What Say You: Trees of Santa Monica

Cities, like families, continue discussions over generations in ways that are unique to each generation and time. One major such discussion in Santa Monica today is about our City trees. Trees help create the iconic image of our city. Trees provide shade and beauty. Trees protect our environment.

We’re talking about them again, in a formal way, because the downtown Ficus trees, now more than 40 years old, were tagged for removal and replacement as part of a 2007 plan. The 2nd and 4th St. Ficus trees were planted in the 1960’s under the advocacy of Jacqueline Girion, Head of the City Beautification Committee, and Clo Hoover, a respected Mayor and a highly successful businesswoman.

Continuing the tradition of protecting our City trees, a group of Santa Monica residents got together and started TreeSavers, an ad hoc committee originally formed to oppose the demolition of the 2nd and 4th St. Ficus trees. In fact, Jerry Rubin, one of the co-founders of TreeSavers, chained himself to a Ficus to prevent it being taken down. That was part of a demonstration that mobilized public opinion.

Eventually TreeSavers petitioned the Council to form a City Tree Commission. This being Santa Monica, the Council took the challenge to heart and at the April 7, 2009 City Council meeting they voted that the first City Urban Forest Task Force be formed to provide oversight and public participation in decision making about Santa Monica’s Urban Forest.

The Staff recommended “that City Council establish an urban forest master plan task force to advise staff on the development of a long-range urban forest master plan, review specific urban forest issues related to the master plan, and serve in an advisory capacity to City Council.” Councilmember Bloom moved the staff report recommendation. There was a brief discussion about membership criteria, followed by a unanimous aye vote of the Council Members present. TreeSavers supports the Task Force idea. They see it as ‘a good start’ on the way to a formal Tree Commission.

The Task Force will formulate its goals. Optimally they will include: giving the public a voice; protecting and enhancing our existing urban forest; helping to craft a master plan that creates beautiful urban design; designing each street for environmental sustainability; and making sure that, while we’re on our way to a new urban forest master plan, we make good decisions today, decisions that reflect our values.

For the Task Force to do the job well it will need, among its members and on its staff, people who have an appreciation of trees, a knowledge of water and air quality and the role of trees in protecting and cleaning the environment, and a knowledge of a sustainable plant palette. If that weren’t enough, our City Urban Forest is a major contributor to the quality of urban design in the City. Oh, and trees provide shade and are beautiful.

Hometown Hero: Louise Jaffe

“Every parent is willing to throw themselves in front of a truck for their child. So what do we do to make every family able to translate their love for their child into action that allows and supports the potential of achievement for their child.”
Louise Jaffe, Chair of the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees.

The way Louise tells it, she was born in the middle of the 1950’s and in the middle of mainstream USA. She mostly grew up in Salisbury, Maryland, a rural community on the Eastern Shore. Her dad was an optometrist and her mom a homemaker, raising Louise and her brother, and helping out with the optometry office.

But mainstream USA was changing and Louise, a good student, instead of senior year in high school went to the local college. She wrote a paper that she thought was original and received her first ‘C’. She wrote her next paper in a traditional style and got an ‘A.’ She went long enough to learn that the idea of being in a classroom for four years and being graded on her work was not for her and transferred to Antioch College. Louise describes Antioch “as a whole new way to be in the world.” “Amazing” professors who didn’t try to “manage” people, just to “welcome” them.

She turned away from a human-centric course of study, wanting to focus on things outside herself. Her degree in Biology took her to the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, GA. Louise discovered she was ‘good enough at science but not good enough to have sparks of insight’ and she wanted that feeling about her work.

Not knowing what should come next, she accepted an opportunity from her uncle, the film director Herbert Ross, who was working on “The 7% Solution.” She describes herself as ‘lucky enough’ to work on films until her last film job, “Howard the Duck.” It was 1985 and she married her husband, Richard Casey, (called Casey) just 2 days after the film wrapped.

By 1986 they were living in Santa Monica and their daughter, Maggie, was born. “Everything changed in a moment. Casey and I were walking Maggie in a stroller and crossing Lincoln Blvd. Without thinking, I stepped out into the street to create a protective zone around the baby. From then on, I couldn’t look at any person without thinking ‘that’s someone’s baby.’”

Luck again intervened and Louise got the chance to work, part time, on the Simpson’s as script supervisor and she’s been working on the Simpson’s continually since 1986. She and Casey had a second daughter, Nora, who was born in 1989.

