City Preps Residents to Defend Beach Parking Zones

By Jorge Casuso

On the surface, it seemed just another meeting of city staff and their constituents.

But with seven Ocean Park preferential parking zones on the line - all of them more than 10 years old -, Saturday's meeting at the Ken Edwards Center was anything but routine.

Instead of just providing information and listening to concerns, planning department staff helped coach and organize some three dozen residents for a crucial Coastal Commission meeting Tuesday morning.

After a year's delay, the commission finally will decide the fate of 936 preferential parking spaces south of Pico Boulevard and east of Lincoln Boulevard that were created by the city without commission approval between 1983 and 1989. The commission discovered the spaces in 1998, while considering the Edgemar Development project on Main Street.

"Don't be exclusionary," Planning Director Suzanne Frick advised the residents. "What is important is to put a face on this issue. We don't want to alienate this commission."

Among the key points city staff encouraged residents to make are the dearth of street parking, the availability of parking in beach lots and the make up of the community (it is not just rich homeowners).

Residents who spoke at Saturday's meeting said they feared that if preferential parking is revoked they wouldn't be able to move their cars or entertain guests, especially on weekends, because there will often be nowhere to park near their homes.

"I can't leave during the day, but there are empty spaces on the beach," said one resident who lives in a zone near Main Street with no daytime restrictions. "As usual, the residents are going to be caught in the middle of this squabble."

While there are 2,400 spaces in Ocean Park's two beach lots, it costs $7 to park ($6 during the winter.) By comparison, unrestricted street parking is free.

Frick, however, warned against bringing up the underused lot, saying that lowering the rates - which already are cheaper than the rates at Venice Beach and Will Rogers State Park - is not on the table.

She did encourage residents who blamed the parking woes not on beach goers, but on employees and customers of Main Street businesses, to speak out on Tuesday.

"It's a major impact," said Roger Genser, a 22-year resident of Ocean Park who helped organize the first Ocean Park zone in 1983. "It was a reaction against Main Street. It had nothing to do with beach parking."

Tuesday's decision will center on whether Santa Monica's zones restrict access to the beach, which the Coastal Commission was created in 1976 to protect.

Commission staff has recommended that the seven zones be retained - with the caveat that the city must reapply for the permits in three years. The city opposes that condition, saying it would be too costly, inhibit long-range planning and leave residents in limbo. Instead city staff is proposing to conduct a parking monitoring program and file a report within five years.

Commission staff also is requiring the city to create 154 spaces to help replenish those taken up by preferential parking. Of these, 65 already have been created. The city also must keep the Tide and Pier beach shuttles running during the summer months.

While Coastal Commission staff seems sympathetic to the plight of beach area residents, it is impossible to predict what the commission will do, Frick said. One warning sign was a complaint by a commissioner who visited the beach to watch the sunset and found no place to park.

"We've been discussing this with the staff for a year and a half," Frick said. "I think this really boils down to philosophical issues with the commission."

Although the city has been negotiating with commission staff, it also has made it clear that it is prepared to file a lawsuit if the commission revokes the zones.

"We have a difference of legal opinion as to whether the Coastal Commission even has authority," Frick said. "We would prefer to go through the process and have a positive outcome."

Since the Coastal Act was passed in 1976, the Coastal Commission has required cities to apply for permits for the special parking zones.

Historically, the Coastal Commission has granted permission for preferential parking zones in coastal communities, often imposing strict conditions to ensure plenty of public parking and beach access.

Since 1982 the commission has approved three applications from Hermosa Beach, Santa Cruz and Capitola. The commission, however, has denied preferential parking permits for Santa Monica's closest neighbors - Venice to the south and Pacific Palisades to the north.

In 1998 approximately 7.5 million visitors flocked to Santa Monica beaches. Over the past 28 years beach attendance has grown by 20 percent.

City Manager Susan McCarthy, who did not attend the meeting, said it would be "unforgivable" if residents weren't prepared given what's at stake.

"The Coastal Commission has a relatively clear mission laid out in the law, and in this situation, it may not be a mission that is sympathetic," McCarthy said. "This would certainly be a profound change."

The Coastal Commission will meet Tuesday at 10 a.m. at the Four Points Sheraton, 530 Pico Blvd.

Staff writer Teresa Rochester contributed to this report.

