No Clothes

Members of a first-ever citizen advisory panel helping to examine pay and benefits at Santa Monica City Hall -- among the highest for cities in California -- are recommending a freeze of employee compensation or possibly of new hiring.

Advisory panel members advocated the wage freeze and possibly similar action on hiring of non-public safety personnel at a joint session with the City's Audit Subcommittee on November 1 devoted largely to an on-going review by outside auditors (Moss Adams) of wages and benefits of City employees.

“What we are advocating is that the City take decisive action,” Dominic Gomez, a member of the seven-member advisory Compensation Study Advisory Committee, told the Lookout on Monday.

SF landlords’ attempts to pass some charges on to tenants face opposition

12/13/2017 8:01 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

In San Francisco, like many other cities, when the various costs of running an apartment building outpace the annual allowable rent increases set by the city’s Rent Board, landlords can request to pass on a portion of those expenses to their tenants.

But in recent years, a pattern involving these so-called pass-through expenses has emerged that’s causing alarm among tenants-rights organizations. Landlords, particularly large property management companies, increasingly are passing on the costs of their debt service — payments on the loan taken out to buy the building — and property taxes to tenants.

That could soon change. Tenants-rights groups, including the Housing Rights Committee of San Francisco, the Tenderloin Housing Clinic, the San Francisco Tenants Union and Legal Assistance to the Elderly, have secured a commitment from Supervisor Sandra Lee Fewer to sponsor legislation to eliminate debt-service and property tax pass-throughs.

Santa Monica Joins Los Angeles Community Choice Energy

12/12/2017 10:53 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

December 8, 2017 -- The City Council on Tuesday voted to join Los Angeles Community Choice Energy (LACCE), a move City officials say will shift all Santa Monica electricity customers to competitive electricity and help boost similar efforts in the region.

The new agency allows cities to purchase electricity in the wholesale power market and sell it to their residents and businesses, according to LACCE.

The agency employs a strategy known as community choice aggregation to provide energy sourced from up to 100 percent renewable sources, compared to less than 30 percent of for Southern California Edison, the City's existing utility.

AND

http://smdp.com/santa-monica-promises-to-be-a-leader-in-new-regional-energy-partnership/163565

How WeHo’s Decade-Old Green Building Codes Compare to Santa Monica

12/12/2017 10:37 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

It’s important to ask the question before WeHo loses too much ground – ground that cities like Santa Monica are quickly occupying.

What’s Happening In Santa Monica

By 2020, Santa Monica plans to complete construction on a 50,000-square-foot city services building that will meet the requirements of the “Living Building Challenge” — the strictest green building standard in the world and a goal that has never before been reached in California.

City Council punts consideration of controversial preschool

12/06/2017 4:03 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Neighbors fighting plans for a 20-student preschool near Gandara Park scored their first political victory Tuesday, when four City Council members voted to postpone the debate over a Conditional Use Permit needed to open the school.

The dozens of residents who are fighting the City over the proposed school at 2953 Delaware Avenue still need to convince four out of seven councilmembers to deny the CUP. However, with only five elected leaders present for Tuesday’s meeting, they were facing an uphill battle. The debate is rescheduled for Jan. 23.