April 15, 2014
Dear SMCLC supporter, Like most Santa Monica residents, we leave our city in the afternoons as infrequently as possible, knowing it can take up to a full hour just to reach the 405 freeway! Our city planners have totally failed us. By approving too much development, theyhave denied us a very basic freedom: mobility. And impossible as it seems, even more traffic is coming. Santa Monica has thirty-seven Development Agreements in the pipeline. (This piecemeal zoning allows for any project, of any size, to be built with the approval of just four City Council members!) No resident organization has the resources to fight each of these thirty-seven Development Agreements separately. And that's not to mention developer's plans to change the heights and densities of downtown, (20-story hotels, anyone?) as well as change zoning to allow greater densities in other areas of our city. The only way to slow our city's out-of-control development is to change the makeup of our out-of-control City Council. Currently, there are four out of seven Councilmembers who consistently vote for whatever massive development comes their way. We must flip at least one of those seats in the election this November in order to change the disastrous direction our city is headed. And we can. But we’ll need your help. The powerful political organization, Santa Monicans for Renters Rights, will hold its convention on August 3, 2014 at John Adams Middle School to determine which three candidates they will support for Council. Whether one agrees or disagrees with every SMRR position, there's no doubt that getting this group’s endorsement is important to winning local elections. We need SMRR to support three candidates who will put residents first in development issues. One of those candidates, whom we proudly support, will be Kevin McKeown. But who will be the other two? When SMRR votes on whom to endorse, we want you to be there and voting, too. That's why we're asking you to join SMRR and come to their convention on August 3rd. Whoever the SMRR membership endorses will be the three official SMRR candidates and could very well be our next Councilmembers. (Unless the membership only endorses two candidates, in which case the SMRR Steering Committee could, on its own, vote to endorse a third candidate.) In order to vote, you must join SMRR by April 30th. We'll be tracking candidate positions and, along with other residents' groups, suggest to our supporters the most effective way to target their votes. SMRR endorsed the Residocracy petition to stop the Hines development, so we know many of their members have also had enough of our city's hyper-development.You can join or renew your SMRR membership for 2014 online at http://www.smrr.org/donate/dues14RR.html Or you can send a check for $25/person to SMRR to: SMRR 2633 Lincoln Blvd. Ste 513 Santa Monica, CA 90405-4619 Please write "2014 member dues" in the memo line. And please let us know you joined so we can keep you in the loop on what to do at the convention. We will be doing everything we can to get one or two additional Council seats occupied by resident-friendly members. Please help us accomplish that. Thank you, Victor, Diana, Sherrill, Jeff
1 Comment
Taffy Patton
5/3/2014 02:09:20 am
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