Louise turned her focus to their education. Louise credits Mary Hartzell, Director of First Presbyterian Nursery School and Julie DiChiro, the principal at Will Rogers, as her teachers. “Julia was a person who didn’t say no. She made each idea better. It was a big lesson to me.”

Louise followed her children from Will Rogers to John Adams and to SAMOHI. She was the PTA president at Will Rogers and at SAMOHI; a founding member of the Community of Excellent Public Schools; and a past PTA Council president. “It has all been a remarkable learning experience and I learned as much as I gave.”

Louise describes the teachers and the principal at Will Rogers as ‘inspired.’ Yet she could see that, in the same school environment, one group of children was doing much better than the other. “I began to realize that learning had to begin at birth and to be a responsibility of the family and the community.”

Right about that time she read the City Open Space Plan and learned about the concept of ‘City As Park.” Louise applied the same framework to education and developed the concept of Santa Monica as a Lifelong Learning City. http:www.smllc.org

“Education is essential. Everyone needs access. All children flourish.”

“My daughters are in college now. I will be at UCLA this coming fall studying for a doctorate in Educational Leadership. I work hard. I try to be a nice person. But I recognize that I’ve been lucky in my marriage, my children, my work, and my city. I’m thrilled and I’m grateful.”

What Say You: Green Streets

Ocean Park Boulevard is proposed to be the City’s newest ‘green street’. The plan for a first phase, from Lincoln Boulevard to Neilson Way, includes bike lanes, street trees, landscape medians and is designed so that it will capture the urban runoff from the Boulevard and from the surrounding 55 acres which drain into its catchment basin.

In Southern California water quality and water quantity are inseparable. Our metropolitan area discharges storm water to the ocean in an amount of water equaling half of the water we pay to import. Storm water, known as urban run off, makes it way off our sidewalks and streets, into the storm sewers and through them out to the ocean, having picked up along the way the pollutants and bacteria that make the Bay and humans sick. Urban runoff, if allowed to infiltrate through the soil to our underground aquifer will be cleaned of pollutants and bacteria in the infiltration process and will reduce our dependence on imported water and help us to better cope with California’s drought cycles.

Combine our citywide support for cleaning the Bay with our love of cycling and walking, add a strong plant palette with lots of canopy trees for air quality benefits and to provide shade for walkers and bicyclists and you have the recipe for Green Streets.

The draft Santa Monica Land Use and Circulation Element (LUCE) states: “Streets are more than just pipes for getting as many cars as possible from point A to point B in the shortest amount of time. As the City’s largest publicly-owned land use and biggest component of the City’s open space, streets and sidewalks must serve multiple functions beyond moving cars.”

We ought to be able to get around our small city with ease and with pleasure, but that is not always so. Green streets will help. All our streets should provide pedestrian safety and a tree­­–lined streetscape, designed to infiltrate urban run off. The LUCE plan calls for a street hierarchy and plans a network of secondary streets which act as connectors between our neighborhoods and are designed for slower traffic than the arterial streets and safe cycling and walking. The Ocean Park Boulevard Streetscape Project will do the job.

As project architect, John Kaliski, says “Ocean Park Boulevard is one of the largest and earliest of the green streets in all of Southern California and we believe it will serve as a model for all the green streets we know are to come. The high level of community participation in the design was truly beneficial and involving the community should be part of the model for the design of all green streets.”

Originally a proposal from local resident and OPA (Ocean Park Association) member Bob Taylor, with the advocacy of the Ocean Park community, this concept now has citywide support. It has been reviewed and supported in community meetings, by the Council, the Planning Commission, and the Recreation and Parks Commission. It will go back to the Council, one more time, for final approval, and is planned for construction in 2010.

Hometown Hero: Ken Genser

“Being on the Council is a tremendous responsibility, but I feel blessed to be able to assume that responsibility. It ‘s the most amazing seat to be in to learn. I meet amazing people and have a great staff. This job has brought me tremendous personal growth in abilities and knowledge.” Ken Genser, Santa Monica Mayor and 6 term Council Member.

