June 2008 WHEW! Another election over…and now get ready for the next one! November is the General Election when we will get the chance, among other issues, to elect a new President of the United States. That item alone should get you out to the polls! Want more? How about the proposed initiative in the City of Santa Monica, coinciding with the City Council election, to place a 75,000 square foot per year limitation on commercial development. This initiative is known by its acronym, RIFT, Resident’s Initiative to Fight Traffic. Yes, Santa Monica has suffered from some bad planning in the past. Case in point is the Watergarden complex. Great design and green space, but its all commercial. There’s no residential component. Thus, the Watergarden has very negative traffic impacts since everyone who works there must drive, or take a bus, to the complex. All of that traffic is on Santa Monica city streets. A nightmare for the local residents. In addition, traffic patterns have drastically changed. Twenty years ago, the morning commute traffic was all virtually West to East (and, of course, afternoon was East to West). Now, with the great economic development efforts of the City of Santa Monica to attract revenue producing (and for the most part, environmentally friendly) businesses paying off, the traffic trends have reversed. The housing supply has not increased significantly, for both affordable and market-rate. So, a short-sighted effort, in the RIFT initiative, has come about to exacerbate the problem. By limiting commercial development to 75,000 square feet a year, companies (locally, and companies seeking to relocate locally) will not look to Santa Monica to solve their growth issues. Mixed-Use developments that could create a large number of affordable housing units, would be nixed if they have over 75,000 square feet of commercial, or if their applications are “in-line” after the annual limit is reached. Imagine if a builder submitted an application on January 1st with 70,000 square feet of commercial, and YOU go in on January 2nd with plans for a 6,000 square foot office. YOU would have to reduce the size of your project or wait for the year to pass before you can apply again…and you’d better be there on January 1st at 8:00 AM! The financing for commercial building will dry up in Santa Monica. Banks won’t want to be “at risk” for the potential rejection and additional waiting time. Economic growth would slow to a trickle, and I don’t believe that the residents behind this initiative are willing to “pony-up” for the lost tax revenue and reduced City services that will result. The other Westside cities; Culver City, Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, and West Hollywood will gladly take all of that potential economic development revenue. If less traffic is truly the goal, get METRO to complete the EXPO line to Santa Monica, and begin the Wilshire Subway from Western to Santa Monica. Even if you never intend to take public transportation and want everyone else to use it so you can have more room on the streets, then you are FOR getting the METRO to fund the Westside projects. This is not a slam-dunk approval process. We are in a CROSS-COUNTY BATTLE for the funding on METRO projects. The San Gabriel Valley WANTS the Gold Line extension to the County Line in Claremont. The San Gabriel Valley residents and Supervisor are united in this stance. Westside residents have not taken their opportunity to stand up and demand that the Westside (the ONLY area of the County not served by rail) finally get their fair share of the long-range transportation funding. Our Supervisor is still tepid on the ideas. He seems to favor busways, like the Orange Line in THE VALLEY. You should have received our Call-for-Action on the METRO funding. If you didn’t, it could be; 1) BHGLAAR does not have an e-mail address on record for you, or 2) you have changed e-mail addresses and did not notify BHGLAAR, or 3) it could be in your Spam (or Junk) folder since it was from a different BHGLAAR address. Of the 5,400 members of BHGLAAR, we only have approximately 3,500 GOOD e-mail addresses. It’s still not too late to get your comments into METRO. The Board of Directors will be voting on the projects in late June. Our second Call-for-Action was on the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance (“BMO”…note from James: “I really hate acronyms”) in the City of Los Angeles. The position from BHGLAAR originated from member requests to the Public Policy Committee, published in the BHGLAAR Newsletter, and supported by the Board of Directors, in 2007. The position was updated when the economic analysis information became available, supporting the contention that REALTORS® presented, the loss of potential land use would reduce property value, and thus, reduce the tax revenue to the City. The response was tremendous! In order to TAKE ACTION to send e-mail letters to all 15 Councilmembers, it is a 2-Click process. Click! Click! And, you’re done. You’ll start seeing the Councilmember “acknowledgements” of your comments start rolling in. The more members respond, the more note the Councilmembers take of our action. The City Council voted 12-0 to approve the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance. This ordinance applies to all but the Hillside and Coastal areas. They really can’t do much on the Coastal areas with the Coastal Commission “over” them, so they directed Staff to come back with a HILLSIDE BASELINE MANSIONIZATION ORDINANCE (no surprise, this was always their intent). There will be some things to shake-out in the implementation of the BMO. Planning Department gets the ordinance passed; Building & Safety (“B&S)” implements the ordinance. How are the B&S personnel, especially INSPECTORS, going to be trained in FAR calculations? Does every existing home built to Floor Area Ratios in excess of the proposed BMO, become “EXISTING NON-CONFORMING” with regard to insurance, title, mortgage lending, and land use? And, most important of all, how will affect our members at BHGLAAR? I’m trying to get answers for some of these questions from the inner-halls of City Hall. For how it will affect our members, I look to YOU the members for your experiences. There are probably (at least) 3 answers to that; 1 – MY BUYERS AND SELLERS THINK IT IS WONDERFUL, or, 2 – MY BUYERS AND SELLERS HATE IT, or, 3 – MY BUYERS AND SELLERS COULDN’T CARE LESS. The Public Policy Meeting is the 4th Wednesday of the month. Next one is on June 25th. We welcome and encourage your involvement in the direction of BHGLAAR’s Public Policy program. James W. Litz Government Affairs Director