No Mystery Here: The "RAND Report" Revealed

By Teresa Rochester

After denying its existence, school district officials have finally released a 2½-year-old "report" that rumors alleged gave a clear warning the district would face financial woes due to declining enrollment.

Pointing out that the data was not a report but only "working notes" for a presentation, Superintendent Neil Schmidt gave the 37 pages - which include numerous detailed graphs and charts -- to the Board of Education on Jan. 7.

"I know that some people in the community have commented about the 'RAND Study,'" Schmidt wrote in his weekly Friday Memo to board members earlier this month. "The only thing I can think of would be the working papers that Kevin generated as part of the work of the volunteer committee."

Compiled by RAND demographer Kevin McCarthy while he was working as a volunteer member of a school bond committee, the notes had become the center of growing controversy after Schmidt announced in October that the district could be facing a $4 to $5 million shortfall. The findings were eventually presented to the school board by the Proposition X Oversight Committee in the spring of 1998 but never released because they were considered notes.

The "report," which was obtained by The Lookout in mid-January, concludes that the "district seems certain to experience continued increases in enrollment until (the) turn of (the) century because of (an) increase in resident population." At the same time -- under the headline "What Can We Expect?" - McCarthy predicted that "population growth will abate if it hasn't already."

Still it is unclear whether McCarthy's analysis will put an end to allegations that the school board should have foreseen that enrollment would level off. McCarthy's analysis specifically predicted a decrease in enrollment in elementary school, an increase in middle schools by the year 2000 and little change at high schools until 2005. However, enrollment numbers for the 1999/2000 school year showed the decrease would occur not in elementary schools but in high schools.

Assistant Superintendent Art Cohen, who worked closely with the volunteer committee, said the "report" offered nothing new in terms of enrollment projections and that the data in McCarthy's research was never used to measure district enrollment projections.

"He was showing the same thing that we knew as well," Cohen said of McCarthy's findings. "It was not significantly different than what we had. He doesn't make any basic conclusion that our enrollment is going to slow down or how fast."

Whatever the "report's" conclusions, its very existence has generated charges of cover-ups and conspiracy. In the weeks following the announcement of the district's shortfall, parents gathered in district headquarter hallways on board meeting nights asking each other for details on the "RAND Report," and questioning the existence of a document that had reached near mythological proportions.

Parents had reason to raise questions. Until January district officials had said there was no RAND "report."

In November of 1999, Schmidt told The Lookout that there was nothing in writing on the volunteer committee's findings.

"They never finished their work," Schmidt said about the group. "Verbally, they alerted their staff that at some point in the near future you will see a leveling off of resident enrollment at that time based upon two to three years in the future, not one year."

On Wednesday, however, Schmidt told The Lookout the data had been available to anyone who asked for it. He noted that the public's requests for the "report" had increased since September, prompting him to release the "working notes" to board of education members after the media requested copies.

"Some of the media came and asked for the information because of all this stuff with the enrollment," Schmidt said. "Some people remember the report, or comments, that were made when we looked at the data on increased growth to determine whether we needed new classrooms or relocatables.

"When people came in and asked to see it we showed it to them," Schmidt said. "They're working documents. The only thing it showed was that Malibu will continue to grow."

But some of those who asked for copies of the "report" said their requests went unheeded.

Beth Muir, president of the Santa Monica/Malibu teacher's union, was surprised when she heard board members had received copies of the "working notes." She had asked for a copy of the document at the Dec. 16, 1999 Board of Education meeting and again when she learned about the distributed copies.

"I've asked for it in private meetings, and I've publicly asked him to speak to this, and again he [Schmidt] refused to speak on it," Muir said. "I wanted to get hold of this report because I wanted to see why did they project an increase in enrollment when there was this decline. They [district officials] even said they remembered when it was presented but denied anything written."

Board member Dorothy Chapman recalled the presentation by the Proposition X Committee in 1998 but said that when she asked for the written data in the fall of last year, she was told nothing had been put in writing.

"I understood there was pressure from the press to get something out," Chapman said. "At the time (the report was presented) we were connecting to Prop. X. We weren't connecting to the ongoing budget issues, and we should have been."

School board member Margaret Quinones, however, said she was not surprised when she saw the "working notes" in the packet and didn't see the information as pertinent to enrollment projections.

"We heard about it a long time ago. We saw glimpses of it prior to this," former board president Quinones said of the data. "If you look at the report, it says at one given time, but it doesn't say when."