choose, of sort of growing up in Santa Monica and being in Santa Monica. You guys just talked about this activism experience that sounds like it was pretty good but is there so anything things think anything sort of. See “professional broadcaster” and I still trip over my tongue. My ego is so low that I won't even edit this part out. Anyway, I was hoping there'd be you got we could talk a little bit about that like what it's like to grow up in Santa Monica you think it's different what advantages or something and then even at the end wanted to talk about something like. Fun or cool that you think might be somewhat unique to the city or something you like to do that you're going to miss when you're away at your fantastic colleges next year <pause> 09:10.57 Damien I'll start with a more pointed question of like do you have any good impressions or I should say a more direct question, any impressions of some advantages in what life was like growing up in Santa Monica versus I don't know anywhere else in the world. 09:28.95 Maya I can talk about this real quick because I actually don't live in Santa Monica anymore. I go to school there, but we moved when I was 8 so I live closer to LAX now. I don't think I really appreciated while I was in Santa Monica and now I really do miss the walkability of Santa Monica. Everything is so close like there's always a park nearby. You can walk places. Public transportation is not perfect by any means but it's pretty doable. I think now where I live, there's not that same friendliness and people don't really walk outside so it doesn't feel as safe. I would say that is something that I do really miss from Santa Monica, and I still go to school there so I do still get to enjoy that for the most part. But yeah I think that's one really great thing about the city. 10:31.10 Damien As a distance runner living in West Los Angeles the first thing I do on any run that's more than three miles is I run into Santa Monica. I never run east towards Westwood or or Palms. My first thing I do is I run into Santa Monica. Then my route changes from there in part because the sidewalks are great. People are great. It…of course if I run far enough there's a beach path so that's pretty great too. Anything Emory or Willa want to add to this? 11:03.11 Willa Like you just mentioned, the beach is really fun. I definitely take it for granted. In my college process, I looked at places on the East Coast which is ironic because I'm. Going to school in California…in L.A. County… which is very funny. When I thought about leaving, I realized just how unique the landscape is in Santa Monica. You have all of these gorgeous walkways that are literally on bluffs overlooking the ocean and it's just gorgeous. You have the PCH, which I really loved during the pandemic, my family and I would just go on drives down the PCH because we couldn't go outside and it was just so…nice to kind of have that natural scene. I also grew up around Main Street and I feel like that's just such a fun community as well. It's a little bit lesser known among the tourists, but it's kind of nice because all the locals are there and it has so many awesome small businesses and things like that. I feel like that's so important. 12:23.95 Damien Well Emery you have to say something now because everyone else went. 12:27.25 Emery Before I say the more interesting thing, I'm gonna say the boring thing that you said…or that you said would be boring.. 12:39.39 Damien I accused you of having a more boring answer than I would have had, even though you're young and hip and I'm neither of those things. 12:49.13 Emery I would point out the great bike lanes. Our bike lanes are really good for the Los Angeles area. I bike to school and back…to most places that I can bike I will just do that. Why take the effort of going in the car when it's gonna be like 20 minutes? Anyways, you touched on the beach. I definitely take for granted and underutilize this. I pretty much don't go to the beach, maybe I'll miss that when I'm on the East Coast. The sun,that's a pretty great thing in Santa Monica that we do get that not all places get. I appreciate that about Santa Monica more specifically. The privilege of going to SMMUSD and Samohi is a winning experience. I think about the college process and the experience of being at a university that can be something that's wildly different from what the rest of life is. I think Samohi does a good job of being a school that represents. Ah…is closer to representing the entire community closer to representing everyone…it shows different walks of life and there's a place for everyone. I guess I have found my place so it's easy for me to say that but that's been my experience. 14:28.26 Damien Do you even own a pair of gloves or like a winter hat like what’s the plan? 14:35.63 Emery I had gloves when I was like 8. I have gardening gloves. Yeah, that's what it is. We will have to stock up before going out. 14:40.57 Damien Gardening gloves. My son who's 14…one of his best friend’s brother goes to MIT now and the dude had never left…I don't think it'd ever been outside of Southern California in his entire life except for like a trip to Japan. The first thing he always says every time I see him…it's been 2 years…he wants to talk about how cold it is. So I know you're not in Boston, but maybe but get a hat or a little scarf all right? Right? So we talked about some of the good things about growing up. So the follow-up question is to talk about something fun, something fun that you’ll miss next year. So no, don't just say, “bike lanes” but maybe like this particular bike ride you like doing that you're not going to be able to do next year or you'll have to find something very similar to it to be able to do next year …something that might be unique to here, a specific place or memory or event or something like that. <long pause> 15:56.66 Damien And while you think, I'll give you mine to give you an extra minute or 2. So, on Friday mornings I get up very early because it's the only time a friend of mine we can both meet up to go running. It’s like five fifty in the morning, that's when we start. We get there at 5:45 and we stretch for 5 minutes first but we meet at Ocean and Main… no excuse me, Ocean and Main don't cross…we meet at Ocean and Santa Monica Boulevard. While we're stretching we have that overlook on the pier. Ah and it is one of our traditions that we have is we try to guess what the pier is going to look like, what the Ferris wheel is going to look like. All that sort of stuff based on the holidays. So I get press releases from the pier communications. Sometimes it’s about what the thing's going to look like and if it's going to be if it's something special like a holiday or Dodgers blue or something like that. I haven't told her why I'm so much better at guessing than her..;.this will also be I can find out now if she listens to the podcast or not. She listens to some podcasts when she's runs and I never asked if she listens to mine. Now I'll find out maybe not this Friday but next friday 17:17.86 Maya And that's such a good strategy. Oh my gosh. 17:20.69 Damien Well I wasn't doing Santa Monica Next when we started doing this but when those press releases started to come to me I was like, “oh it's going to be red for a week to celebrate API month.” 17:29.15 Maya So cheat codes unlocked. 17:40.93 Damien And I can't do ones that would be weird, like when Wrestlemania was in town. They had a big WWE like logo on the wheel like if I guessed that that would have tipped her off that something was up because that's you know a little outside of normal. 18:00.13 Damien All right? So though I want to pick on Emery. He went last time. Maybe you should go first this time. 18:06.56 Emery Could you repeat the question. We. 18:09.28 Damien Can I repeat…I just I just vamped and all that.. Ahem, so what's something specific that you do here that you will miss. Maybe not being able to do is regularly next year. So I gave a specific example if I were not in Los Angeles so close to Santa Monica I would still go running on Fridays obviously because I'm mentally ill and like to run a lot apparently; but I wouldn't be able to do that stuff with the pier and that that I get to do with my friend every every week while we're stretching because there's not a big ferris wheel everywhere in the world. 18:46.38 Emery Something that I appreciate is being a suburb while having access to LA is cool. That is, I play something that you can do elsewhere but I go to the Collins and Katz Family YMCA and I'm able to do that in West LA while being in walkable, bikeable San Monica. I appreciate that. I also like going Downtown sometimes to Union Station to engage with LA and I appreciate being able to have something like this more peaceful. 19:34.70 Damien You know that is like a great answer but he seems to be nervous about it. It was such a good answer, like you get to be in like this wonderful community of Santa Monica and then you have access to all the stuff especially with like Expo and that it's not even like a half hour train trip apart. You don't even need a car. 20:03.81 Maya I don't think I can top that. Mine was going to be that I'm going miss Samosa House, because I love Indian food. There's Indian food everywhere. But there's not Samosa House everywhere. So it's going to be rough. I don't know. 20:17.80 Damien I want to say that I can see these guys because we have video up but we're only recording the audio. People popped at the words Samosa House so that was a very popular answer. 20:28.67 Maya I feel like Santa Monica food is just on top. It's so good. Yeah, that's that's the thing. 20:32.36 Willa I eat vegan food. It's so easy. I mean, that is 1 thing that I really like. Maya and I are both vegan but I’ve had chronic migraines and so apparently gluten can sometimes trigger migraines. So I've been trying to reduce my gluten intake, that would not be possible anywhere else to be gluten free and vegan even for a little bit anywhere else. I would be dead and so that's really nice. Santa Monica just has so many options. It's a very health conscious place, very into very hippie things. That's very nice for me. I already talked to you guys about this but Small World Books. The best bookstore on the entire planet. There are 2 cats that live in the bookstore and you can pet them and they're so cute and it's just like a really great small business. I buy every single book that I have on my shelf from there because they are just so wonderful. Support local bookstores! 21:53.62 Damien And as I mentioned, they've got a great cafe in our pre-interview. They've got a great cafe. It's also right on the boardwalk because that's where I have met people to eat and drink after boardwalk runs. But I will say Maya…you shouldn't have too much trouble finding good vegan food in Berkeley California 22:12.93 Maya I think I'll be okay but I'll still Miss Samosa house 22:13.16 Damien Ah, yeah, that might be our ah that might be the um winter break catch up podcast with you guys. We'll have to find out if .. how the vegan food is stacked up. 22:22.40 Maya The reunion. Yeah no I will say also just to add to what makes Santa Monica so cool…I didn't realize how accessible like city council members and city staff were to us. Two weeks ago, I'm part of Youth Climate Strike and we had protests down at LA City Hall. We went to the city council because we wanted to give public comments and present our demands for the strike. It was such a different experience. I'm used to being in Santa Monica City council where all the council members will come and introduce themselves to people and there's like 10 people there, tops. And there were just like so many people wanting to give public comment but then also like the leaders were coming in and out of the chambers. Most of them weren't even there and if they were there they were on their phones, not even listening. It was insane. It just didn't really click how lucky we are to have leaders, and I think part of that is also just Santa Monica being such a small city compared to the City of Los Angeles, but I think it still is a very big deal. 23:49.59 Damien I mean compared to LA..but it's got 80000 people at nighttime. That's not nothing. I actually like covering the Santa Monica city council now as an outside reporter for a year and a half and some of the members don't trust us because of our perceived politics. But, I actually find your council...
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Who's Next Episode 1: Previewing the March 5 Primary
03/01/2024
Who's Next Episode 1: Previewing the March 5 Primary
Welcome to our new podcast series, Who’s Next, where we talk to youth leaders in Santa Monica about the issues that are most important to them. With California’s primary election next Tuesday, I had a chance to talk with three co-captain’s for Samohi’s Team Marine. The conversation jumps back and forth between a discussion of the election and issues that youth are concerned about nationwide and a discussion of their personal advocacy efforts and those of Team Marine. I don’t want to ramble on too much, so to learn more you can listen to the podcast immediately below, or a transcript of the discussion immediately below that. Damien Newton As I said in the intro my name is Damien and we're here with this week’s Santa Monica Next podcast. We're gonna be talking with 3 leaders from Santa Monica High School's Team Marine, and they're gonna we're gonna talk about the election, what matters to high school students…specifically the ones we're talking to, but broadly what matters to high school students. Those that are eighteen about what is going to influence their votes both next week and in the fall. We have Emery, Maya and Willow with us today: and why don't we just start off with some brief introductions.. Maya Hi everybody. My name is Maya. I'm a senior at Santa Monica high school and I use she/her pronouns. I'm one of the 3 co-captains of Team Marine. I'm just really excited to be here, talking about the election and its relationship to the climate crisis and just all of the issues that the youth are really concerned about. I'm glad to be here today and to be able to be in the space to talk with you all. Emery Hi everyone. I'm Emery. I'm also a co-captain on Team Marine as a senior at Samohi as well. I'm very excited to talk about different perspectives on the election upcoming and in the fall and express how our communities have reacted to the whole discussion around politics and as emerging voters. Willa Okay, hi everyone. I'm Willa. I'm also a co-captain of Team Marine and as basically everybody else said “I'm really looking forward to talking about the upcoming elections” and how youth has a voice in elections even if you're not old enough to vote yet. Damien Newton So the timing of this is fortuitous because we do have a primary next week. The presidential election primary is kind of dull in California. We pretty much know who the candidates are for the 2 major parties. Outside of some protest voting, or if you know you're going to vote for the US senate race or something that's a little more exciting. But when we talk about climate and climate issues, it is one of the biggest factors in deciding who to vote for and 1 of the ways that you can look at candidates and start to see differences. Emery I'd say it's an important issue for the youth as a whole.. It's something that is sometimes at the forefront and for some it can probably be a very influential factor. I wouldn't say that it's the only one. There's a lot of different issues. But it's one that at this point in time is getting a lot of attention and that I think does have the potential to sway a lot of votes. Maya As youth climate activists, when we talk about the climate crisis. We're not just talking about nature and the environment. But we're talking about our future and the future of our society. And so, when we're looking at different candidates,like Emory was saying, there are so many issues nowadays that we really have to weigh the pros and cons of the stances of each candidate. But I think that the climate crisis has emerged as one of the most important issues, especially for youth voters. Willa I definitely agree. I think Maya said it really well. When we're voting for environmental policy, we are voting for our future because this is something that as people who are in their late teens; it's going to be something that is going to impact the rest of our lives and also the lives of many many future generations. That is something that's so important to consider, for me at least as somebody who will be voting in the general election. I can't vote in the primaries because I'm not quite old enough. Damien Newton I should have done this before we jumped into climate issues, but.. Team Marine deals directly with climate issues. But I'm going to guess that there's going to be people that are listening to this podcast that have no idea what Team Marine is…I mean Santa Monica high school sort of has a reputation of being a very environmentally conscious school going back to things like WalkIt!BikeIt! which was groundbreaking for bicycle pedestrian advocacy in a high school, to what Team Marine is now. So could you guys just describe a little bit what that is and what Team Marine does. Maya Team Marine is Santa Monica High School's environmental advocacy and activism organization. We talk about a plethora of issues. We were founded in 2006 and our main issues are the climate crisis and more specifically plastic pollution. We deal with all sorts of projects nowadays. We've done climate policy: passing a climate literacy resolution at our board of education this past November. We look at green spaces in the city of Santa Monica and at the waste management practices of our