August 22, 2025
Before the 2024 City Council election, SMCLC warned voters that democracy was on the ballot. We asked whether the candidates running for Council believed Santa Monicans and their elected representatives should have a say in determining their own city’s zoning and development decisions. https://www.smclc.net/Election10-17-24.html
None of them thought that was important. Specifically, all four (Hall, Raskin, Snell, Zernitskaya) declined to voice support for an effort to restore local democracy by supporting a 2026 statewide initiative to wrest neighborhood zoning away from Sacramento and return it to local communities where those decisions had always been made.
Unfortunately, our worst fears are playing out.
This Council majority is now actively dismantling public participation so that residents (both property owners and renters), can have no input into major development decisions that will radically affect them.
They’re going headlong into a new uncharted world — one where residents can be severely impacted by high-density development without regard for open space, water, traffic, public safety, fire danger, or our well-being.
All in the service of building non-affordable housing — and building more of it than even the State is requiring.
Indeed, the main objective of this City Council is to lead without opposition and try to silence groups or individuals who disagree with their unsustainable approach to development on public and private land.
This Council is operating in multiple disturbing ways recently described by SMCLC adviser and architect Dan Jansenson for SMa.r.t. (Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow) https://smmirror.com/2025/08/sm-a-r-t-column-the-rhetoric-of-municipal-control/
Dan’s article is well worth a read, but here are some key points about Council’s agenda:
1 Silencing Neighborhood Associations by signaling an intent to intimidate and defund the six Santa Monica Neighborhood Associations. Council members have questioned these groups’ formation, tax status, whether City funding has ever been used for political purposes, and whether the annual audits that cleared these groups of any impropriety were correct.
2 Eliminating public participation on key development issues by ipso facto declaring an “emergency,” enabling normal rules of study and public input to be ignored, and allowing Council decisions to be made unilaterally.
3 Summarily dismissing the entire Downtown Santa Monica Board and installing hand-picked members of that supposedly nonpartisan, independent group — without prior notice to the Board or the public as to the reasons for this wholesale dismissal, and without enacting a reasonable public process for qualified applicants to apply.
4 Attacking the Mayor for using “racist” language because she spoke about the importance of “neighborhood character” and her concern — widely shared in the community — that rushed emergency ordinances relaxing building standards and rapidly accelerating the addition of thousands of non-affordable housing units, require more public debate and diverse voices.
These are the actions of an arrogant, ideological, and autocratic City Council — one that fears dissent. This abuse of power will continue until residents begin to exercise their power — to challenge actions that are not legal, and to remove Council members who are flagrantly anti-democratic.
Link: Local Press Coverage
