(Photo from Santa Monica Press Release.)

Santa Monica is looking for support from the Venice Neighborhood Council and Venetians to sign a petition for Santa Monica’s revitalization of the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium.

Santa Monica wants to make the auditorium into a Performing Arts/Cultural District but adding a dual purpose, two-surface ice arena and soccer field on top of the Civic Auditorium.

Santa Monica sent an “interest in supporting” letter to members of the Venice Neighborhood Council with a petition.

Ivan Spiegel, who is Parliamentarian for the Venice Neighborhood Council, was recipient of the request. His personal response, as a Venetian, was a flat “No” with reasons.

By Ivan Spiegel

I received your email and petition because I am on the Board mailing list for the Venice Neighborhood Council. I am responding as an individual and the opinions expressed here do not in any way reflect the thinking of the VNC Board or any of its members.

First of all I applaud your efforts to bring recreational venues to your community. I actually coached and refereed youth soccer in Santa Monica twenty years ago when my son was that age and your sports programs were top-notch.

While I know that you are not personally responsible for what follows, I feel that when you ask for support from the Venice community for this project there are some things about Santa Monica that you must be made aware of…

Santa Monica has not been a very good neighbor. In fact, your city’s proprietorial behavior has been downright atrocious. In most of our dealings with your city government we have only been told about what is best for Santa Monica. To wit…

For years we have been petitioning your city to change the flight patterns from Santa Monica airport. Planes take off and turn over Venice. Santa Monica gets the revenues and Venice gets the noise, pollution, and crashes. All efforts to modify this have failed.

Santa Monica has been phasing out its homeless services and pushing these unfortunate individuals out over your borders and into our community. As an example, there used to be a pickup spot to the Winter Shelter in Santa Monica but it has been discontinued. This has resulted in a disproportionate number of individuals having to come into Venice to receive basic services. If you want further proof, just read the signs about no parking of over-size vehicles (a euphemism for people whose only home is their car) that have been posted on every street along your borders. Where do you think they’re going to go?

The proprietary behavior even extends to little things like the use of Santa Monica’s dog parks and libraries. Your dog parks can only be used by Santa Monica residents. There is now a charge for the use of Santa Monica libraries by non-residents – $25 per year for a library card. No other library that I know of in LA County charges for the “privilege” of reading. You even have to show proof-of-residence to drop off electronic waste within your borders.

And then there’s the Expo Line that all west siders have waited decades for. Santa Monica lobbied hard to get the Expo line to terminate in downtown Santa Monica. This will be a windfall for Santa Monica businesses and residents. You will be able to drive to the train stations, get out of your car, and ride all over the county. Except, now that it’s almost ready to open we find out that there is not going to be any parking in Santa Monica (except for a few spaces by Santa Monica College). The light rail is supposed to be for everyone, not just Santa Monicans. There is no way that this is just an oversight. Your city doesn’t want more traffic downtown so the rest of us are just screwed.

As I said above, I think you’re trying to do a good thing and none of this is directly your fault, but before I can support it, I’d like to know what guarantees we can have that non-Santa Monica residents will have access to the facilities and not be charged extra for using them. And how much will we have to pay to park? Wait, I can drive from Venice to Culver City, park my car for free, and take the Expo Line to the Civic Center.

In short, to take a page from your City’s historically non-neighborly behavior, What’s In It For Us?

Ivan Spiegel
40-year Venice resident