school and school district. We work with teachers and administrators to educate our students. Team Marine is really involved in a little bit of everything 06:30.80 Willa I just want to add that we um historically started out as a competition team and so it used to be much more stereotypical STEM kind of things. Generations of Team Marine have built a solar powered car, or were integral to Santa Monica's plastic bag ban. We're trying to continue that legacy; not really a competition team anymore, but more of an environmental activism group. Emery Team Marines history is largely not so much as a mission driven action so much as passion driven. There's obviously the overarching goal of fighting climate change in the way we can, but that's always been dictated by the interest of people in the club at the given time. It started out as a competition because STEM kids were interested in this as it was more an emerging movement. Now seventeen years down the line, we're doing fast fashion green space climate literacy. Things that members now are interested in. Damien Newton You were just talking about their climate literacy. How does that work for a high school club, do you work with other students, is there a curriculum? In addition, do you think there's sort of a general consensus even amongst students that aren't politically active that Climate is something that's going to be the issue, maybe possibly the defining political issue of their lives. Maya I think when we talk about climate, there's a general understanding among the majority if not all students that climate is an important issue; but I don't think everybody on our campus grasps the true severity of the situation. That was part of what we were hoping to accomplish with our resolution, just to make sure that everybody gets an adequate climate education that allows them to really understand all of the complexities of the climate crisis, be able to apply that to their everyday decisions and also empower students to become climate activists. My hope is that through that extra environmental education that the resolution mandates;n students will truly understand what the climate crisis is and be able to leverage the climate crisis to make political decisions. Damien Newton As we talk a little bit also about elections as we go forward. There is a presidential primary next week, California has a US Senate election. There are congressional races, state senate races, assembly races. How much, if at all and (I will be honest when I was your ageI could probably tell you who my US senators were, and who my governor and president were…but I do not think I could tell you my mayor’s’ names, and my city council members assembly members or anything like that) but…Is there a greater awareness ah of any of the local elections or is the focus, “oh my god are we really going to you know, have to try to stop Donald Trump from being president.” Willa Um, I mean I. Damien Newton I'm going to make a note to myself. I love that you all look to each other to see who's going to answer this. We didn't have video when I was growing up so there the pauses were actually much longer than they are now. Willa From my experience… Emre and I are in an AP US gov class together… and as much as our school tries to make us engaged in politics, it is kind of hard because as young people because we have so many things that seem to come first. I personally am really excited to get involved in voting. Just like my family has always brought me up to see voting as such an incredible privilege and so it's very exciting for me to be able to use my voice. But from what I've seen most of our age group kind of doesn't really realize that they can actually have a genuine impact even on just local things. As Team Marine we are so lucky because we get to work with the city council and the school board and we are there and involve ourselves so that we can see how we truly can make a difference. Even though Maya and I both can't vote yet, I think we can definitely do better in terms of encouraging people our age to see how they can have a voice. Maya Building on what Willa said, and what you had mentioned in your question about this general awareness of who our leaders are, it really comes down to the student or the person. If you want to be involved in politics and be an influence on your community, it's very accessible like Willa was saying, way more accessible than most people would think. But if somebody's not motivated then yeah, they don't necessarily have that awareness of who your city council members are and who your state assembly members are. All of us have been to city council meetings and board of education meetings to testify and give public comment. But I don't think that everybody is engaging in those opportunities and I don't think everybody truly understands that those opportunities are available to them. I think we need to be doing a better job of showing young people “Hey you can actually have a tremendous influence on your community and on the politics of your city” even if, like Willa said, you're not a voting age yet. Emery I really like that point that you made about the realization that accessibility is right there. We've decided to go to city council meetings and go to school board meetings because we decided it. No one said, “Oh this is an option. Go ahead and do it.” And no one thought to themselves to do it themselves. Talking about Santa Monica high school, there's a big emphasis I'd say there's a very clear political feeling on campus. It's pretty uniform. If you don't have that, or if you disagree with that you're going to be an outsider in some way. That's not to say that you can't fit in, but there's a lot of attention on national issues. Because we're looking so far up, we don't see the local world around us. And we don't pay attention to who gets elected on our city council and our and our school board even though maybe those things do have an impact on the issues that we care about. They're just not ah those things are definitely not as focused on. Damien Newton Well one of the reasons Santa Monica Next exists, even though I don't live in Santa Monica, is because it really is a tremendous place as far as the city expresses and is very strong about the values and sometimes it… Emery By the youth I'd say. Damien Newton …doesn't always live up to them. A lot of times it does, sometimes it doesn’t. But it's also a nationally famous city for a city with 80,000 people in it. I remember people telling me, “Hey you know they made a Santa Monica joke on Ted lasso.” “You know they made a Santa Monica Airport joke on some other show.” “You know, Elon Musk blames Santa Monica for his daughter being transgender…” So what you do with the city,l really matters and it really ripples out because so much attention is paid to the city. It presents a unique opportunity for you all in a way that. Growing up in Reading Pennsylvania, the advocates that I knew in high school didn't talk about testifying and the city council on the school board. It's like what you do actually is going to ripple out more than folks that are in other cities just because it's Santa Monica which for whatever reason has captured the imagination of a lot of people. Maya Building on what you were just saying, I think one of my favorite things about Santa Monica is it's looked to globally as a leader in sustainability and so many other issues. One of the beautiful things about being an activist here in Santa Monica and Los Angeles is that really so many other cities are watching us and looking to us to see what we're doing. Like Willow was saying about the plastic bag ban a few years back, Santa Monica was one of the first cities that adopted that. Suddenly so many other cities around California adopted that same plastic bag ban. Then the state adopted it. so I think even though our actions might move people and projects outside the city. Maya Seems small on the surface like what we do influences the policies that other cities end up adopting and then it's just this ripple effect. Um, but yeah, really really cool to see. Damien Newton We're starting to approach 20 minutes…we're past fifteen… which usually is the point where I ask if there's something that you all really wanted to talk about that I totally missed. But I have a backup question in case, no one has something like that or if you're just too polite to do that to me on our first podcast. So, “Is there anything else sort of related to the election or general values that any of you would like to touch on that we haven't touched on yet? I’ll make it easy, my other question is whether or not you have any predictions for next Tuesday beyond “that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are going to win.” Emery Specific. Damien Newton All right…anyone want to guess whether or not Nikki Haley will get more than…that is 30% of the vote in California or 30% of the Republican vote. Emery Oh that's interesting more than 30% what does she get in South Carolina? Damien Newton She got 40 in South Carolina but she was governor there, so you would hope that she would do better there than in California. But I think there's more of the Republican Party in California that is moderate than in South Carolina…California is not a major player in the Republican PartY, so it really would be a guess when we want to give it over/under on 30. Willa I'm going to say that she goes over thirty, because especially even in Santa Monica, like Emory said, it's very skewed politically. That's something that obviously is true for our entire conversation. Willa We're talking about all these environmental things and how our school reacts to politics and environmentalism but we also are the only public school in Santa Monica which is an extremely liberal place so you know…. …We don't represent everybody nationally but I think Nikki Haley definitely could do over 30%. Like you said there are many more moderates here and I think a lot of Californians, even the Republican ones, are unified in the fact that they just don't like Trump. I'm interested to see how it plays out, especially as this is my last year not really voting in the primaries. So I'm kind of watching to see how I can do it next time around. Damien Newton I would put it at over 32 for the simple reason that I think a lot of republicans are planning to come out and vote in the US Senate race for Steve Garvey, and I think the more people that vote the lower the Trump share is going to be. He’s got hardcore people who will go out and vote no matter what as we've seen, but those more moderate people that are going to come out to try and get Garvey into second place will be enough to bump up Haley's numbers. Emery I would expect Nikki Haley to get less than 30% of the republican vote in California mostly because even in the place where she would have perhaps a stronger advantage, she didn't. She didn’t win. I think that there we might underestimate or overestimate how overall liberal California is because you have the cities but you also have the rural areas. I don't know well enough to say where but there are rural areas in California but it's my understanding that city centers and more rural areas have the strongest divide. You can get pretty far to the right even being in California you're just in a different community. I know maybe 1 person who is a member of the Republican party. And he supports Trump. Damien Newton I've been to a NASCAR race in Fontana with my son a couple years ago who likes race cars. It was a different world than even in the NASCAR race that's downtown every year at the Coliseum. Going to Fontana, it was like stepping into another planet. It was something else. Anyone want to give a closing thought? Emery In this age where there's a lot of information, as youth who are emerging into our political minds and perspectives. There's a lot of misinformation, disinformation. There's a lot of opinions and it's very easy if you want to get an opinion to just get one handed to you. What the media is essentially marketing right now. Mostly, “here is an opinion that already exists” and I think that makes it a bit difficult for a youth who hasn't fully formed their own perspectives to get data and come up with their own conclusions. They're not able to get their own perspective because it's essentially handed to them prepackaged. Damien Newton It doesn't get better as you get olde. Well hey thank you all so much. I'm going to check in right after the election and we'll let you know whether Willa and I were right or Emery was. Emery Okay. Damien Newton And I'm hoping to be able to do these, maybe check in once a month on some different topics. Thank you all for being here with us.
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What's Next Special Episode : Dr. Toloudis Boycotts APSA
09/04/2023
What's Next Special Episode : Dr. Toloudis Boycotts APSA
This weekend the American Political Science Association (APSA) rolled into Los Angeles for its annual conference. But this year, the annual confab was roiled in controversy as the association was moving on with its conference after Unite Here Local 11 asked them to cancel the conference or move it online in a show of solidarity as their strike and picketing against hotels in the region continued. APSA's board voted 17-4 to move on with the conference, but move the meetings, lectures and everything else out of the hotels and into the convention center. This was not enough for Unite Here who noted that the official hotels for the convention were the same ones they were picketing. This was also not enough for many of its members who boycotted the convention. A few, including today's guest Dr. Nicholas Toloudis, came to Los Angeles, didn't stay in a picketed hotel and joined a picket line instead of a plenary. For anyone just joining the controversy, but finds this topic interesting you can read APSA's statements and messages to members before the conference (), follow Dr. Toloudis on Twitter (), read the most confused tweet about ways to not cross a picket line (), or read some of the coverage of the APSA controversy (). And for more coverage of the strike and the actions in Santa Monica, . A full transcript of the interview can be found after the podcast.
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What's Next Episode 8 : Katie Neginskiy of IWRC
08/17/2023
What's Next Episode 8 : Katie Neginskiy of IWRC
This week's podcast features Katie Neginsky with the . IWRC is a "community of learning, support, and resources for refugee and immigrant women and their families focused on building joy and momentum." It offers plenty of ways for people to get involved with helping refugees adjust to American culture from teaching classes online, to helping at events, to fundraising. To get more involved, there's plenty of resources on their website. This podcast is the first of a new series we'll be doing to introduce readers and listeners to non-profits in the region where they can volunteer time and treasure to make a real difference. If podcasts aren't your medium of choice, you can read a transcript of the interview below and Katie wrote a piece for Next about IWRC and the value that volunteers provide people adjusting to, or preparing to come, to America. In the interview, we talk about two of the websites that they run: and . But the interview isn't all business! In our "fun" section we talk about both Barbenheimer and how some cultures find peanut butter to be the weirdest thing imaginable. If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on past episodes of Santa Monica Next: , , , ,, , and . Transcript: wn 8 Tue, Aug 15, 2023 4:25PM • 35:09 SUMMARY KEYWORDS volunteers, participants, people, class, work, podcast, barbecue, english language, students, kids, american culture, fun, peanut butter, programming, refugees, la, patsy cline, santa monica, knitting, dolly parton SPEAKERS Damien Newton, Katie Neginsky Damien Newton 00:01 Welcome to Episode 8 of the Santa Monica Next podcast. What's next? Today I'm here with Katie Neginsky with the International Women's Resource Center. This is the first podcast in what's going to be a series that will accompany some articles on the website that's aimed at introducing people in Santa Monica and the westside and anyone who might be listening to some great nonprofits that you can plug into, and you can do some volunteer work . That's going to have some great impact locally, or in this case, locally and beyond. Rather than me going into a large explanation. Why don't we just kick it off right away with Katie, why don't you just tell us a little bit about what IWRC is and some of its recent history. Katie Neginsky 00:39 Thanks for having me. My name is Katie. And Neginsky and I founded the International Women's Resource Center, or IWRC affectionately, in early 2022. So, we're a young organization just about a year and a half old. We provide educational programming, and community building programming for refugee and immigrant participants. Our main focus is on refugees and immigrants in LA County, and Orange County, but we have three different international programs as well running in different countries. And we have so much fun just providing great educational programming, family literacy, health literacy, workforce prep, and community building opportunities for this population. And all of that relies on volunteers. So all the more the merrier. Damien Newton 01:41 Now, actually, in our notes, I had that we were going to talk about volunteerism in a little bit, that was the "topic that I want to talk about" for our regular listeners. But why don't we just transition right into that since you just mentioned the volunteers, and you had mentioned when we were talking just a couple minutes ago, that you do an English language learning