The second episode of our Mayor's Roundtable podcast features Former Mayor Gleam Davis and activist and researcher Juan Matute. While the focus of this podcast is the city's annual budget, there's also a really interesting mini-discussion at about the eighteen minute mark where we discuss the future of the Civic, Airport (and Airport Park) and how either or both of those properites could be part of the solution for the city's ongoing budget deficit.

A full, but lightly edited, transcript of the podcast can be found below.

Damien Newton - I'm here with Juan Matute and Gleam Davis, and we are going to be talking about the Santa Monica budget. Let's start off with just a very brief overview of how it works. I admitted in the pre-show that last year when I was covering the budget, I didn't quite understand why we do a two-year budget every year because obviously you're going to be making changes the following year.

I was embarrassed to ask anyone why because everyone else seemed to think it was normal. But let's just assume that I know what I'm talking about today, but still think it would be great for people listening to the podcast to hear why is it that Santa Monica passes a two-year budget every year?

Gleam Davis

Well, maybe I'll start and Juan can add in. And thanks, Damian, for having us. When Rick Cole was city manager several years ago, it was decided that going through the entire budget process every year was tremendously inefficient.

The budget process requires every department to do a work plan, and submit a budget to the city manager's office. The city manager then has to deal with it. The idea was that, and best practice really among a lot of governmental agencies is to do what is effectively a two-year budget so that the work plans were only really being revised every couple of years. Also, the heavy duty lifting in terms of council study sessions about the budget only had to happen every two years.

Unfortunately, under California state law, the city is required to adopt a budget every year. So they budget in a two-year cycle, but they still have to adopt a budget on an annual basis. And that's just a legal requirement.

And simply because circumstances change, you adopt a budget, say, in an even year and you go to adopt a budget in an odd year: revenues may be up, revenues may be down. So there always have to be some annual adjustments.

And that's what happens in the annual budget cycle.

Juan Matute

That is for the operating budget, which is the current expenses, staff, staff contracts, supplies, et cetera. ah The city also has a capital improvement program, a five-year capital project budget, and it can work on those needs in the off year.

And so this idea of having the operating year and then the capital year, the capital year is less intense because there's really a long-term need there with the capital projects. It's a long-term investment plan. It allows the city to shift its focus between those two things in a way that, so the City of Los Angeles does not do a citywide capital improvement ah programming process, capital budget, and they lose sight often of the capital needs.

They are ending up doing a lot of deferred maintenance and underinvestment in infrastructure in the City of LA that, prior to our current budget situation, was less of a problem in Santa Monica and something that was very much reflected in the quality of infrastructure and the built environment in Santa Monica versus the city of Los Angeles.

DN - So they pass a two-year budget, but they still have to look at the budget again every year just because there's going to be changes and all of that. When I report on it, I haven't tried to look out and do the second year. Am I doing a disservice? Do I need to change my style?

GD - Well, no, because, you know, the situation on the ground changes and there are budget adjustments constantly. One of the procedural things about the city council is once it adopts a budget at the end of June every year, to make any intermediate changes between the adoption of the new budget the next year takes five votes of the city council.

The reason is that you don't want to be changing your budget too frequently on the fly. And I'll be honest, in some of our political times in the last few years, that requirement has saved us from potential problems.

People still tend to think of the budget as just being the year ahead. It really is just a methodology that allows staff not to have to do what is a very intensive process every 12 months, break it out every 24 months, and then really just do adjustments depending on if revenues go up, revenues go down, expenditures go up, expenditures go down, that sort of thing.

So I think looking one year in advance is probably the most accurate way to do it.

It really is more of an efficiency issue than a policy issue, if that makes sense.

JM - And there's a built-in mid-year budget review in December to do minor course corrections as needed. It's not like 24 months, set it and forget it, or 12 months, set and forget it. There's an established process for when revenues are down, revenues are up. There's this need that we have accepted this grant and so that moves this funding from X to Z.

DN - Let's talk a little bit. Santa Monica has some unique things in its budget, some challenges from lawsuit settlements and all sorts of other money that's set in stone and then it's got some flexibility. But in reality, there's not a lot of maneuvering that can be done with the budget, as I understand it because there's a lot of payments that have to happen.

The city is facing some significant budget challenges because of tourism dropping off. It looked like it was rebounding. But I keep hearing that foreign tourists aren't all that interested in coming to America these days for some reason.

