ACTION Apartment Association

3 City Owned Parking Lots Earmarked for Affordable Housing

03/10/2023 10:29 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

The three parcels at 1217 Euclid Street, 1211-1217 Fourteenth Street and 1146 Sixteenth Street -- are among 24 City owned parcels earmarked for 100 percent affordable housing development.

Former city staff oppose hiring more city staff

03/09/2023 11:26 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

“Creating two departments would require creating a new, expensive department director position, as well as an executive assistant to provide administrative support for the new director,” said the letter. “An additional position providing budget and operational support for the new director would also likely be necessary. At minimum, salaries and benefits for the new positions would cost the City several hundred thousand dollars per year.

The proposal would add more high-paid administrative staff at a time when the City has been unable to restore many key services that were reduced due to pandemic-related budget cuts. Notable examples of the City’s continuing challenges include severely reduced after-school programs for low-income youth and significantly reduced hours and services at public libraries.”

Electrification Roadmap Just a Start, City Officials Say

03/09/2023 9:06 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

The roadmap, said Nico Predock, sustainability analyst for the City, "is not an officially council-approved and adopted plan. The idea of this is not to say this is what is going to happen.

"The roadmap is meant to present possible policy options," Predock said. "There is still the need for community engagement" before the Council is presented with a plan for electrifying all existing buildings.

Biennial budget subject of special Saturday meeting of Council

03/08/2023 8:25 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

The City conducted a survey in May 2022 that captured community sentiment on the most important issues in Santa Monica once the COVID19 pandemic was over. Traffic was deemed the least urgent, followed by trash and litter in the Downtown and beach areas. Crime rated the second most urgent with homelessness far and away being the most urgent.

City Revenues to Take Five Years to Recover

03/08/2023 8:00 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Santa Monica's General Fund non-restricted reserves -- which were used to provide essential services during the pandemic and to settle a costly sexual abuse lawsuit -- lost 30 percent of their funds between June 30, 2019 and June 30, 2022, according to he report.

"Strong reserves are necessary to cushion the delivery of services from the impact of emergency expenditures, contingent liabilities, and economic uncertainty," the report states.

Council agrees on need to increase waste rates

03/07/2023 10:27 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

The City Council favored a slightly larger increase to solid waste rates that will preserve services to Santa Monica residents at their last meeting.

Transitioning to Electricity Could Cost Property Owners Up to $1 Billion

03/07/2023 8:41 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

The "Electrification Roadmap," which has not yet been approved, proposes a plan to reduce carbon emissions by requiring property owners to transition from gas to electric before they can rent, sell or make major renovations.

The plan would impact 70 percent of Santa Monica's 13,138 single and multi-family residential buildings, which "use natural gas as their primary fuel type."

Garbage rates could increase by about 11 percent

03/06/2023 12:00 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

“While everything costs more these days in 2023, we're still charging 2019 rates and your trash rates have remained exactly the same for the last few years,” Young said. “Ultimately, we had to dip into reserves to sustain our operation. At this rate RRR is projected to deplete its reserves and completely run out of money by next summer without an immediate rate increase.”

SMa.r.t. Column: The Urgency to Retrofit Earthquake-Deficient Buildings

03/06/2023 9:50 AM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

A large portion of the buildings identified as vulnerable–most of them two-story apartment buildings–must have their retrofits completed by 2025. The staff report suggests that the department will need to increase staffing to ensure that the city can enforce compliance with the law. Our own, informal, experience suggests that staffing is currently so short that new projects may be experiencing significant delays in obtaining permits. This is causing problems for applicants and staff members alike, and the ripple effects may be spreading into the earthquake-retrofit program. In a SMa.r.t. article from January, 2017 (https://tinyurl.com/3z8h7kxs) we discussed the enormous workload that would fall on city staff’s shoulders once the flood of seismic upgrade permits began. These predictions seem to be coming true.

Construction of Nearly 700 Housing Units Kicks Off

03/03/2023 2:59 PM | Margaret Fulton (Administrator)

Tishman Speyer broke ground Monday on a senior building that launches the initial phase of the "Santa Monica Collection" development, which in total will add 677 housing units at eight Downtown sites.