podcasts also. So there's lots of different programs that that IWRC has that that people locally can get involved in. Katie Neginsky 02:06 Absolutely. So our program is designed to be very nimble, flexible, and responsive to what the participants request. So we get all kinds of requests from our refugee and immigrant participants of things that they would like to see out of our programming, or materials they would like us to produce or events they would like us to host. And we find a way to do it. And a lot of that is through the very generous, generous work and dedication of our volunteers. Right now we have about 250 volunteers in LA County, the majority of them work virtually as one on one English language tutors. So they submit a short intake form to us about their availability, there background as far as what languages they speak, but it's not required to speak another language, if they have any preferences about the length, first language of the student. All of that sort of fun information. And then we match the volunteer tutors with participants. And then they meet virtually for tutoring, and the students have a wide variety of goals. Some of them are just starting out with English. Some of them are quite proficient, but they want to learn more American slang and conversational English, which is always fun. Some of them want more specific workforce preparation. So we try to match them with a volunteer who works in the same field that the participant worked in in their home country. So everything's very tailored for the best possible experience for the participant and for the volunteer. We also use volunteers to lead workshops or short term group classes online, if they have an area of expertise they would like to share so some volunteers lead health literacy classes or family literacy classes for participants. Other volunteers lead really fun classes like it could be a knitting class, it could be a meditation class, it could be a class about American stand up comedy. All of these topics are really interesting and fun for the participants. And they all help the participants learn English. And usually it's more memorable because it's coming through some fun content. We also use volunteers for our kids club, which is really fun. So once a month. We have a group of kids that meet together and I talked to them about different refugee and immigrant issues so they're learning more about this population. And we have different projects that we do one of them being a birthday kit fundraiser, not a fundraising drive, but a materials drive. So they will go out into their communities or their schools or within their friends and family and collect birthday party supplies. And then we all meet together and have a session of creating birthday party kits. And those go out to the participants so that they have those materials ready to create a fun and memorable birthday party for their kids. So that's another really fun way to get involved with volunteering. We have many more items all listed out on the website that you're welcome to check out. But the main three are English language tutors, the workshop leaders and the kids club. Damien Newton 05:50 Do you want people that are teachers or certified teachers? Or is this something where people can if they have an interest in helping with this, or even if it's somehow related to something else that they do in life, just be able to plug in? Katie Neginsky 06:09 Yeah, and anyone's welcome. Of course, English proficiency is necessary. But other than that, we need the volunteers where they are and the participants where they are. So we do have some very experienced English teachers, they may be retired teachers, or teachers that are just finishing their master's in curriculum and instruction and they want some practicum hours in we tend to place those teachers with beginning level students that may be pre literate in their native language. Because that really requires a more structured class. But we have other people who have different specialties. So if it's someone who is never taught before, but they work in tech, then we could place them with a participant who has intermediate or advanced level English and worked in tech in their home country. And maybe this is an area where they can build up common language. Damien Newton 07:09 As you were talking, I was flashing back to the virtual taekwondo classes. I was running online during the earlier years of the pandemic, remembering those and was like, "I wonder if that's something that would work. Although I'm not really much of a I'm not a formally trained teacher." Katie Neginsky 07:27 Taekwondo would be great. We've run to yoga classes online in the participants love it. It's all in English. It's a great way to practice the body parts. We had a volunteer who was in India, so we do use volunteers that are in other countries. And he is a yogi master in India, and he led the classes in English for our students in Los Angeles. So that was really cool. Damien Newton 07:55 No, yeah, that's cool. All right It's been awhile. I'll have to set up my matts outside again. Katie Neginsky 08:17 I love when volunteers bring their passion or their hobbies. Like I mentioned, the knitting, this one was really popular. We collected all the materials that the students would need to knit, and mailed them to all of the students that enrolled and then one of the volunteers would sit and do knitting classes with them virtually. And some of the students already knew how to knit and maybe they could embroider and so and they were very experienced in that area, or some of them were new to knitting. But they liked the community aspect, and they liked learning the English vocabulary for something that they were interested in. So really, anything could be a class as long as it's held in English. Damien Newton 09:00 You do allow people of all all genders to take the classes or is there a focus or children is it just children and women are included together? Damien Newton 09:17 The The classes are for adults of any gender. But the kids club is for volunteering. So we do want to make sure we can get have opportunities for elementary and middle school aged kids to volunteer with us. So that's how we do it. Katie Neginsky 09:45 But we do have we do host some family literacy events throughout the city and when we do that, then the participants are welcome to invite their children. So typically the children of the Refugee and Immigrant participants are not participating in the English language programming. But they are welcome to attend the family literacy events that we have. So for example, we had one event in Griffith Park where a children's book author came. And everyone received a copy of her book. She read it to the kids, and she walked them through an art activity. So we do a lot of things like that. That's, again, the emphasis is on community building, and family literacy. And then there's an opportunity for families to participate together. Damien Newton 10:41 IWRC isn't just local, and one of the transitions here and weeks, if I remember correctly. And for IWRC related work, because this isn't your only day job. What is it that you'll be doing while you're overseas? Katie Neginsky 11:02 So IWC works quite closely with the State Department and quite a lot of embassies and the embassies, the US embassies all have a program called Regional English Language Offices that they shortened to RELO. So they look for experts in this field to help them develop English language programming in other countries. So they contract with us often to provide training for English teachers in to write curriculum for students. So right now, we're doing a lot of curriculum writing around English language learning and American culture, which has been really fun to think about: how do we want to present American culture and not rewrite these normal textbook texts about this is the fourth of July. This is Thanksgiving, like, this is not true American culture we're trying to get get below the surface a little bit. So we have videos and curriculum, and a podcast, that's all English language and American culture. And that is being used internationally. And then we also have all the same programming that's available to IWRC participants in LA. We have programming for women who are displaced from Ukraine, but are still within Europe, and are applying to come to the US or Canada. So in this way, they're able to start thinking about workforce preparation in English language learning, while they're waiting for for their papers to come through so they can come to the US. Then we have programming in Africa for South Sudanese in Congolese refugees who are in Uganda, and a third program for women displaced from Myanmar who are in Bangladesh and applying to come to the US or Canada. So all three of these are intended to give those participants tools to either self study or have an online tutor in the US, help them prep before they arrive in the US because the typical model is for refugees and immigrants to be resettled. And then they start English the day after they arrive. And it's quite stressful. So we're trying to take advantage of that time while they're waiting for their paperwork to be processed. So I do a fair amount of traveling to go and check on those programs. And on Friday, I'll be leaving for Geneva to do some work at the United Nations Office, but also to meet with two partners from Kyiv, who helped with the Ukrainian project. And then in the fall, I'll be going to Moldova to work with the on the Ukrainian project as well. Damien Newton 13:59 I mean, this is pretty amazing. Like the officially the nonprofit has existed I think you said I mean, for less than two years I can do that math is pretty quickly in my head. And you have a pretty thriving local program and an international program at the same time. With some crossover between between the two. Is there a is there a secret you can share with me about how you expanded so quickly? Katie Neginsky 14:23 I think the the magic in it in was, again, the this platform of wanting to be really responsive to what the participants need and listening to the participants. And we weren't trying to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of really fantastic agencies and service providers in Los Angeles County who do fantastic work with refugees and immigrants. However, they do have some restrictions based on their funding model. So a lot of them can't provide certain services or or they can only provide certain services for a short amount of time. And then they can't provide those services if the participant moves out of the state. So we've just wanted to design our funding so that we don't have those limitations. And that makes us able to provide services that are a complement to those agencies. So we work very closely with all the resettlement agencies in LA and some of the other service providers. And that way, we can be sure that we're not duplicating services, but we're complementing services. So we've really struck a need that was there. So it's just taken off really quickly. And a lot of that wouldn't have been possible before COVID, because it wasn't so common to have so much virtual programming. So now timing and design this, is the magic combination. Damien Newton 16:04 We should have done this about six or seven minutes ago. But we talked you talked a lot about the different ways that people could get involved. And we will have again, the links with the text accompanying in the podcast, but what is the website where you go, the first portal, someone should go to if they want to? If they're interested in volunteering, is it obvious from the IWRC webpage? Or should they be going somewhere else? Katie Neginsky 16:27 Yes, it's quite clear at the website is IWRCenter.org. In there is a tab that says "Get Involved." And that has all of the different volunteer roles. It also has information. If you would like to pass out flyers within your community to let participants know that we exist and that our services are available to them. We can work with refugees, immigrants, asylees undocumented people, we don't have any restrictions. Or if you'd like to host a fundraiser or if you want to get involved with the kids clubs are helped spread the word in any way. Or if you have other ideas. Again, we're super flexible and responsive to the participants. But that extends to the volunteers as well. So if you have ideas, I'd love to hear them. Damien Newton 17:22 Right. I sometimes will shorthand nonprofits that just their initials. And I should remember that the iwrc.org takes you to the Iowa Waste Resource Center. So IWRCenter.org Katie Neginsky 17:35 They sound very important as well, but very different. Damien Newton 17:38 Yes. different missions. Yeah. I remember it was one of the Iowa colleges that had that too. But anyway, yeah, cuz of course, I punched that into my internet when Natalya first introduced us and was like, oh, that's probably not right. Katie Neginsky 17:52 They they preempted my handle. Yeah. Damien Newton 17:55 I believe the Los Angeles County bike coalition's Lacbc.org is something weird, too, which is why there something else. But yeah, we got Streetsblog first. I guess some people in New York got Streetsblog first, but they became friends with us. So I think that kind of wraps up the sort of basics. If people want to learn more, they should really go to the IWRCenter.org. There's some information that's in the essay that wasn't here. I don't want to preempt it too much, because people should read the essay to that you wrote. And there's contact information all over the website. For people that have more questions, or all of any of that. It's really cool work that you do. And I said, as we were talking, I was thinking of ways that either possibly me or some of our events we do at our church might be able to cross over we have a quilting group. So as you were talking about knitting, that was natural... Katie Neginsky 18:46 oh, I have an idea. Oh, light bulb, so we'll talk about it. All right. I'll add if there are any teachers or participate possible participants tuned in, if we have a little section of IWRC that we fondly call curiosity literacy. And if you go to that website, curiosityliteracy.com, which you can get to it from our regular website as well. We have a full curriculum that we've written, and it's translated into several support languages. So Ukrainian, Russian, Bangla, Burmese, Swahili, Farsi and Dari. So if you are a teacher who's working with English language learners, and you would like those materials, they are all available for free. You can download them as fillable PDFs. We have an amazing graphic designer, and so they're very beautiful. And they're designed for adults, and they're all trauma informed, and they're really fun and interesting. Those are great resources for teachers, but also for any English language learners who would like to study independently. They're designed to be used by either group. Damien Newton 20:10 So we're running up against what I always joke is our artificially created time limit. Because, you know, it's the internet, we can go as long as we want to. But we do try to keep the podcast to about 30 minutes as three segments. So that again, very easy math. We are recording on Back To School Day in Los Angeles. And so I all four of our combined kids, you have two also, Katie Neginsky 20:33 yes, nine and five. So all four of our combined kids are away, hurray Damien Newton 20:40 ...at the moment, which means we can talk about them in our fun question segment. So one of the things we've asked a lot of people that have been on this podcast, that are involved in politics about their kids' future plans are what they do and how they tie into that. So you, obviously, a passion for you is creating volunteer opportunities for people. Do either of your kids have a volunteer activity that they do regularly? Or have just started doing something like that, that you really enjoy and that they enjoy? ...
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What's Next Episode 7: Jon Katz
07/10/2023
What's Next Episode 7: Jon Katz
The What's Next podcast is back, and this interview is a doozy. Featuring Democratic Club President Jon Katz, we have a wide ranging conversation discussing everything from how the Dem. Club makes endorsements and gets involved in issues, how Santa Monica IS safe, and even why Leslie Nielsen does a great job playing the President of the United States in Scary Movie 3. If you prefer to read a transcript, a lightly-edited (for clarity) copy of our discussion . The audio is embedded at the bottom of this post. And of course, we also discuss the Unite Here! and other hotel strikes happening throughout Southern California. Our next podcast will feature a worker explaining why they are striking and what they hope to achieve through direct action. But in the meantime, the local dem club is making waves itself. The club announced this weekend that five members of its executive board were appointed to Standing Committees in the California Democratic Party (CADEM). These include: Dan Hall, SMDC Vice President for Political Action, was appointed to the Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JEDI) Committee, Susan Sheu, SMDC Vice President for Communications, was appointed to the Platform Committee, Natalya Zernitskaya, SMDC Recording Secretary, was appointed to the Rules Committee, Caroline Torosis, Santa Monica City Council Member and elected CADEM Executive Board Member, was reappointed to the JEDI Committee, Anastasia Foster, a Santa Monica Rent Control Board Commissioner, was appointed to be the Vice Chair of the Credential Committee. If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on past episodes of Santa Monica Next: , , , , and .