The first time Ken Genser went to a museum, his Aunt and Uncle took him to the Southwest Museum. His strongest memory of that visit is of the tunnel into the museum. He was impressed with the thickness of the tunnel walls. It was the beginning of a lifelong interest in walls, architecture and how things are built. Although he went on to work for design firms and worked with Bill Alexander, who designed one of the first cantilevered houses in the Hollywood Hills, it was his interest in buildings that propelled him into local politics.

He was a boy of 9 when he started having physical problems. His family lived in Ladera Heights. The area was subdivided but empty. Tumbleweeds blew out from the oil fields and across his neighborhood and jack rabbits were plentiful. It wasn’t until he was in High School that his doctors were able to put a name to his physical problems. With all his medical problems he had a hard time in high school. That didn’t stop him from schoolwork or from going on to Berkeley to study architecture and to be part of Berkeley political life. The philosophy of the architecture school was that social problems could be solved through good design. He learned theory but not the nuts and bolts of architecture and so he came back to LA to the newly founded Southern California Institute for Architecture (SciArc). This was when the school was on Nebraska in Santa Monica.

While at SciArc he got an opportunity to move into the Sea Castle apartments. It took him a week to decide to move into the then seedy area where Sea Castle was located. But with rent at $180 per month, including utilites, he moved in and lived there for 12 years. In an important way living at Sea Castle was the start of his political career. The Sea Castle owners defaulted on the mortgage and the tenants formed a Limited Equity Partnership. HUD wouldn’t deal with them but they got the attention of Anne Morgenthaler who wrote an article about the tenants. Ken’s photo was published in the Outlook story and that got him onto the Ocean Park Community Organization (OPCO) Housing Committee.

Ken remembers his first time speaking in front of the Planning Commission was to support the R2R zoning ordinance. “It was a real stretch for me to speak in public that time and for many years after that.”

By 1983 he was appointed to the Planning Commission. The arthritis he’d had since he was 9 was still with him but didn’t stop him from working for American Youth Hostel Inc. and, more importantly for Santa Monica, running for Council in 1988. He has been a Council Member since that time. During the 2000 campaign he had to be rushed, by friends, to Cedar’s, but continued running the campaign from his hospital bed. He won but it was also the year he had to be on dialysis and eventually he had to have a kidney transplant.

He says his good friends get him through his medical problems and his work on the Council is very motivating. “I think I help to effect issues. I’m not the one with the big vision but I hope I bring a sense of what Santa Monica means and a dose of practicality to make sure things can be implemented. I know there are people who will disagree, but I really try to represent the people in our community.

What Say You: The Herb Katz Seat

City Council watchers are talking about the anticipated February 24th Council vote to fill Herb Katz’s seat. A five-time council member, Katz was well known for his support for education, his interest in city planning, his straight talking style and his openness. Discussion and disagreement and agreement over criteria to select his replacement are ongoing. Criteria being proposed include: appointing someone who shares Katz’s values, his style, and his opinions; holding a special election as that would be more in the democratic spirit; using the appointment to repair the gender and geographical imbalances of the existing Council.

At their January 27 meeting the Council called for any and all interested persons to submit an application and a statement of interest to the City Clerk by 5:30 on February 17. The City Charter requires that the vacancy be filled. The vote is scheduled for the February 24 Council meeting. Failing to get four votes for any one of the applicants, the City is required to hold a special election.

Maybe an amazing candidate will emerge from the application process, uniting the Council Members in an enthusiastic, unanimous endorsement. Perhaps a neutral candidate, acceptable to all and publicly committing not to use an appointment as an opportunity to run in the 2008 election, will emerge. It is more likely that the choice will be among the four top contenders. In alphabetical order they are: Gleam Davis, Patricia Hoffman, Terry O’Day and Ted Winterer. Each has strong support in the community.

All four have run for office previously. Ted Winterer in 2008, Terry O’Day and Gleam Davis in 2006, and, Patricia Hoffman in 2004. All were next in order, after the winners, in numbers of votes cast. All four are very active community members. Winterer is the President of OPA (Ocean Park Association), a Recreation and Parks Commissioner, a supporter of Proposition T. O’Day is a Planning Commissioner, a well known environmental advocate and an opponent of Proposition T (which was on the November 2008 ballot and was defeated). Davis and Hoffman are the current Co-Chairs of SMRR (Santa Monicans for Renter’s Rights). Davis is also the co-chair of the BB Committee and a Planning Commissioner. Hoffman was the President of the Board of Education and has been a long­time advocate for affordable housing and for public health.

