1 David Yakobson
From: Soloff, Michael <[email protected]>
Sent: Tuesday, January 27, 2026 3:21 PM
To: councilmtgitems; Caroline Torosis; Jesse Zwick; Ellis Raskin; Dan Hall; Barry Snell; Natalya Zernitskaya; Lana Negrete
Cc: [email protected]
Subject: 1.27.26 City Council Meeting Agenda (Items 10.1, 16.c, and 5.G
EXTERNAL
Dear Council Members:
I have a meeting tonight as a pro bono attorney with the tenants of a building in Echo Park whose landlord illegally tried to empty the building. I therefore may not make it back to your meeting in time to provide live public comment (and have learned that phone comment required sign up yesterday). Here are my comments.
Main Agenda
Item 10A
SMRR supports adoption of the proposed worker retention policy, but urges that you amend the draft to include the specific language proposed by UniteHere. SMRR understands that by making these amendments you will bring the new ordinance into conformity with the Los Angeles LAX ordinance and other local ordinances.
Workers at the hotels on City land, and at pier businesses, play a vital role in our tourist economy, and thereby contribute greatly to the sales tax and TOT tax that benefits all of us residing in Santa Monica. We owe it to those workers to protect them to the extent reasonably possible from losing their jobs merely because one lessee goes out of business and a new one enters. Assuring that those workers can be retained, even if there is a delay between the closing of one business and the opening of another, is a very reasonable step that the UniteHere language addresses. It is bad enough that Rusty’s was closed immediately after the workers had decided to unionize. It would add additional injury if this City allowed the delay in reopening at that location to cost these workers their jobs.
Item 16C
SMRR applauds the eƯort of Mayor Torosis and Council members Hall and Raskin in bringing forward an item focusing on aƯordability. SMRR was formed to preserve housing aƯordability, and has continued to fight to do so for more than 45 years. SMRR believes all of the items are worthy of study, although any final position will depend on the details of any proposals later brought forward.
SMRR believes that one critical aƯordability program needs to be added to the list; namely, the Council should direct exploration of expansion of cash payments to rent burdened renter households. The POD program targets senior households, but many other types of households—including families with children and even residents of some of our aƯordable housing projects, get no help from that program at Item 16-C
January 27, 2026
Item 16-C
January 27, 2026
2 present. Part of the reason for passing 2022 Measure GS was to allow expansion of assistance to new groups, and Council should direct exploration of doing so.
The prior direction by Council to stand up a right to council and flexible financial assistance program is critical to avoiding homelessness. But as this item highlights, that does not address ongoing aƯordability and the devastating health and educational consequences of being lower income and rent burdened. Direct cash payments do address this in a highly cost-eƯective manner, as the POD program and Section 8 prove. Please add this to your aƯordability study agenda.
Consent Calendar
Item 5.G
As a personal comment only, while I rarely agree with the people who provided written comment on this, I think that from a transparency perspective the City is going overboard by putting all of this into closed session (i.e., even withholding the rough outlines of what it is going to negotiate about regarding the public land). I also have concerns about EAH given that so little progress has been made on the 4th Street Garage project to date, and hope that the City will negotiate provisions with whomever to assure real and timely progress is made toward building the aƯordable housing to which the City committed in the housing element on its public land.
Item 16-C
January 27, 2026
Item 16-C
January 27, 2026
1 David Yakobson
From: Ann Hoover <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, January 26, 2026 3:20 PM
To: councilmtgitems; Caroline Torosis; Dan Hall; Ellis Raskin; Natalya Zernitskaya; Lana Negrete; Barry Snell; Jesse Zwick; Oliver Chi; Oscar Santiago; Susan Cline; Peter James Subject: January 27, 2026 City Council Meeting - Item 1. - General Public Input regarding certain Consent Calendar and 16. Items
EXTERNAL
Dear Mayor Torosis, City Manager Chi, and Councilmembers - Just a gentle comment on some Consent Calendar Items - are all of these contract extensions necessary?
An example is 4.C., the real-time schedule info. and performance metrics re bus arrival predictions.
This seems like an expensive but only nice-to-have rather than a need-to-have service? There is always at least one, sometimes more, Consent Calendar Items that are expensive and seem like nice-to-haves, not need-to-haves.
And a gentle comment on 16. Items generally - many of them involve requests for action that will involve future expenditures by the City. If we start adding up, from meeting to meeting, the
16. Items that get approved, they will total millions more in City expenses over time that likely will fall on the General Fund unless they can be addressed with grants. 16.C. - though a well-intentioned and super-worthy possible endeavor - is an excellent example of this.
So are we in a fiscal emergency or are we not? No matter how worthy a 16. Item may be, and the vast majority of them are, at some point I hope Council will get ultra-disciplined, press pause on coming up with new ways to spend that likely will tap the General Fund, and really review and edit existing General Fund programs and expenditures (for value/efficacy/impact) before we tack on anything new again.
Thank you!
Sincerely,
Ann Bowman
Resident, 29 years
Item 16-C
January 27, 2026
Item 16-C
January 27, 2026