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What's Next Episode 6: Daniel Ivanov
06/01/2023
What's Next Episode 6: Daniel Ivanov
A discussed the Rent Control Board and how next week they are expected to vote to increase the rent by up to 2.8% for properties governed by the city's rent control laws. To explain the process by which increases are set, the value of rent control for a city such as Santa Monica and other matters related to the vote; we brought on Rent Control Boardmember Daniel Ivanov for this week's episode of What's Next. If you have any issues with your rent, or questions for the Rent Control Board, Daniel asked that we print his email address so you can get in touch with him directly. You can do so, here : . In addition to rent control, we also discuss crime and public safety in Santa Monica and how some politicians and media outlets skew the perception of these issues for their personal gain. And of course we have five "fun" questions to help you get to know Ivanov, and myself, a little better. If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on past episodes of Santa Monica Next: , , , , and . Below is a transcript of the interview from today's podcast. Damien Newton (DN): So I'm Damien Newton, we're recording on Zen caster with Daniel Ivanov. Thank you for being with us today. You were just elected to the Rent Control board back in November and we're about to vote on your first rent increase. How exciting. Daniel Ivanov (DI): Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. DN: All right. So as I said, I believe the June 8 meeting, which if we put this up, tomorrow, June 1, will be one week away, is the first meeting where you're going to be voting on one of the rent increases. The rent increase is much smaller than it was last year. But I think some people who might not be listening to this might not even completely understand how rent control works. So could we start off with just a very brief primer on what rent control is, what sort of the controversies were last year and how that sort of been solved for this year? DI: Sure. It's called the GA, so a general adjustment. And this year, the GA is going to be we announced that our last meeting is going to be 2.8%. Now, that's a mathematical formula using the consumer price index that the rent control agency calculates. So the board doesn't necessarily approve or deny the 2.8. The 2.8 is what the rate is using the formula. What we can do at our next meeting on the eighth is we can set a maximum dollar amount cap, which this year, if same thing doing the same calculation, it would be $67. So that's, that's going to be all at our next meeting on the eighth, there's going to be a public comment period for the GA, and then we're also going to vote on our budget to approve that for the new fiscal year. In terms of where we've been, and kind of how we got here. I think a lot of people remember that last year, around summer of 2022, I want to say July or August, we got hit with the news that the GA last year it was going to be 6%. And 6%, in my understanding, is either the largest GA figure that we've had in decades, if not ever. And so part of the reason why I ran and a proposal that eventually got onto the ballot was measure RC, which would have kept that 6% to 3%. Thankfully, voters passed that overwhelmingly in November, I believe it was like by a 70 to 30% margin. So that was good news. That got passed, we got that implemented essentially right after the election. A lot of renters in Santa Monica felt that relief right away. And so, moving forward 3%, which is always going to be the cap. We ended up coming off at 2.8 this year. Thankfully, inflation stabilized a little bit year over year, which is part of why we got that lower rate. DN: So let's take it back into a little bit more basic level, if someone's listening to this and GA's, and rent caps, and all that seems strange, either they just moved to the area or they happen to be in a unit that's not rent controlled. Rent control is a big part of Santa Monica's history. The city has its own political party that's basically "the rent control party." And until 2022, excuse me until 2020. They basically won every election, and they had a little bit of a hiccup. And then they did pretty well again last year. Like every level: school board, rent control board, city council, like they win on this issue, but let's get a real brief explanation of what is right and control. It's been around in Santa Monica for 50 years, sort of the very basics of how it works and why you have a rent control board that goes through all of these different things to try to keep the rent low for a large segment of the population. DI: That's a great point because Santa Monica is the oldest rent control jurisdiction in the state. I mean, there's only about 14 in the whole state. We've had it since about 1979. And we're the first ones in the state to do it. Fundamentally, what rent control is, at its most basic level, is it essentially sets a cap either at $1 amount figure or a percentage about how much your rent could go up year over year. It stops landlords from implementing exorbitant rent increases of 5% 10% 15%, I mean, crazy figures like that, right? So the GA, for people that, you know, don't know all the nuances of all those mathematical calculations, the GA is that cap that comes out every year, that tells you how much your rent is gonna go up that year. But it cannot go more than that. That's the ceiling that is going to be set so that you will not pay more money than that cap. I think you asked, "Why is it necessary to have a rent control board? Why is it necessary to have an agency do these functions?" We are already currently in Santa Monica…we are already pricing out doctors, lawyers, engineers, people that are traditionally upper middle class, right. And so we need some mechanism, some agency in the city that tries to level the playing field. We need someone to try to stabilize things a little bit. And when I'm talking about doctors, lawyers, engineers getting priced out. I'm not talking about, you know, retail workers or food service workers. If middle class people and upper middle class people are struggling; we're where our lower middle class people and those striving to break into the middle class, how are they doing? We have to figure out what kind of city we want to be. And what I mean by that is, Santa Monica can easily become like, a Malibu or the Palisades, where, if you want to live in Santa Monica, the only feasible way of doing that is being a celebrity with a multimillion dollar income. I don't think any of us want to live in a city like that. I want to live in a city where middle class people can, can put down roots, you know, live thrive, raise a family. Those that are striving to break into the middle class have an opportunity to do that. So it's a value statement, right? I mean, it's just we have to decide, as a city, what our values are. And I think the rent control board is on the front lines of trying to level that playing field to make it just a little more equitable, to get more people to be able to afford to live here. DN: It was interesting, because when you were mentioning the potentially exorbitant rent increases, you'll see in some places you said 5-10-15%, but that five is actually lower than what it was last year, with a rent control board. Which is, I guess one of the reasons why you got interested in running and one of the reasons the City Council put out, Measure RC, and it didn't seem to have much trouble passing. It got wildly high approval numbers. DI: Correct. And to your point last year was really a very unique situation. That GA is calculated based on the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation. And last year, we had the highest inflation rate in this country, probably since the 70s, and probably in over 40 years. So that really was an anomaly. That was, you know, a very unusual circumstance. But I'm glad that when it happened the voters in Santa Monica, you know, rose up and implemented a change to make that burden a little easier for renters in our community. DN: It always it always feels like such a struggle to get certain things past but it really did seem that this is a core value that very few people were willing to budge on. A couple of weeks ago, I did an article on the 2.8% increase, which I think I still call the proposed increase, even though it's pretty much locked in because it's a math formula, not a political calculation. I talked about how the opposition to RC was really just landlords, the rent control party was for it, the Democratic Party was for it, the conservative columnist at the Mirror were for it…like everyone was for it, except for like, a handful of conservative really, really conservative groups. And the people that want to raise the rents more than 6% or more than 3%. DI: Yeah, and I want to touch on one more issue because. You mentioned the RC and the 3% is kind of one of the one of the reasons why I ran. I want to talk about another issue I ran that was happening simultaneously around the time that 6% GA announcement came out. We talked about this before together as well. But last summer,I believe this was August of 2022. Somewhere around there. There was a proposal in the city council by councilmember Lana Negrete. That was introduced around, I think it was like three or four in the morning. DN: It was, yeah, 11th hour as well, is how we referred to it, and someone actually said to me, it was after the 11th hour. DI: And her proposal was a little more complex than how I'm going to describe it, but at its most basic functional level, so that people can understand: what it what it would have done was it would have means tested rent control. What means testing means essentially, is that instead of every single person getting the same benefit of what that GA is going to be, her proposal would have basically created these different income thresholds and brackets, where depending on what the thresholds were, and where and where you fell, based on your income within those brackets, people would have got some people would have gotten a certain amount of relief, other people would have gotten a different amount of relief. And some people would have gotten no amount of rent control relief whatsoever, because their income would have been considered too high to qualify, depending on the thresholds. And so, just think about renters last year in Santa Monica, you know, first they got hit with the news of like, we're gonna get a 6% increase. It's the highest increase we've had in decades, if not ever. And then at the same time, almost simultaneously, they get this news that the city council is thinking about, potentially, getting rid of rent control whatsoever, and having people not qualified at all. Part of why I ran and part of why I'm serving on the board, is it remains to be seen if counsel is going to explore anything like that again. But, I just want to make it known that I will do everything in my power on the rent control board to put a stop to any kind of effort like that. And preserve the essence of rent control the way it was originally implemented in 1979. And has been throughout the decades in our city. DN: It was certainly an election season last year where it felt like there was sort of a progressive push back after the 2020 election was an outlier as far as the city's politics go. But we've already gone a little over 12 minutes. And we try to keep these to 3 10 minute ish segments. We just did the segment I wanted to talk about and you wanted to talk a little bit about public safety and our experiences in the city and how maybe the way that the public safety discussion is being framed by some of the loudest voices isn't the most productive. I'll say to people listening a couple of weeks ago, when we met for the first time, we walked up and down the Promenade in the middle of the day, and basically had a discussion about how, it's not the experience of casually walking up and down. The promenade was a very comfortable and safe experience. There were plenty of open shops and things to do. I was writing down restaurants that I could bring them back and bring my kids to that evening. But sometimes when you hear the Promenade discussed, it sounds like Thunderdome in Mad Max, and we've got our masks and our flame throwers. And it's a very scary, terrible place. That wasn't our experience on that day. And I think you're saying for the most part, that's not the experience. DI: Yeah, well, so the reason why I raised this issue, and you talked about kind of the loudest voices, you know, saying these things. I bring it back to the last election cycle, you know, in 2022. You know, there were certain candidates, I remember in particular, Armand Melkonians, was running for council at that time. And every time that I saw him speak, whether it was at a debate or you know, at some kind of forum, he would essentially, you know, paint this picture, like you've said that Santa Monica is like this hellscape that's, you know, extremely dangerous and no one feels safe walking the streets. And this one line that he would always reiterate that rubbed me the wrong way, especially was, …he would talk about how he walks on Ocean Avenue all the time. And the parking lots are completely empty. No one's there. There's no tourists. The Promenade is empty. And that, you know, that was his bit. He said that no matter what time of day it was, whether he was going on a weekday on a weekend, morning, afternoon, evening, whatever, no matter what time of day it was, it was always like that. The reason why I say it rubs me the wrong way is because I literally live on Ocean Avenue. My apartment building is on Ocean Avenue. I walk Ocean Avenue every day. I walk, you know, the trail by the pier almost every day. And, it's just not true. I mean, it couldn't be further from the truth. Every time I walk down the pier by the trail or on Ocean Avenue, the parking lot is jam packed. You cannot find a parking spot, do you go down towards Montana with those parking lots. Same thing, there's, there's not one spot to be had. Same thing with the public beach parking right outside Santa Monica Beach is always packed. And to your point, when we walked the Promenade, you mentioned that, you know, it might be a little less people than pre-pandemic. And that could be partially due to the pandemic, I can't, you know, attest to that, because I've only been in Santa Monica since 2021. So I don't have a frame of reference pre-pandemic. But I've lived here for, you know, going on two years now. I've never had a situation where I felt like I was walking in a ghost town where the streets were completely vacant. And frankly, I've never had a situation yet where I was ever walking in the streets and just felt unsafe to be outside. I'm not trying to say that Santa Monica doesn't have its problems. I'm not trying to say that we're some perfect utopia that doesn't have issues with, you know, public safety and homelessness, and we have our problems every city does. But I think this notion of just painting, you know, Santa Monica with this crime ridden picture, and we talked about John Ali's billboard on the Promenade as well. It's not productive. If you care about those issues, those scare test scare tactics, those fear mongering tactics are not doing anything to productively solve the problem. So that begs the question, you know, why are we doing them? Or why are the people that are using those tactics? doing them? DN: I always do like to qualify that, you know, I am a six foot two middle aged male who is in good physical shape and teaches martial arts to children. So maybe I'm more confident in situations that other people would find scary. But three times a week I'm running Ocean Park, Pico Boulevard, sometimes even Olympic, 17th Street, I'm running the streets, you know, it's dark out. And I don't feel intimidated or scared. Like, I might run into a homeless person sleeping in a doorstop, or something like that. Or someone might shout something at me, but it's not scary. It's like I live in a city. If I wanted to avoid all of that, I suppose I could live out in the forest somewhere where I grew up, but it's not. I don't have these kind of "Oh, my God vibes" when I'm out doing it. And I said, I'm out early in the morning. DI: Yeah. No, I completely agree with you. I'm not going on runs like you are, I probably should be. But like I said, I walked the trail a lot by the beach. A lot of days in the evenings after work. Sometimes, weekend mornings, you know, are also different times of the day. And yeah, I echo your experience. I just haven't had those kinds of issues. DN: Yeah, maybe we're just both too intimidating. DI: Yeah. Or we've just, you know, gotten, you know, crazy lucky over this amount of time. But I don't think that's the case. DN: Well, I mean, because when we talked, I talked about crime rates with people. You know, we talked about the city and the county and all of that. I do like to point out, you know, anecdotal information, which is a lot of what news reports are to is not always the best way to judge things. For example, the odds of getting shot in California are lower than the odds of getting shot in North Carolina. But there's not breathless news segments about the murder rates in North Carolina, like there are about Los Angeles and San Francisco. I'm sort of lumping Santa Monica into greater Los Angeles, but there's a perception, because these are dense places with a lot of people. So those crimes, it's obviously always a horrible thing when something like that happens, but when you're in a county with 11 million people, you know, statistically speaking, that's going to happen. But then you have the news reports and you have people that take what's in those news reports and blow them up into big news. I'm sure the Observer's article on whatever it was that happened at the pier the other night where some, I guess there was a stabbing in the evening hours, I bet the Santa Monica Observer story reads very differently than the Daily Press story, which is very different than the SMPD press release. But all that sort of stuff can create a perception for people. DI: Not to get, you know, to necessarily be political on this. But if you actually crunched the numbers per capita in the aggregate a lot of red states like Oklahoma end up having higher murder rates, higher gun violence rates than states like New York, California. That doesn't always, that doesn't always make it into the headline. But if you actually look at the statistical data, you know, that's just kind of where the numbers fall. DN: So we're now past the 21 minute mark, which means it's time to ask fun questions. Hooray for fun. For anyone just listening or who has always turned it off right after I say "fun questions." Our ground rules are that these questions are usually supplied by readers. If we don't get good reader questions, or we don't get five good reader questions, I usually fill in with variations of questions that have gotten us fun answers in the past. As always, Daniel has the option to turn around and ask me one of the questions at the end of the five questions, which is both a way for you, the listeners, to get a better sense of me the editor/podcaster. And a way to sort of make it so that I don't start asking totally insane, zany personal questions that no one would ever want to answer, because then there's a chance I would have to answer them, too. So are you ready? Are you fun? DI: I am ready. I think I can be fun. DN: So I have tried and failed several times to get good restaurant advice from people by doing this. Finally, Abby gave me a good one last time. And so I don't want to say what it is because then if you say the same thing, people will be like, "Oh, whatever." And then I find fun ways to ask it. But I'm just going to be blunt this time. What is...