Let's talk about the challenges and some of the things the city has to deal with.

GD - The big challenge is there isn't much discretionary money. Like most human institutions, the vast majority of the city's budget, the operational budget, not the capital budget, goes to pay the salary of staff.

Even though our staff is significantly reduced from pre-COVID times, that is still the bulk of the budget. We have the overhang of the Eric Euler sex abuse settlements and some other potential larger liabilities hanging down there. And the city needs to be financially prudent. And that means protecting its reserve fund and what it calls the rainy day fund.

Should there be some sort of catastrophe, an earthquake or what happened in the Palisades with the fires, that the city has the resources to address an unanticipated but costly catastrophe.

The big challenge is not having enough money. We have a council, which for the most part, I think is very smart and has some really good ideas.

You have a couple of council members who unfortunately had their hands tied for a couple of years. Now that they have a more sympathetic council, they would like to do some positive stuff. And there isn't really the money to support that. And you have four new council members who got elected because they want to do good things for the city. And, you know, they're being told by staff there isn't money for a lot of those good things. So that's really the challenge they're facing.

But I think they're trying to adopt some policies and procedures that might make it possible to do some innovative things even in this current budget crisis.

JM - On a multi-year decadal cycle, Santa Monica's budget is really related to tourism, retail activity, and associated activities. And so with the rise of the Promenade in the 80s-90s, the city's budget increased substantially in the 2000s and 2010s, primarily due to the transient occupancy tax, which is a tax on people staying in hotels.

That ebbs and flows with the, both the global economy, visitors, tourists, and also just the strength of "Santa Monica as a great place to go."

That's been challenged post COVID and continues to be challenged with the fires and other things. Fortunately we're in a mega world city and we're right near one of the top five airports in the world for people getting off the plane and actually staying in the city.

There is an opportunity to grow tourism in Santa Monica and improve the financial footing of the city.

But the city was doing a long-term planning exercise prior to COVID. about whether tourism or some other economic sector would be worth supporting into the future. And that got about 80, 90% done and it remains unfinished.

Now we guess it's not tourism, but maybe we could make it tourism again, but maybe it ends up being biotech or creative industries or other things.

And so the city is kind of in this period where it's trying to figure out where that revenue growth is going to come from in the future based on underlying economic activity in the city.

But we haven't figured it out yet.

GD - Tourism is really the bedrock of the Santa Monica economy. The most recent estimate is that if we didn't have tourism, there would be a deficit of about $1,300 to $1,500 per household in terms of the city budget and nobody in the city wants to cough up another $1,300 to $1,500 to pay for a basic level of services.

There is some optimism on the horizon, and whether you call it tourism or just regional events…SoFi Stadium is a beautiful big stadium. The Intuit Dome is big and beautiful and new and exciting. And there's all sorts of attractions around us.

The good news is that while there are many attractions, there aren't that many pockets of places for people who are going to expensive events to stay. Nobody who's paying $5,000 to go see a World Cup game is probably going to stay in Inglewood.

In Marina Del Rey, the hotel situation there has deteriorated over time. So even with international tourism down, Santa Monica remains well placed to benefit from that.

I will tell you, revenues went up dramatically when Taylor Swift and Beyonce played at SoFi. People stayed in the hotels and when they stay in our hotels, they eat in our restaurants and they shop in our stores.

While we want to obviously continue to promote tourism there are external factors, as you pointed out, Damien, like a president who's hostile to people who want to come here and ah concerns about visa issues.

There are ways we can work around it. And as Juan points out, we can look for other opportunities as well. But it's just going to take some effort. And I think that's one thing the city really needs to work on more is being more thoughtful and intentional about what it wants its economy to look like.

DN - Is there anything that's sticking out as sort of the big controversial item or items that the council is going to be tackling in the budget? Or do we expect that for the most part, this is going to be a smooth-ish process with a council that has been on the same page for the most part for a lot of the early discussions, not just about the budget, but about other issues as they come up. A lot of 7-0 votes, 6-1 votes.

JM - I think there's really interesting stuff going on right now that not neither of us know about because it's one of those things that under California's Brown Act can happen behind closed doors.

And that is the collective bargaining agreements with the various employer groups for the city. Those are all labor negotiations that happen in closed session with the city attorneys and labor negotiators.

Some of those contracts are very good for the people who are working under them, but perhaps less great for the people in Santa Monica who want a certain level of service ah per per dollar that the city has.