Some are saying that the choice will be either Davis or Hoffman as they are SMRR members. Four of the sitting Council Members, Ken Genser, Pam O’Connor, Kevin McKeown and Richard Bloom are SMRR members. Bob Holbrook and Bobby Shriver are not. Herb Katz was not.

As important as all the defined criteria are, also important will be something that only the Council Members can know. They have to consider the dynamic of the Council and pick the person they think will be a beneficial addition to that dynamic.

Herb Katz can’t be replaced. But we can and should honor his memory by seating a Council Member who loves our City as he did and who will be, as he was, dedicated to serving the people of the City and a constant presence in its public life.

Bittersweet History

Jail in Baker County Georgia consisted of a black metal cage, 20x20x8, divided into four equal sections and placed within a square, concrete block building with openings for windows, but no windows. It was the usual Georgia summer, hot and thick with bugs, especially June bugs.

Bittersweet history. Amendment XV to the US Constitution (1870) “The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” The Voting Rights Act (1965). No voting qualification or prerequisite to voting, or standard, practice, or procedure shall be imposed or applied by any State or political subdivision to deny or abridge the right of any citizen of the United States to vote on account of race or color.” Across the South these laws were ignored.

In the summer of 1965, I was one of a handful of SNCC (Student NonViolent Coordinating Committee) workers in Baker County GA knocking on doors, going to church meetings, teaching people how to read and talking to people about why it was worth it to register to vote. It wasn’t that people didn’t want to vote. It was that they weren’t allowed to register and, if they insisted, what they got was trouble, sometimes terrible trouble. You see, Baker County had a sheriff named L. Warren Johnson. Sheriff Johnson used to boast about the number of people he’d killed.

A generous and kind, black farming family were my hosts. As the first white civil rights worker in the county, I was news. One morning I overheard the youngest child in the family talking to his grandmother, excitedly telling her that I’d made my own bed. I gave a silent thank you to the summer camp where, along with fun stuff – swimming, canoeing, and campfire building, we’d been taught how to make hospital corners for a neatly made bed.

The day we went to jail started pretty much the same as the others. Most of the family went out to the fields at dawn to farm. Someone always stayed in the house with me, as protecting a guest was both a political act and a moral commitment. I was waiting and worrying about this day. Some civil rights workers and about 14 local people were on our way to the Courthouse to try to register to vote. We knew we were on our way to jail.

Today there are 1073 registered African-American voters in Baker County. On November 4th, 1674 people voted in Baker County. Obama won in Baker County.

What Say You: Voting Day

November 4 2008: USA. News reports coming from every state confirm long lines of peaceful and patient voters. As I write this, we don’t know the results. As you read this, we will. You can bet the world is watching. They want to know who our next president will be as much as we do. The first winner of this day will be democracy herself and that win comes from our turning out to vote in impressive numbers.

Dateline: Santa Monica. Our own Santa Monica elections are down ballot. At the Santa Monica Shores, just as at polling places around the country, neighbors and friends greeted each other. Poll workers remembered many voters from previous elections. There was a young woman who was voting for the first time. She was excited and wanted to make sure she marked her ballot correctly. She wanted her vote to count.

Prop T is definitely down ballot. And, no, the world is not watching. But it is important to Santa Monica. Now the proponents said a vote for T was a vote against traffic and the opponents said a vote for T was a vote against schools and housing. After reading the arguments, it seemed clear to me that Prop T didn’t solve our traffic problems and didn’t hurt our school children or our renters. So what gives?

Here’s where it gets interesting. We’re a small town of 80,000 some people. Our population grows everyday because of the people who come here to work, to play, to shop, to eat. On hot summer Sundays we can have as many as 500,000 people at the beach. So, yes, traffic is a huge problem. And that, I think, is why Prop T got on the ballot and, if it wins, why it won.

We can’t make traffic congestion go away by arbitrarily slowing development. But there are ways to make big decreases in traffic problems. Our elected and appointed officials and City staff and our wonderfully active and involved citizens need to work together to implement smart and fun and easy ways to get around town. It's possible. We know how to do it. Let’s do it. Let’s show that democracy works down ballot and up ballot.

I hope Senator Obama becomes President-elect Obama with a double-digit win and I hope that, by next summer, those 500,000 people at the beach will have great things to say about getting around Santa Monica as well as having a great day at the beach.