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What's Next Episode 5 : Cynthia Rose
05/04/2023
What's Next Episode 5 : Cynthia Rose
Welcome to What’s Next, Episode 5 featuring SM Spoke’s Cynthia Rose. Cynthia has been involved in mobility, street safety and environmental politics in Santa Monica for decades and we’re happy to have her join us as part of our coverage of Bike Month! If you’re just joining us, you can catch up on past episodes of Santa Monica Next: , , and earlier this week we dropped . A full transcript of today’s podcast can be found right here: Damien: Welcome to Episode 5 of the What's Next podcast for Santa Monica Next. May is Bike Month and we are celebrating by having Cynthia Rose, the longtime head of Santa Monica Spoke and probably the most recognizable advocate for safe streets and bicycling in Santa Monica as our guest today. I'm not going to waste too much time with the intro. Cynthia and I had an over half hour conversation. So let's get right into it. Here is What's Next Episode Five with Damien Newton and Cynthia Rose. Damien: So as we said in the intro, it is Bike Month and we have Santa Monica's longtime head of Santa Monica Spoke, Cynthia Rose with us today. Welcome to What's Next and happy Bike Month. Cynthia: Happy Bike Month to you old friend. Good to be here. Damien: I'm gonna be honest. When we were doing the "five fun questions." I had a question of, "Could you describe the first time we met?" But I realized that I couldn't remember when that was. I actually went through old Facebook posts. And I was like, "did we meet at the vegan fundraiser for bike month and 2011?" Or was it before that? Cynthia: I can't think of when we...I just I can't think of when we met either. Yeah, it's been forever. Remember some of our first events together like for "Airport 2 Park" when your kids were just like babies in car seats? There is a picture of...car seats in bucket bikes. I should rephrase that. Yes. Damien: And there's a picture of you at our first Santa Monica Next fundraiser, pre Jason Islas when Gary Kavanaugh was our editor. So yeah, we go back. Cynthia: Wow. Yeah, yeah, old times old friends. Old times. Good friends. Oh, good times. Damien: The friendliest intro I've done and I had Abby on last week. Cynthia: Abby's my She-ro Damien: Yes, Abby's an example, I point to a lot about advocacy. And we talked last week. I don't know if you had a chance to listen to it because we just aired it on Monday, and we're recording on Wednesday. But we had a whole section talking about developing leaders and the next generation of leaders. I've tried to follow the example that she did but I did not do the best job with that even when I was trying to be intentional earlier in my career. I was trying to get Carter Rubin to take over all this like five years ago and instead he's far more successful than me so I definitely messed up. Cynthia: Well, I'll say that for us at Santa Monica Spoke and the Santa Monica Safe Street Alliance we're really focused on nurturing and empowering our youth leadership for the Santa Monica Safe Street Alliance. To be a mentor and bring them on and empower them to be the leaders within the Safe Street Alliance. So we're going to be looking to them to help us guide that entire project moving forward Damien: Santa Monica has a long history of youth leadership on the issues of bicycle and pedestrian safety. I remember Bike It! and Walk It! Before we added "bus it" was a huge undertaking taken on by Santa Monica High School students and became sort of a national model for how to do bike to school. I still see it referenced on webpages in other parts of the state for Streetsblog California, or when I'm putting together materials for my own schools', walk-bike to school day. Cynthia: That was Rachel and what was ... Damien: I know they're probably in their 40s by now. Right? Cynthia: No, they're still young. But you know, and they were also honored by President Barack Obama.... Damien: I remember that. That was an early Santa Monica Next story. I think maybe even pre-G that might have been when we were still in pre- launch. Cynthia: My partner, my co host, co host, ha. My co-chair at the Santa Monica Safe Streets Alliance is Chris Gutierrez who led the Climate Action Youth Collective, and now we're focused together again, mentoring and empowering the youth with all the many facets of advocacy and government. And where they connect and intersect with climate and housing and mobility and all of those things, trying to put it all under one big intersectional bucket of topics. Damien: Now, usually when we start the podcast, there is a format: one topic I want to talk about, a topic the guest wants to talk about, then our five fun questions. I usually go "yay, fun." But now this ties way better into your topic than mine. So why don't we do your topic first? We were talking about getting people involved in doing outreach, and how it's often harder to get people involved that are happy or content with something than it is people that are upset with it. Because people that are happy and content are focused on enjoying something, and maybe aren't going to public meetings. So let's transition into that because kids are usually not a group that you can get involved in things outside of advocacy in their school, or advocacy on national issues, like climate change, or gun control. So how do we get happy people more involved in things? Cynthia: You know, that's been the egg that we've been trying to crack for a decade here in Santa Monica. We have done, I think, proudly, we have done so much good work, that many folks are happy and think that it's all going well, and that they don't need to pay as much attention and be engaged. And I think the flip side of that, as a lot of us know in advocacy work, is that every step we take forward is a hard fought step. And it may look easy from the outside. But it's a lot of work and a lot of interconnected dots, a lot of advocacy, a lot of education, a lot of just so many interconnected issues. And then on launch day, it all seems pretty and beautiful. Cynthia: And people go off and, and go and have their happy day. And the only people that stay engaged on either a project or the direction that things are going are the people that are angry, and the people that are mad that they feel something is being done wrong, or the roads are being taken away from them, or whatever it is. They remain engaged and vocal. And the people who are just so pleased that the way things are going just go on about their happy way and enjoy the infrastructure. And that literally has been our hardest thing to just continually navigate is keeping people engaged and trying to let them know that their voice is still really really important in moving us continually in this direction of of more equitable, sustainable mobility, safer streets, above all for everyone and how those things interconnect with the climate, and housing, and, and environmental justice, all of those things are just so intersectional and interconnected. And that's what we're really aiming to do with the youth core because the kids get this. Sometimes the part that they don't get is how mobility is connected to it. But the groups that we're seeing now really do get that they realized that if they can't move about how do they get to their job? How do they get to play? How do they get to here or there without using methods of mobility that they probably want to move away from, which is fossil fuels and things like that. Damien: Now, I think it's interesting. So speaking of Barack Obama, he used to have this "Don't boo, vote," he would say. He would be giving a speech and mentioning Mitt Romney, and then everyone would boo, then he would go, "Don't boo, vote.: I think a lot of people, maybe especially in our generations, do the "Don't boo, vote." They vote, and they vote for the good people. And if the good people win they sort of think that's enough. In Santa Monica, with the exception of the 2020 election, where the world was in chaos, there was a huge reaction to the protests and the police crackdowns in Santa Monica, and the election was swayed because of that. Generally, the loud angry people don't win elections in Santa Monica. And I think a lot of people think well, that's enough. We have a good city council, we can go. And yeah, yeah, but that it's been sort of a different mix. It's been more of a split City Council the past couple years. And that's, I think that it's hard for some people to sort of gear up for the type of advocacy you're talking about because they think things are going okay. Cynthia: Yeah, it's, it's definitely a challenge. We need to figure out how to keep people engaged with not just the vote, but following along with the people that not only they vote for it but the people that get into office, how they actually vote, how they, what voices are they looking to guide them. Are they being open and equitable to all of the community, or are they focusing in one area or another. And I think that that is, particularly for a group like Santa Monica Spoke, we're a 501 C three we do not get into and we will never get into politics. We can't, it's against the law. We can't advocate for or endorse any candidate and never have. But what we can do is open ourselves to relationships with any council member that wants to be authentic in their conversations about the issues that are important to us and our community. And we can elevate those. Those conversations...we would elevate and we would share that with our community. And we cannot, we never show preference, we won't. But we also don't embroil ourselves with people who are opposed to what we're doing, which is making the streets safer for everyone. And that includes people walking, biking and driving their cars. Damien: So we sort of had a conversation on their SGV Connect podcast at Streetsblog la about different types of outreach and what they could do with a group that was working on the 20 Hills landfill Park project. Now, it's pretty easy to get a lot of positive feedback when you're literally talking about turning a landfill into a park. Actually, probably even easier than turning an airport into a park. But they said that they wanted to do things differently, though, for their outreach. And so not only did they do a lot of rides, and a lot of activities, they would sometimes do things they didn't announce and just go out to the trails and meet people that were on the trails in the park surrounding Puente Hills go to the landfill and talk to people that were there, unannounced. So it wasn't like a public meeting or anything. It was literally like spot checks. Santa Monica Spoke has always been really good about having different rides and activities as a place to meet people. But I was just wondering what you would think as far as the city goes in doing outreach now, what should Santa Monica be doing to make sure that the loud angry voices assuming they're not the majority don't dominate the conversation? Cynthia: I think with the pandemic's cities have started to pay more attention to making sure that the voices that are heard are not just the voices that show up to council meetings. That's one of the silver linings that we are able to take with us away from the isolation of lockdown. We can look to having more outreach that is beyond the typical suspects and the people that have time. I think it's for us, it's always been, we need to figure out how to meet people where they are. And it's a challenge. And for cities, it's going to be a challenge for us. You know, we know that when I am around like a school, say for instance, anytime between drop off, pickup and drop off, I am amazed at the at the increase in the people who arrive by bike, cargo bikes...it used to be when I rode around Santa Monica, I would see a cargo bike and I knew every single one. It's like, "Oh, I've seen that guy before. I've seen her before. I've seen them before." These days, every time I go out, there's a new cargo bike, not only the person, but the type of cargo bike. So going to schools and really engaging with those people is something that we've always wanted to be able to do. And that's one avenue that we tried to do with the Safe Routes to School. But again, these things are heavy lift, nothing is easy. So I don't mean to make excuses. But we need to keep we can never stop trying harder. But I think the baseline is we need to meet people where they are, we need to give people options to engage. And above all, we need to stop listening to only the group of people that show up because they have the same group of people, and also the loud and angry voices. If that's 10, if that's you know, 25 we're a city of 90,000 people; that's clearly not the majority. They're just the loudest. So we need to really find those voices, and those people that are not necessarily actively engaged. That leads into something that we've talked about before in our struggle To connect with our community at which, you know, we run into people on the street, and they're like, Oh, your Santa Monica spot. I love you guys, you guys are doing a great job. It's like, "Keep doing your good work." No, "how can I help?" Sometimes we're getting that. But in Santa Monica, as I said before people who live here or move here it's because of the type of infrastructure because of the way the city is being built. And even though they may ride their bike for many or all of their daily activities, they don't necessarily self identify as a cyclist. And therefore, they just let us do the work. And they just kind of feed a little bit of information in here and there. But we've continued to struggle on how we can connect with them more directly, so that they can understand how important their voice is, in keeping us going in the direction that we've been headed. That was a long answer. Damien: That's a great answer, though, man, don't sell yourself short. Besides, I feel like we've already pretty much covered what was supposed to be my topic. But let's do it anyway, officially, which is Santa Monica is being held up right now as the city in California for good bike infrastructure. It's the place you know, maybe some of the folks in NorCal are gonna argue about Davis or the, you know, the Central Coast people talking about San Luis Obispo, but I've been hearing Santa Monica a lot more. And there's that great video that we're probably going to post tomorrow that's been making the rounds. About how things are going in Santa Monica. Does Santa Monica deserve this level of praise? And whether they do or don't? What should they be focused on right now as I'm talking about a city, like from a staff level? What should the city be doing to keep going forward? Cynthia: So firstly, to address do we deserve the accolades of being like the next Amsterdam or however it is that they're putting it. I am also the Chair at Cal bike, as you know. And we have infrastructure. That's brilliant, all over this state. And we have cities like Davis, we have cities like Long Beach, we have what was the other example you used? Damien: San Luis… Cynthia: San Luis Obispo, beautiful, beautiful bike infrastructure. Santa Monica is very unique. We are a very dense beach town .We're on a grid. We have busy streets and neighborhood streets almost completely across the city. So long way around? I am beyond proud of the work that we've done in Santa Monica, and the work that the city has accomplished in the time that we've been working with them. And I think that we deserve the accolades that we've been getting. Does that mean we should rest on our laurels? Or that we've done everything perfectly? No. We have some definite deficits that can and should be addressed. And hopefully, we're starting to tick those away. But in the broader answer to the question, I think that the mobility team, previous and current and the city itself has done an incredible job of really focusing and moving towards the future. And for the most part, the council has been completely supportive of that since 2009, that we've been that we've been involved with ...quite literally every bike project and area plan, and anything that even remotely could possibly touch mobility in the city of Santa Monica . So then I think there was another part of that question. Damien: In the short term, what should the city be doing? What should the focus be right now? And maybe you're going to tell us what something they're already doing. If there if things are moving in the right direction, still, Cynthia: I think that things are moving in the right direction quickly. Santa Monica has always been really great at getting grant funding. They are good at getting grant funding and use it you know, to their best advantage. We have, we have so many projects in the pipeline right now, that are a result of tons of outreach. Well, tons of outreach and and and really listening to the community on what they want to see. The Wilshire safety study. This may, we're going to start seeing some real implementations that are as a result of that year long process of looking at Wilshire Boulevard, through the lens of how do we make this safer for everyone.That's primarily a car centric Boulevard. So we need to focus on pedestrian improvements where there's bike crossing infrastructure that we'll be focused on. But we're also going to be focused on making vehicular traffic safe, so that when drivers inevitably make an error, that it doesn't result in serious injury and death. And that is the whole purpose of like Vision Zero, and safe streets: designing the streets so that when errors do inevitably happen, the results are not catastrophic. I think the city is applying for a grant to do the same sort of thing on Santa Monica Boulevard, which is another high injury network within the city. And we would go through the same process where we're engaging the community and all the businesses along the corridor, hopefully working with us again at Santa Monica Spoke to do a lot of that outreach, and then formulating that into a plan on how we can improve the street so that everyone is safer. Damien: Alright, so ready for five fun questions. Cynthia: Oh, God. Damien: So we have a rule on this, which is, after we're done, you can ask me any of the five questions also, which is both so that the people listening can get to know me a little better, because I'm not quite as public figure as my predecessors at Santa Monica Next, and partially to make sure I don't ask anything totally insane or inappropriate, because I wouldn't want to answer that question either. If it's something that's very unique to you, we might modify it a little bit. So it makes sense to me. And as I, Cynthia: I'm on bike month preparation noodle brain. So hopefully, I can even remember the questions after we're through. So that's going back to you. Damien: And I already told you that I answered the fifth question, which maybe we'll just switch around to make the first question now, which was about first time riding a scooter. So we'll start with that we'll go in reverse order. So have you ever ridden one of the famous Santa Monica e scooters and if so, what was your first trip on the scooter like? Cynthia: So two confessions, I have never written the scooter Damien: Neither had Rick Cole. Cynthia: I have done scooter training. And we have organized through our partners at Lyft. Long ago, we did scooter training on the bike path. And all my favorite things were that we had a we did it on the Santa Monica Beach Campus, the bike campus, which is at the end for folks on the line who are listening, it's at the end of Ocean Park at the beach. There's an access road that has been painted with a bike lane and bike obstacle courses so that you can get better at riding on the road, get better and learn how to ride on the street without actually being on the street. So we held...