I know one of one of the things that's cited amongst people I talked to is that the Santa Monica Police Officers Association that represents the line sworn police officers has had a clause in their contract for about 40 years where they're the second most highly paid officers of a group of 10 or so police forces in Los Angeles County.

So as other places that have other sources of revenue besides tourism and sales tax, are able to offer raises to their police officers in Santa Monica.

We've also had to give them raises, even if we haven't had the money. That creates some of these challenges. Of course, it compounds with the legal settlement from the sex abuse at the Police Activities League in the 90s.

Those are settlements that happen in closed session. So I think we see seven no votes and a lot of alignment ah in public meetings.

But there are very important and consequential things that are going on right now that will affect the ability of the city to use some, potentially some money or no money on meeting current priorities as the budget comes to final adoption.

GD - I do think there could be some controversial things. I think it depends on what the appetite is of the city council for that level of controversy. The fact of the matter is that ah the city's already exploring on the upcoming agenda…they have a item to enter into a contract with a brokerage to sell a couple of city properties that will raise some money for the city, but selling, for example, the city TV property on 19th Street will raise a few million dollars, but isn't going to solve the $100 million dollar hole in the budget.

There are ways to address that. The one that gets spoken about occasionally is the Civic Center property.

The Landwatch building on it, that property is of marginal value to the city economically.

I understand a lot of people are attached to it, have a tremendous amount of nostalgia, and attach a value to it. But monetarily, the presence of that landmark building really causes the value of that property to be much lesser than it would be if it were just a blank piece of land.

If the building were not there, it's my understanding the property would be worth three times what it is with the civic sitting on it. And it's a valuable enough piece of property that if you were to put it on the market without the civic, you could probably go a long way towards filling the budget hole the Eric Euler settlements have done. It's similarly true with the airport.

Depending on who you talk to there's 190-200 acres out there. 15 acres of it is within the city of Los Angeles and subject to city of LA zoning.

So as people are envisioning what they want to do at the airport, there's 15 acres that may not really be readily available for whatever vision they have. And maybe it's worth exploring selling that off.

We have had offers for it in the past. You sell off that 15 acres. I don't know what it's worth, but again, it's worth a substantial amount of money.

But we have a relatively new and inexperienced council and it really is a question of how much risk are they willing to take? Because either of those two actions would clearly engender a lot of controversy among certain quarters of the public. I don't know that a majority of people would really care if voters in Santa Monica would care. But there would certainly be a loud vocal minority who would oppose either one of those actions.

DN - I think there are definitely loud groups that would be upset about changes to the Civic, especially with the agreement being signed the other week, and then or changes to the airport.

JM - Yeah, but it is probably on a two-decade cycle, right? Our options are maybe one of those. Airport Park, there's Substantial Park at the Airport, Save the Civic.

And if we want both, we're talking about large tax increases, like a parcel tax to fund some of the lost revenues from those decisions or added expense of converting the airport or maybe even contributing to some vision for the Civic.

If there was a $2,000 per year parcel tax, which is very substantial for Santa Monica, that would generate $45 million annually. And that's kind of what we're talking about in terms of the annual gap that would be needed to do these things.

It's really hard for people to understand the extent to which we have these trade-offs between "Let's do the Civic" and "Let's do the airport park" and "let's do basic city services" that are already in deficit.

But like there is a consequence and a price tag associated with that. And it is substantial. And I don't know if the people of Santa Monica would vote for an increase in their property taxes or other types of taxes that would be that substantial.

DN - You know, I did this podcast wrong. We should have opened with let's sell the Civic and a big chunk of airport property instead of putting it here at the end of the podcast. We definitely…I definitely did this wrong.

JM - You have your teaser for your intro.

DN - "Join us at the 16 minute mark when Gleam suggests that we just sell the airport."

JM - You'll put all the ads in about whatever it is that I don't know who's selling ads on your podcast, say.

And then they'll get through several ad cycles. I know as a former board chair, Santa Monica Next is a big profit-making enterprise for it.

DN - Oh, absolutely. Yeah, I'm sure you know that very well.

I was in Feinstein's Facebook group ah the other day, i posted something nice about the Corsair winning a bunch of awards. I don't really know a lot about SMC's academics, but their journalism department is great.

They win awards for their newspapers. Kids go on to Annenberg. Like, it's really fantastic, which is... also kind of ironic for reasons I won't get into here, involving the state of local journalism in Santa Monica.