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What's Next Episode 4 : Abby Arnold
04/28/2023
What's Next Episode 4 : Abby Arnold
Alas, one of Santa Monica's most important and most-underheralded activists, Abby Arnold is leaving Santa Monica after most of her adult life, almost 40 years. Her kids have made lives in Sonoma, and Arnold is planning on joining then for a happy retirement. However, that gives us a chance to have one last interview with the former co-chair of Santa Monica Forward, long-time member of several city commissions, and a host of other jobs and titles at various non-profits. However, a large portion of this interview is spent talking about the need to plan for the future by creating and nurturing new leaders. A copy of the transcript of this interview can be found below: If you're just joining us, you can catch up on past episodes of Santa Monica Next: , and . One last programming note, at the end of the episode we discuss having on someone with SMMUSD. That's going to wait an episode because I forgot that May is Bike Month, so our next guest with be SM Spoke's super advocate, Cynthia Rose. Transcript: DN: So welcome Abby. Thanks for being with us today. AA: Thanks for having me, Damien. This is fun. DN: So as I mentioned in the intro, you are going to be leaving us soon. For parts north, I guess. And we, this is sort of our unofficial exit interview, because we haven't really done one like this before. So we've got three categories. As we've been doing in our things, there's a topic, I want to talk about, a topic you want to talk about, and then the five fun questions. Yay, fun. So let's go right into it. I know in your professional life, you've worked on issues related to homelessness, not just in Santa Monica, but in lots of other cities, helping design plans, helping write grants to get funding for programs, all sorts of things. And I also know that you've been obviously very involved with Santa Monica Forward, and other groups that have been pushing the City of Santa Monica to broaden the number of housing options that are in the city: affordable housing, market rate housing, you know, bring more housing in so that the city can meet its housing obligations and be the kind of city that is growing and attracting more, more young people and more families, more everything. So let's start by talking a little bit about what's going on in Santa Monica right now. We'll start with talking about the city's homelessness policies, and then move a little bit into the housing policies. Everyone in the region is dealing with different homeless crisis in their home cities. How is Santa Monica doing? AA: So I've always felt that Santa Monica had a good commitment to addressing homelessness, because of what used to be called OPCC, and is now called the People Concern. We have a lot of shelter beds here in Santa Monica. So that when people are ready to come inside, there's a bed for people. That's part of why our census is very high, because when they say there are X number of people who are homeless in Santa Monica, everybody who's staying at the shelter on Olympic and the ones on on Cloverfield, and other facilities all get counted as people who are unhoused, here in Santa Monica. And we've always had good outreach teams and devoted and dedicated group from the police department that works on connecting with people who are unhoused. So I feel like we do a pretty good job. The one thing that I wish I had put energy into while I was here, is changing a very antiquated policy that we have in Santa Monica, which is that people who are unhoused have to prove that they either had their last address here in Santa Monica, before they became unhoused, or that they have been unhoused in Santa Monica for three years. There's no way anybody can prove that. So it makes it really difficult for the service providers to to give people the services that are available here. Because they have to go through, you know, this extra layer of proof on the part of the person. And it's kind of an impossible proof. That's a leftover from the very old policies of Bobby Shriver and Bob Holbrook, a long, long time ago. We should have gotten rid of those a long time ago. And I'm sorry that we didn't. DN: When I was doing the series on homelessness at Streetsblog, Los Angeles like five years ago, and was talking to all these different communities; one of the things that I discovered is one of the reasons that Los Angeles County has a disproportionately high number of people experiencing homelessness is because there are people that come to California and come to Los Angeles area, looking for a shelter of some sort because they were abused, because they were LGBTQ and were disowned by their family, or because they're veterans and we have this huge veterans facility right here. When I did the safe parking program up at the VA that was they were all here because they could get health care. So it seems like having a policy where you have to be from here to access our services is really sort of flying in the face of the idea of California as a place where people can come and be accepted for who they are. AA: Absolutely. And I think that, you know, we're brought to the people of Santa Monica, you know, we would say, as a, as a community, we want to be welcoming, and we want to help people when they need help. There is an effort to try to get a really robust mental health center here, and even some beds, so that people who are experiencing homelessness can get the medical care that they need, and get calmed down after having lived on the street. Which means you're not sleeping well, and you're not getting getting good nutrition and all those things that make you depressed and unable to function. You are so right about the attraction of, of Los Angeles in general and Santa Monica, among several other cities. How many years did I write, "we're at the end of a 3000 mile cross country highway, and people go west, and they end up here with nothing." And,the same thing happens in Hollywood, where people come out saying, "Oh, I'm going to be a movie star." And they end up unhoused and living under the freeway. They ended up in West Hollywood saying, "you know, I've got to be someplace where I'm safe. Because in my home community in whatever state, Florida, we can pick today. It's not safe to be trans." We have to recognize that people are coming here, not because they're going to get a bag lunch; they're coming here because they have dreams, that may not be realistic, but that they are trying to follow and that they're trying to be safe. DN: When we talk about homelessness, everybody we talked to be they, you know, a far left person or my City Councilmember in LA TracI Park, or even someone who's conservative note that people get into the system, and they don't get out of it in large part because we don't have affordable housing options in LA County. The pre-pandemic stats, I remember were atrocious. And I can't imagine it's gotten any better in the past three or four years. So what do you see Santa Monica's role and what do you see is how Santa Monica doing in being able to provide safe, affordable, or even subsidized housing. For people that are moving through the system that have jobs, have IDs. They just need a place to stay and they're, you know, ready to have a normal life. AA: So I think it's important to realize that we need apartments for the 60,000 or more unhoused households in Los Angeles County. In order to achieve that, we also need to have housing for everybody who's else who's under housed. So the people who are moving here to work in tech, our kids who grow up, go to college and come back and get a job, and they end up living back in their childhood bedroom. Because there aren't enough homes. DN: Quick note, I'm recording this in my child's bedroom right now. So after he's gone, he can't come back or I will lose my recording studio. AA: Good luck with that. Well, and I'll tell you, I'm moving to Northern California because both of my kids live up there now because they could not find a way to make a living and pay rent here in Los Angeles. So it's a real problem. And long before the pandemic, the LA County CAOs office, homeless group was saying that we needed half a million additional housing units in Los Angeles County in order to have enough capacity for the people who are unhoused. I was maybe 50,000 on house at that point. So maybe it's up to six 600,000 that we need. You cannot force someone to go to Palmdale. Much as some people would like to do that. Someone whose medical care and safe places are here on the Westside isn't gonna want to go to Palmdale. I actually have somebody who I I stay in touch with who is who was unhoused. He's living downtown now and every week he has to come out to Venice family clinic. And so you just can't keep on doing that, you know. And a lot of people aren't competent to get on the bus and come out here and for their medical care and, and they don't feel safe in buildings or in communities that they haven't been to before. So I feel like every community, every neighborhood needs to find room, create room for the people who need that kind of help. DN: All right, I'm not gonna take it, I'm not gonna talk about Palmdale. Pour Palmdale. So, let's switch a little bit from my topic to your topic. You want to talk about leadership development, and why it's important not just for Santa Monica, but for organizations and everyone to be recruiting new people and new leaders to take up for the old leaders. One of the reasons that you're comfortable leaving is because there's a lot of leaders that are my age and younger that have stepped up in organizations like forward. The guy I was trying to groom to take over for me at Streetsblog has moved well past. He's at the NRDC now. And he's my board chair, and I work for him. So that was a huge failure on my part, but I'll have to find someone less talented than him. But ...that's a joke. Although not really, Carter, we love you Carter. Listen to the podcast. So, hopefully he's laughing right now. So let's talk a little bit about that you have at your, at the Streetsblog excuse me at the Santa Monica Next, (I just keep saying Streetsblog) at the Santa Monica next, welcome back party at your house. Juan Matute talked a lot about how you were very much a leader in a generation that looked for younger people to mold and to get into leadership positions. You weren't interested in holding them forever, yourself, and be they Commission's or Forward or whatever. So can we talk a little bit about that? Why do you think is important? And how do you identify younger leaders and start to get them ready to lead? AA: Thank you for that opportunity to make this pitch. You know, I ran for city council in 2002, which was you know, 20 years ago plus. Last summer when when Kristin McCown said that she was not going to run again, people called me...many people called me...and said, "Oh, you should run, you should run." And I'm like, "I'm too old. This is not the age to be running for city council." And it has concerned me for a long time that we tend to keep power for ourselves, rather than sharing it with others. And that means that new ideas are hard to get to get in, that we don't think beyond our own selves and our friends. And that we don't think about the people, the future residents of Santa Monica. And without having new people moving in, what's going to happen to our schools? When I first moved to Santa Monica, they were closing schools because there weren't enough kids in Santa Monica, to fill the schools. And now they just import kids from other communities from Los Angeles mostly on permits to fill up the school. DN: That sounds like a great idea, because I might be putting my kid in the Santa Monica school in two years. AA: A lot of people do it. And, and the fact is that we need to keep our population replenished, and not just be a bunch of what they they used to say about Santa Barbara, "Newlyweds and nearly deads." And Santa Monica needs to have new people coming in and we need to be taking leadership and passing on leadership to others. So I decided, some years ago to just really put my focus on helping and encouraging encouraging younger people to get involved, and helping them and supporting them, as they engaged with, with government. Telling people, " Being on a commission is a good thing." I often go to commission meetings to support people who have gotten appointed, help them figure out how to get appointed. It's interesting to me, I recently was telling somebody that I've known for 30 years that I was leaving, and she started to tear up. And she said, "you're my connection to power here in Santa Monica." And this is somebody who's a homeowner, a city employee, well educated, lived here over 30 years, who feels that she can't engage with the power structure in a city of under 100,000 people. That's ridiculous. And it's because I think people hoard power. And we see the same people serving on commissions for years and years and years, and the same chair of the Commission's. I can't tell you how many times people have said to me, “Well, you're on the city council, aren't you?" And I'm like, "No, I ran once. That's it." I'm very mindfully trying to turn leadership over to the younger generation. As one of my friends who's my age, said, "We skipped a generation in leadership development. There's there aren't that many leaders in their 50s." We're looking down to people now in their 30s and early 40s, and even 20s, and encouraging them to become leaders. So I am hoping that, that that will continue. And I'm, I will say, I am very, very confident in the people who I've been working with, through Forward and the League of Women Voters and, and other parts of my life,To have excellent leaders for the future. DN: The leadership structure at Forward at least seems pretty good. I've interacted with them a little bit, a lot on Twitter, but a little bit in real life. I don't think Juan has a position there right now. I haven't looked at the roster recently. But you know, obviously, he and I have been working together and friends together for 15 years now. I guess. I met him when he was a grad student, and single. AA: Right. And here he is of parent elementary school and served a long time on the board of downtown Santa Monica and really bringing his expertise on transportation to making a huge difference in the transportation policy here in our city. DN: It's a great example. I met he and Sirinya, his wife, at the same time at a 2008 Measure R rally, the county transportation tax that was on the ballot. They were they were waving signs, "Bruins for Traffic Relief," I think they were called. I'm going to try to find that picture from when I get either one of them on the podcast. When you look at the structure that's there, a lot of commissions, a lot of sort of your official power structures: they do have the same people that have been there forever or reappointed or some some deck shuffling, so to speak. Someone's on this commission this year, and then they're on another commission two years out. As we're still only been publishing now for just over two months regularly, I haven't gone into commissions yet. I'm trying to move into doing more stuff on the school district. But do you look at the Commission's right now and see an effort in the city at that level to start to promote, you know, younger leaders, leaders in their 30s and maybe even younger 40s? AA: Well, that was happening for a while but with the current Council, they've really turned turned around on that. For example, Leonora Camnor was on the housing commission. She's one of the major housing leaders in Los Angeles County and actually statewide, and we were very lucky to have her on our, on our commission in our little city, and she was attacked like mad. She was replaced by somebody in their 70s So it's a different world. I do think the rent control board has been a great place for leadership development of young people. And so I'm hoping, that that and other places the Democratic Club, etc. People get a chance to run as a candidate, and get their name out and have people vote for him. And look, Carolyn Torosis, came from the rent board and is now on the council. So I think that's one of the places that we can look to for leadership development in the future. And just supporting people when they get into office as well. As you know, when you're the parent of young children, it's hard to be doing a huge amount of volunteer work on top of your parenting duties. DN: Yeah, you know, I saw an email that was basically like, "We don't know what Jesse Zwick's job is. He's a new council member and hasn't reported yet." I'm like, "I don't think Jesse has a job. I think he's a parent and a council member. I think council member is his job." Even though I know it's far from a full time job and how it's paid. I don't think he's doing anything else. But it was like, it was so weird for me to see that as an attack. Like, "We don't know what it is who's paying him? I'm like, AA: His spouse has a job, right? And what's wrong with the with a family where the female person in it is the primary? DN: If there's something wrong with it, I've got problems. AA: Hate to keep having to say this in 2023. DN: You know, it's not as big a deal on the West Coast as the East Coast. I used to tell people when I moved out here on the East Coast, I would get ribbed by mostly men, but women too, "Doesn't it bother you that your wife makes more money than you?" And I was always my response was always, "Oh, God, I hope she does. Could you imagine making less money than I do? That'd be terrible." And I get a comment like that. I don't know, maybe once a year at best out here, or at worst, I should say out here. But I used to get that almost every time. You know, we went out and she was an engineer and I was working in nonprofits. But I was always struck me as such a weird question, but I guess she's texting me now, "Where are you?"So are you ready for the fun questions? AA: I am ready for the fun questions. DN: As always, our unofficial rule on this is that you can ask me one of the five questions, which is a way to for people to get to know me better. As I'm not as a public figure as past Santa Monica Next editors were in Santa Monica. I mean, I live pretty close. But I don't live there. I spend a lot of time running in the city. But no one has stopped me. I'd be like, "Hey, are you the Santa Monica Next guy?" while I'm off on my long runs. So, and part of that is to make it so that these questions don't get too weird, because obviously, I don't want to ask to answer a super weird question either. So All right. Question One: You've been involved in Santa Monica politics for decades, as you pointed out a couple of times in the interview and telling things that happened in the 80s or earlier, is there a political memory or advocacy memory that you'd really like to share something that sticks out as sort of a fun and or important moment in local history? AA: Yes, thank you. One thing that I've been thinking about a lot lately, is because the Olympics are coming back in a few years, is the 1984 Olympics. And that was right when I moved into Santa Monica, I lived in Topanga for a couple of years before that. And I was working for the Campaign for Economic Democracy, which was Tom Hayden's organization. My job with them was the women's rights organizer or the reproductive rights organizer. And at that time, it was kind of a new thing to have Commissions on the Status of Women. And it was also a totally new thing for the Olympics to allow women to run the marathon. So, 1984 was the first time that women were allowed to run the marathon in the Olympics. So the Commission on the Status of...
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What's Next Episode 3 : Rick Cole
04/12/2023
What's Next Episode 3 : Rick Cole
For the third episode of the What's Next podcast, Damien Newton interviews Rick Cole, the former city manager for the City of Santa Monica. Cole has also served as City Manager in. handful of other Southern California Cities and is currently the Chief Deputy Controller, City of LA. He also served as Mayor of the City of Pasadena. If you enjoy this podcast and want to hear more Rick Cole (or more of me), I also interviewed him for a recent episode of SGV Connect at Streetsblog L.A. Check out that interview here. Next week, we'll be back with a podcast featuring Abby Arnold, a long-time Santa Monica advocate who may be most familiar to our younger readers as the co-chair of Santa Monica Forward and a member of the Next advisory board. Arnold is leaving town to be closer to her children after a lifetime in Santa Monica and we look forward to hearing her parting thoughts. Below the audio of the podcast is a lightly edited transcript. DN: So again, for anyone that's listening to this podcast that's interested, we did also do an interview earlier this month with Rick Cole at the SGV Connect podcast at Streetsblog LA. You can go back and listen to that, if you're interested. One of the things that we talked about in that podcast, as we were talking about your politics, it's pretty clear that you're a little bit left of center. How do you balance when you're sort of in that CEO, city manager position when you have a council that's doing something that you don't necessarily agree with, or pushing a policy on? And how do you sort of balance your own politics with sort of the city's politics that you're working for? And how is that different when you're a city manager versus a city's mayor? RC: I think it's an interesting question. I hope I can answer it in a way that isn't too inside baseball for people who haven't paid close attention to how local government works. I think among most city managers, there's a little bit of disrespect for the elected officials. And it's, I don't mean that in any personal sense. I just mean that if you're a city manager and come up in a typical way, you've spent 10,20, sometimes 30 years of schooling, experience, and job training; and then these amateurs get elected who are your bosses. There's this sense that, "I know how to run the city. And I have these people that don't." I remember when I first got a job as a city manager, the city manager of Culver City came up to me, long gone, of course, and said, "Well, now you, you will understand what it's like to care and feed five idiots." And I thought, "Do you know who you're talking to? I used to be one of those idiots." So, I have a tremendous respect for the role of elected officials, because they represent the people of the community who are ultimately who we serve. And I think their role is to be in charge. And I respect that, probably more than most city managers do. On the other hand, I think that the role of a manager is also to lead, and not just to manage. Too many city managers, for all kinds of reasons, manage not to get fired, manage to get through the day, manage to balance the budget, rather than leading and thinking about where the city needs to be in five or 10 or 20 years from now when none of us are in charge. But the decisions we make today will have consequences. So in that sense, I think it's the job of the manager to lead and when the city council says, "No, that's not exactly what we have in mind," then you stand down. There was tension, I think it had something to do with my departure, over the project there at 4th in Arizona. From the day that I arrived there, I made it clear that I thought that that was a poorly conceived project. That it was too big for the context. And that it wasn't the right mix of uses. And I continued to tell the council, "I know that a majority of you support it for a variety of reasons. And so we will continue to move forward with it. But I don't think it'll ever be built. And I think we're wasting our time continuing to push it up the court." Well, of course, I left and the project cratered. But in the end, I was right. But I had to take that balance, even though I firmly believe that that was not a good project for the city. And there were a couple of council members who shared that view. The majority did. And so we continued to push it forward through the process. And ultimately, as I predicted it, it fell apart from its own dead weight. DN: Was there ever a time where you were in a situation where for whatever reason, you really thought that a city council, and again, this doesn't have to be Santa Monica's, wasn't necessary really representing the people very well? They were pushing their own politics for whatever reason. And, again, you don't have to get into too many specifics. I'm not asking you to burn anybody. And if that comes up as a city manager, how do you balance that? RC: I think that comes up for every city manager. People have a wide range of motives, from personal aggrandizement to fiery idealism. Very few people don't have some mixture of, of a number of agendas going on. And ultimately, it is the people's decision about who to vote for not me. I've had some council members that I was uncomfortable with why they were pushing particular agendas. But they're elected officials, and you have to respect the role. I've had a lot of people try to analyze what goes on between my ears. And I'm always surprised, "Oh, Rick Cole thinks this, or Rick Cole must be doing that." And I think, "Boy, they don't know how busy I am. Because, because they think I have time to think up these very convoluted motives." And I think that's the same for most people. I think most people don't have deep dark motives that they're pursuing. They're just trying to get through the day, trying to get reelected in the case of many politicians, and trying to do a good job in the case of the vast majority of elected officials and, for that matter, city managers. So that's one thing, I think you develop a certain relativism in these roles, of accepting that the people have their own agendas, their own motives, their own mix of ideological and personal fixations, and you work with it. We live in a diverse society, democracy is not perfect, and you figure out a way to get through the day. At the point in which your ethics are at stake. It's your responsibility, either to blow the whistle or resign, or both. DN: I think you're different from a lot of people that get the city manager job that you have a public persona sort of outside of the city manager when not just as Mayor of Pasadena. Your Twitter handle is "urbanistcole" . It's not, you know, Samocitymanager or Venturacitymanager, or...I don't remember exactly what your title is in the comptroller's office, but like comptrollerexecutiveguy. If you have a reputation outside of outside of your sort of government roles,...if you're being seen as an urbanist, and you're with the City Council that's not doing you know, good urbanism, how does that impact you and impact your own brand? And how much of that own brand management has to factor in? This is also a question that a lot of people that do solutions or impact journalism have to think about also. So you know, not just, this isn't just a youth thing. It's more about just how how, advice maybe for people that have to do reputation management with a job that doesn't always match up with their public image or nonprofit image or activist image, or whatever. RC: Yeah, I guess in that sense, I'm probably more old fashioned, at least in vocabulary. I don't think so much about my image, my reputation, or my brand. I think about my record and my legacy. And I think it's my job to do the best job I can in every job I have and recognize, as I said, a moment ago, politics and democracy are messy. And that's okay. I started out as a journalist, and I was fascinated by how power plays out in institutions, which didn't necessarily always make for the most compelling stories, but I thought the most in depth stories. I tried to look at not just the personalities, but how systems shape outcomes. And for me, I decided that I needed to test these grand theories that I was writing about. And it turns out it's hard work. I've made mistakes. I have regrets. But overall, I think my north star has been not my reputation, not my brand, not my image. My north star has been how do you positively impact the lives of ordinary people in cities? Because that's where a majority of humanity now lives. And we live together particularly here in Southern California, in incredible diversity and getting that to work is not easy. I've thoroughly loved the challenge of trying to figure out how you can navigate that. I think at a certain point, your reputation and your brand and your image, you know, take care of themselves. There are people who think that I'm a wild eyed crazy maniac. There are people who think that I am much more sober, conservative and, and methodical than that. And I've had the privilege of being hired by people who saw what I could bring to the job, rather than hiring a name or an image. DN: Alright, so it's been a little over 10 minutes. This is usually when we switch tracks from "what I want to talk about" to "what you wanted to talk about." And you said that you wanted to talk about sort of the transportation opportunities and what's going on in Santa Monica. You know, Santa Monica next was actually originally founded by Streetsblog, just to sort of try and be a mini-Streetsblog. And because there was so much fun, progressive transportation things going on. Turns out, it was hard to do a daily story in a city that's eight square miles. So it started to venture into housing and other topics as well. But I have always found Santa Monica to be sort of an exciting city to talk about transportation, because even people and leaders that are much more conservative than me and other issues seem to be on board with the general ideas of reducing greenhouse gas emissions through progressive transportation. Is that statement I think you would agree with? RC: Well, I came to Santa Monica at just an ideal time on that score. After decades of hoping to be connected by rail to the rest of Los Angeles, The Expo Line was just about to open. The city council had adopted as one of their five priorities (when I prodded them to, to narrow it down from 20, top priorities) that we would be a new model of mobility. And so we jumped on that opportunity. Not only should people try the Expo Line, but that we will really focus on the first mile-last mile issue. How do people get there without putting a bunch of parking lots and parking structures next to the stations? So, of course, walking is preeminent...than biking, public transit, we ran the Big Blue Bus. And then of course, the scooter revolution happened a couple of years later, and we were right at the epicenter. We were literally the place where the first 12 scooters for rent in the world were dropped off on our streets. DN: Alright, can I ask quickly? Is it true? You found out that they were going to do it through LinkedIn? RC: And there's a truth to that. But that's not exactly what happened, Travis VanderZanden had this idea. And he came to our transportation folks, and he pitched the idea. And they said, "Oh, this sounds really interesting. Why don't you write us a little report? And we'll think about it." And of course, his reaction as a tech entrepreneur was, "Oh, that's not a good idea. Someone else is going to jump on this before I do." So then he reached out to two Mayor Winterer on LinkedIn and said, "Hey, I'm trying to do this thing." And Mayor Witter didn't check his LinkedIn. And so Travis said, "Well, I tried the Transportation Department, I tried the mayor. I'll just put these 12 things out on the street and see what happens." And then of course, all hell broke loose. DN: Oh, that is so much less interesting than the urban legend. That's a shame. I always remember seeing people like random conversations about scooters and they told the city by texting Rick Cole on LinkedIn. But it was Ted, not you. And they met with some city staff first. I'm sorry to interrupt. I couldn't help but mention the scooters. RC: Well, the scooters, I think were the transportation challenge on steroids, right? The challenge with the scooters (which have just been banned in Paris by a 90% vote of the populace) is that when they showed up in Santa Monica, we were completely unprepared. And so was the population. And Travis started running them in May, it might have been April or June. He caught the tourist wave. We have hundreds of 1000s of people who visit Santa Monica during the summer and every single one of them wanted to ride the scooter for the very first time. And it turns out that after people have gotten the hang of it, they're as responsible, or irresponsible, as car drivers or bicyclists or what have you. 99% of the people are, are pretty well behaved, and then 1% Act like crazies. The trouble is, the first time you write it, the ratio is reversed. 99% of the people act like crazies, until they get the hang of it. So we had two and three people with kids hanging on the handlebars and zooming down the street, and cutting in front of cars, and nearly running over pedestrians, and leaving them scattered on the sidewalk. To the credit of the city council, they said, "You know, we're going to tough this out. It's miserable. Our constituents are calling us every day screaming and yelling. But if we're going to be on a new model of mobility, we've got to see this experiment through." So we moved to impose regulation on them. And I knew that that classic 100-year-old Progressive Era, FCC, FDA, Public Utilities, Commission regulation was just not going to work. This was something that was changing in real time. It wasn't like you could give a seven year study before you release a drug. In seven days, the technology was changing. Instead of spending six months writing rules, we had a selection process. We selected four vendors, and then and then we told them, "Look, you have a license to operate in our city. And we will make the rules up as we go along. And as a part of this experiment, you will have to follow the rules. We will give you notice like Friday will tell you on Monday, this is going to change. And you need to be prepared. If we're going to be nimble on the government side, you need to be nimble in response." And I think it was a remarkable success in real time public policy. DN: Sorry, I got us off on scooters for a while. You wanted to talk about The Big blue bus, some of the opportunities presented by the airport, etc...I'm assuming you meant the opportunities the airport closing is going to create for the community. So why don't we start with the Big Blue Bus. BBB is a kind of a unique transit agency, in how it operates. Santa Monica is surrounded by LA, so the bus doesn't just serve Santa Monica; it provides access for people in Santa Monica to get to LA and vice versa. I live along one of the routes that goes towards UCLA. And I know people that ride the bus every day that never set foot in Santa Monica, they live and work in LA. So let's talk a little bit about the Big Blue Bus and some of the challenges and opportunities that having that kind of transit system has for a city. RC: I think the holy grail that we're still pursuing is a seamless, integrated multimodal approach. Rather than think, "Well, I have a car. So if I want to get from point A to point B and then to point C; I've got to get in my car, I gotta park it at point B. I'm going to park it at point C. I've got to get gas. I've got to insure it. I've got to take care of it. I've got to park it when I get back." And that's the end of the story. Right? Or if you don't have a car for whatever reason: you're environmentalist, you're too old, you're too young, you're disabled, you're too poor. Then, then you got to figure out "Oh my god, I gotta get to, to my doctor's appointment at Kaiser and it's four buses in three hours." And that's an unfortunate dichotomy. And I think that where we need to be going is, "Okay, we want to get from today we're gonna get from point A to point B and maybe change your mind and instead of going to point C, we're gonna go to point D. How do we integrate walking, biking, transit, autos, for all all the other possibilities that are out there?" How do we make it so that we put the person who is traveling in the proverbial driver's seat where they can choose the cheapest, the fastest, the healthiest, the most environmentally responsible? And they can mix and match, right? "I have time today so I'm going to ride the bus because I'll have less stress. I don't have time today, so I'm going to take my car. I don't want to park because it's really expensive there. So I'm going to take on demand transit. I want to go to UCLA or USC for the book fair this weekend. So I'm going to take Expo, and I'm going to get there by walking to the train station." That's what I think Santa Monica was trying to do in 8.3 Square Miles: figure out how to make that possible for people to have those kinds of choices. You walk into a coffee shop anywhere in Los Angeles, and there's 47 different ways of having coffee. And yet, when it comes to transportation, we have this binary. If you can't afford a car, you got to have a car. And if you can't afford a car, you can't drive a car, then you're screwed. We need to do a much better job of making biking safer, walking pleasant, transit faster, and have cars pay the actual cost that they inflict on society, so that we're all sharing that in an equitable way. DN: We're a little over but I feel like the airport's an important topic that that we could probably just do podcast after podcast about. Look at where we are now, I think we're, what, seven years away from being able to close it. RC: Five. DN: Five? Oh my gosh, that that pandemic really has changed the timing in my head. So we're only five years away. The city is starting its planning process for what to do afterwards, in sort of a more tactical way, as opposed to "let's just let's build a park." which is a great idea, I think. But they're starting to look at the costs of that. So where do you see what was? What should the city be doing? Where should it be going? What are some of the opportunities that you see there? And how can the city be doing what the city is doing now to make sure to take advantage of those opportunities? RC: So anyone who goes to New York City, and spends more than one day there, is going to be struck by, "Oh my god, what vision it took to put Central Park in the middle of this place, and have everything grew up around it, and have this extraordinary jewel, right in the center of it." And I think we need to think in those kinds of 50-year terms with the redevelopment of the Santa Monica Airport. It's over 200 acres, in the heart of one of the most consequential pieces of real estate on the planet, the affluent West Side center of media in the world. And here's this unsafe anachronism that is going to go away and leave a hole that's going to be filled by something. What does that something look like? And not only what goes in, in the airport itself, but what goes on around it? What's the transportation connection? It's right on the edge of Santa Monica, it borders on Los Angeles. So it's not going to be a Santa Monica asset, it's going to be a Los Angeles County Asset like Griffith Park. And while the neighbors immediately there should have some say in what happens; what really we need to do is think about the long run potential of this as an asset for Los Angeles County, for the c\City of LA for Santa Monica Culver City, etc. There really needs to be a joint powers authority. Santa Monica, because it owns the land, should be in the driver's seat. But it's going to need...
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What's Next Episode 1 : Kate Cagle
02/28/2023
What's Next Episode 1 : Kate Cagle
Welcome to the first episode of Santa Monica Next’s new podcast What’s Next hosted by Damien Newton. This week's episode features Spectrum News 1 anchor Kate Cagle, who is perhaps even better known to our readers and listeners in Santa Monica from her work at the Santa Monica Daily Press. Listen on and find out what Chase from Paw Patrol and April O'Neal have in common. A full transcript of the episode can be found below the podcast. Thanks to Kate for joining us and look for our next episode in two weeks. If you missed our first episode with Councilmember Jesse Zwick, you can find it . Damien Newton (DN): Welcome to the second episode of What's Next, the Santa Monica next podcast. Thank you for joining us today and we have a great guest: Kate Cagle. She is the anchor for Spectrum News1, and as many of you hopefully remember, a former reporter for the Santa Monica Daily Press. We're talking about policing. We're talking about homelessness. And in our five fun question segment towards the end, we get to find out what fictional reporter had the biggest impact on Kate's career. So without any further ado, let's get right into it. Here's my interview with Kate Cagle. DN: As I mentioned in the intro, I'm here with Kate Cagle, a renowned reporter formerly with the Santa Monica Daily Press now with Spec. News One where for a couple of years, she was really out on the street doing a lot of reporting at places like Echo Park, the Venice boardwalk, and a lot of places where news was breaking, involving policing, homelessness services, and outreach and all sorts of major stories. And now she's the anchor for Spectrum News, one or one of the anchors at Spectrum, News One, and we are very happy to have her with us today. So thank you for being here today. Kate Cagle (KG): We're now and wow, I laughed. Thank you. DN: For anyone listening for the first time we base this podcast format right now, actually, it said on the original Daily Show format. And we're gonna keep doing that for at least another month before we might tinker with it. And I mean, again, this is the pre John Stewart version of the Daily Show. So that format was: a topic that I want to talk about and a topic that Kate wants to talk about, And then five fun questions. Yay. Some of which were submitted by readers, some of which were, we came up with internally, and one of which is actually a leftover question from our last podcast with Jesse's Zwick. So anyway, so let's let's start talking about one of the issues that you covered a lot when you were out on the street, which obviously is been the sort of biggest one in LA County politics for the past several years, arguably even bigger than the Coronavirus and the government's response to Coronavirus , which is the issue of homelessness and people experiencing homelessness and what people are experiencing on the streets, what people that are housed are experiencing in their neighborhoods. When I look at this issue politically, and I see two sides, really that talk about different answers, and when it comes down to is what point of view. And I'm going to ask you to either correct me or agree with me what point of view you're coming with, are you looking at as people are discussing the issue? Are you coming at it from what is best for the people that are living in a community? Usually, they're already housed or have been here for a long time. And what is best for the people that are in the community that are unhoused, whether they've been living there for a long time, or they're transient and just passing through or something like that. And usually, what I've discovered is depending where your point of view to start with there is how people sort of view the issue. You've talked to way more people about this than I have both people experiencing homelessness, policymakers, people that are housing communities. Is do you sort of agree with that take? Or do you see sort of different divisions and how people view the issue? KC: I think I see a lot of unnecessary conflict, because at the end of the day, everyone I talked to wants the same thing. They want the homeless crisis address, like a humanitarian crisis, they want people to no longer be living on the street. I think that there's this false narrative that, you know, whether you're a house person or a business owner, or whether you're living in a tent, that you have different values that you're bringing to the equation, when at the end of the day, everyone just wants the system to work. And it's clearly not working for anyone. DN: When I was writing at Streetsblog, we did a series on the different types of housing and shelters and all of that, that are commonly used and built where we went, we went to the different different places one and you know, Ascensia in Glendale places like that, including the one down on Venice Boulevard. And we talked to the Santa Monica Community Housing Corporation, all those sorts of groups about affordable housing, bridge, housing, all of that. It seemed when we did it that with the exception of Venice, where there were other issues related to the pandemic and their ability to keep the area around the around the bridge housing center sort of safe and clean...with the exception of that most communities that had these sort of affordable housing or bridge housing programs didn't seem to really, again, I'm referring to the house community,didn't seem to care after they had been there for a couple years. In some cases, especially Glendale, there was like whole volunteer programs where the community was like pitching in to provide meals and stuff like that. And I'm wondering because you've obviously covered a lot of the conflict It has been happened in communities as new developments we're going to you. Is that something that you've been able to notice, too, that there's a lot of fear and concern in the beginning, but generally, again, Venice being the exception as time goes on, people get more comfortable with them. KC: Yeah, I mean, I definitely remember interviewing people in Hollywood around the bridge shelter that opened there. And there were a lot of folks in the neighborhood who really supported it opening and what they understood, the main issue was that shelter opened with a fraction of the number of beds needed to house the people who are already living on that block on the sidewalk. And I remember talking to a mom whose kid went to a nearby elementary school who said, they would welcome more bridge housing, if it meant that they could bring people inside and clear out the sidewalks. So I have the interviewed people and communities that welcome the shelter program. I think that what happened in with that shelter in Hollywood and with Venice was the collision of a lot of these projects coming online. Like I think that the sunset shelter open just a few months before the pandemic hit. And that just completely changed one the priorities of the city and of the gar city administration. And it also changed the guidelines around shuffling people and cleaning the streets. So all of a sudden, it was it was the CDC that was telling the city do not displace people during the pandemic, they didn't want populations mixing. So there was this city wide freeze on doing sweeps and cleanups. And I think that that fueled even more disappointment in Venice, because there had been promises specifically around that shelter that the neighbors would see results. So I think, like I said, just the timing was really unfortunate. I mean, the whole pandemic was unfortunate. And it really created more of a crisis because even the city's efforts and the promises that they were trying to make, they could no longer holds up because they were being told not to. DN: Now, I apologize for anyone listening to feels like we're not being Santa Monica enough; because I did want to talk about Inside Safe, which is a City of LA program. And the reason this is the one that's been on a lot of the news programs, not just yours, but the other ones and the mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass is out there promoting the program pretty heavily. So it's one that I think a lot of people are familiar with Gleam Davis, the mayor of Santa Monica does not show up every time the city is doing sort of homeless outreach. So we don't have as as easy a comparison that I think people are familiar with. But Inside Safe is is in short a program the city's doing right now to try and get people off the streets into temporary housing. It's gotten a lot of praise from people and communities because you can fizz that are already housed because you can see a definite impact in the areas where it's it's the program has been as far as there's no encampments there and things look cleaner. It's gotten sort of a mixed results from direct advocates for the homelessness and people that are living in these hotels, because they're getting moved around a lot. And a lot of cases, especially ones on the west side, Venice, specifically, you know, they're in hotels that are 15-20 miles away, which for the people that have jobs is really difficult. I just wanted to get your sort of feelings on how that's going and maybe what lessons other cities be they Culver City or Santa Monica or whoever might be able to get from what's going on in Los Angeles right now. KC: I think that there's been a major shift in the city and just speaking at City Hall. The sense of urgency that voters voters sent a clear message to city hall in November that this was THE issue to them. And Mayor Karen Bass certainly went in with a mandate to show results quickly. What I keep saying, and I don't know if this is PC, that this is the easy part. Throwing someone's tent away is an easy thing for the city to do. Renting motel rooms is something the city learned how to do during the pandemic through Project room key. And I think that they realize that bypassing having to sell a shelter to a community when there's already a hotel there that you can simply book up the hotel rooms and move folks inside. The city now knows how to do that. The hard part is permanent housing. The hard part is keeping people inside once we get there there. Everyone saw the report that the UCLA Luskin Institute did around Echo Park Lake. And, you know, only a handful of people who went into Project Roomkey actually ended up with permanent housing and the vast majority fell through the cracks of the system. And the county couldn't even tell UCLA where those people were anymore. So to try to snowball this effort quickly from what she's doing right now, which is housing a dozen people, their housing an encampment somewhere else. I mean, she's promised 17,000 People moved inside in the first year. So scaling up is going to be really difficult. And also, the problem with with a bridge housing under Mayor Garcetti was the backdoor just certainly wasn't there. Their goal had been that people would stay in a bridge housing for three months. I mean, we know people who have been in bridge housing for over a year. So without the affordable housing on the other side. You know, that's just where the log jam is going to be. And I say log jam, realizing that these are human beings, who... DN: It's an expression, people won't be offended, I don't think... KC: Well, I'm just saying, like, you know, the uncertainty surrounding the day to day life of living on the street is really, really difficult. And it's difficult when you're living on the street. It's difficult when you're in a hotel, and you don't know how long you're going to be in the hotel. It's difficult to get treatment, find jobs...all the things that we want to see. I think Angelenos want to see happen for these people. I thoroughly believe that people who live in LA are caring, compassionate people who see this as a humanitarian crisis. And they just they do want to see it done the right way, just the right way is a very hard way because it's just not how our system is set up. Like they're building a whole new system. DN: You wanted to talk a little bit more about the I think what most people if they're familiar with your work at Spec News 1, know that you've been reporting on the LAPD, the LA County Sheriff's and a lot of policing issues, ties in with Black Lives Matter and advocacy movements to reform the police and all sorts of stuff. For years, you were sort of our go to reporter for that type of coverage at Streetsblog. And our we have a reporter Sahra Suleiman, who does a lot of that work, too. So why don't you introduce the issue and tell us what's really exciting to you about that with where we are right now, obviously a different Sheriff than the one you covered for the most part, and an I'll prompt you with probing questions to keep the conversation moving. KC: That's great. And I just want to say I really admire Sahra and enjoy her work and read her work in her thoroughness is always amazing to me. And so that's great. You know, and I really got into talking about policing issues In 2019, with the lawsuit in East LA over the, you know, the banditos deputy gang, and you know, this crazy, it was just the craziest thing, we me and my news director at the time Scott Warren had ever read reading this complaint from they were, you know, it was coming from the deputies who said that they had been harassed beaten up, that there had been a brawl at an after work party, because they were refusing to join this group called the banditos. And so that was really the first story I did about it. And I remember walking down the hallway at Spectrum and running into Scott and he said, "stay on this story." So many more years later, here I am. And I would also add everything that I was covering around homelessness was also feeding into my curiosity about the criminal justice system and how it was working and how it wasn't working. Because I was doing ride alongs with LAPD. I remember riding around Pacific Division and the head telling me, he had noticed that every time they would sweep away and encampment and tell people, they couldn't stay there, it would just simply pop up in another place. And they didn't want to be involved with it at all, and that they were frustrated that there was no other part of the city that was tackling the homeless crisis and really be in an ability to be there as a 24/7 response. And I was just really fascinated by this notion that if someone commits a crime and does something wrong On the system can house them immediately no questions asked. We take them to jail. But if someone is in a desperate situation living on the street, trying to get them indoors into housing when it's not punishment, becomes this month years long, incredibly frustrating bureaucratic process where they need IDs and follow up and to be places at certain times. And it just seemed like we were really good at doing this one thing, and really bad at actually helping people. And like I said earlier, I mean, the solution that I think most Angelenos want, the humane solution is requiring building an entire system that has never existed before. DN: Now in your coverage, I'm going to focus try to focus a little more on the sheriff since they have jurisdiction and have been involved in Santa Monica, obviously. About a year ago, there was sort of some sort of energy built between Phil Brock, who's a council member and Sheriff Villanueva, obviously Sheriff ViIlanueva wave is not there anymore. So they've just been, obviously a presence inside the city, both in the politics and the law enforcing. But have you seen any sort of difference in how the sheriff's are approaching any issues, be it via homelessness or community policing or anything like that, and just a couple months since we've changed from Villanueva to Luna? KC: It's a completely different paradigm. I mean, the sheriff's department they are a paramilitary organization. So, change at the top is actually extremely powerful because everyone follows chain of command. So the difference between the personalities of Sheriff Alex Villanueva and Sheriff Robert Luna, they are vastly different. These are two men who have vastly different views of policing of the future of the department, the role that the department should play in contract cities or in the county in homelessness and all these different areas, it's going to be completely different. You can't predict anything about where the department is going to go now, specifically around homelessness. I haven't really heard the new sheriff speak very much about homelessness. DN: And Villanueva talked about it a lot. Like he definitely saw that whether it was he was seeing that as the issue the officers needed to address because it was the biggest issue or it was just his path to reelection, it was kind of hard to tell with him because he was in front of the cameras a lot more than than Sheriff Luna. But it was definitely more of a public focus thab it has been the past couple of months where the the focus really has shifted from policing to the Mayor's Office of Los Angeles. And a little bit the county supervisors too, but it's really been Karen Bass, it's been the person that I think most people have seen talking about the issue recently. KC: Well, Villanueva was definitely trying to tap into the frustration that he knew. And he was right. I mean, people are incredibly frustrated around the homelessness crisis, around the encampments. And they want to see improvement. And I think he thought that that would be a winning campaign strategy for him. And also a good look for the department to look like it was actually trying to tackle the crisis, and that he would be able to come in and kind of shame local leadership for not doing enough. But you know, I spoke to those deputies, and I interviewed them, and they would run into the same problem that every single official runs into, and that is the lack of housing, affordable housing. The same thing we talked about the frustration that ultimately Mayor bass is going to run into as well is just places to move people indoors. DN: I have sort of a goofy Alex Villanueva question that we can cut again, if you don't want to answer it. But are you surprised he doesn't have a gig at FoxNews yet, because we all assume that that's what he was doing was the last couple of months of his campaign, especially when he would go on and on about how woke everybody was, is that he was really juest angling for a Fox News job. Surprised? KC: I'm not really sure how that works. And I don't know how interested Fox News would be in having a pungent former Sheriff Alex Villanueva because remember, he is a Democrat. So I mean, maybe there's strength in that that he's willing to criticize the Democratic Party. He still gives his weekly Instagram Live. I think it's every Wednesday. And sometimes I pop in to see what he has to say. And last time I heard he was basically telling the audience that those who are calling him to run for office once again, will not be disappointed. So I think that he has a plan. DN: Well, that's just warms my heart to hear. Do you have any sort of closing thoughts on this? We went a little over on our first segment. So do you have any closing thoughts you want to talk about on or can we go into our fun segment? KC: No, I guess not. All right. DN: So the reason we were attracted to ask you to join us for this podcast wasn't just because of your work in spec news one, but also because you were a Santa Monica, Daily Press reporter before that. For those of you that don't know, the Santa Monica Daily Press is a newspaper in the city of Santa Monica that's available free at most print editions available free at most places, and you can go to smdp.com. That was supposed to be a joke. I assume that anyone listening to this podcast knows what the Daily Press is. Anyway, you worked there for years. Do you have a favorite...
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What's Next Episode 1 : Jesse Zwick
02/16/2023
What's Next Episode 1 : Jesse Zwick
Welcome to the first episode of Santa Monica Next’s new podcast What’s Next hosted by Damien Newton. And we’re doubly proud to introduce our first guest: Santa Monica Councilmember Jesse Zwick! A full transcript of the interview with Jesse can be found at . We’d like to give a special thank you to Jesse for being brave enough to be our first guest and all of you for giving us a listen.
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