And someone writes, "You only write that because SMC pays you to write good things about them." You can go to any news website in this city and SMC has bought ads… except for one.

JM - I hear that Don Gerard's retiring and maybe once he does his replacement, they'll buy ads with Santa Monica next.

DN - (grumbling)- I think they even have two ads on Surf Santa Monica. I don't know.

JM - I think that's a very astute observation about the college's role in the community.

DN - Yeah. So yeah, the last five minutes of this podcast were fire.

GD - Hopefully that fire won't translate to someone trying to burn down my house.

DN - You didn't actually suggest selling the airport. You just pointed out that there's 15 acres of it that could be profitable to the city as part of dealing with the larger issues they face. That's a fair observation.

GD - To circle back to where we are, the fact of the matter is that if people want to renovate the Civic, if they want to build a substantial amount of parkland out at the airport, whether it's 100% or 50% or whatever, they're going to have to find some significant source of revenue.

Selling, for example, 15 acres at the airport could go a long way towards funding the building of the rest of the park.

Sadly, Santa Monica used to pride itself on being one of the few fit cities that had a AAA bond rating. No more. Because we depleted our reserves to a point where we no longer qualify for a triple A bond rating.

So reinvigorating, replenishing those reserves would not only be good from a bond rating standpoint, but it actually saves the citizens money because the higher bond rating, the less we have to pay on bonds.

JM - If we do some sort of project at the airport with less than a AAA bond rating, there's going to be a lot of challenges, for sure.

So we have to get our fiscal house in order, and that means making tough choices and recognizing that we can't do everything. Santa Monica is a wealthy city, both in terms of population and the city budget. It's still one of the top...it's 80 something by population in California, but top 10 for general fund budget, because it's got a lot of activities.

It's got a lot of services that the city provides, in the bus parks and recreation. It operates an airport. We have a large police force given our nighttime population, but historically not the daytime population versus other places.

We've had a very abundant past, in terms of resources for the city, but the scarcity that permeates everything is catching up even with Santa Monica and the people who live here with the higher housing costs and everything else, higher construction costs, and now higher ah interest rates on our on our debt to get infrastructure projects done, including airport.

DN - From my Mar Vista community just to the east of Santa Monica, if we had to choose between the Civic, or your city services, or selling airport land, we would vote unanimously to maintain the airport land and not build anything on it ever.

That would be my community's vote, but we don't get one…which is probably good.

GD - Well, that's one of the challenges of the airport, right? You know, when people joke that it's our central park, and the answer is, well, no, really, it's Mar Vista's Central Park.

DN - We only surround IT on two sides.

GD - If people want empirical evidence of who will use that park, they only have to look at the dog park that's out at the airport right now. When we built that dog park, 90% of the people who used it were from outside the city.

And the few people from the city who were using it got all up in arms because it was quite crowded. There was tremendous demand from the people in your neighborhood, Damien….

DN - I'm a cat person.

GD - …to use that dog park. So then they passed a rule that nobody who didn't live in Santa Monica could use it. And then holy hell broke loose.

And Mike Bonin…

DN - Rosendahl. It's pre-Bonin, right?

GD - Maybe it might have been Rosenthal, right?

DN - Yeah. Phil Brock goes like chapter and verse on this sometimes.

At least every two years, he tells the story of Bill Rosendahl losing a gasket about it.

GD - Yeah. Yeah, it might have been Rosendahl. And I think Bill actually, you're right, because I think he went to a rally on City Hall property to open the dog park: Freedom for the Mar Vista Dogs.

And so they finally came to some agreement. But, you know, that's just a microcosm of telling you who's going to use the park if we build it.

DN - I mean, it sounds fine to me. I mean, it's a nice big park.

JM - That's just evidence that we don't shouldn't necessarily expect the people of Santa Monica to be charitable with paying for parks that other people can use because based on history, they had to have a rally at City Hall to non-Santa Monica residents. So should we learn from history or see if it will repeat itself with the airport?

GD - I have a sense that it will repeat itself to some extent, but yeah that will be an interesting topic for another podcast, what to do with or at the airport.

DN - We've talked a little bit about it. I'm not sure who to have on as guests for that. So we should talk about that offline. Although if anyone has listened and has gotten to the 27 minute and 44 second point, I know who should be in that podcast. You should email me, Damien at Santa Monica next.org.

JM - Frank Gruber just emailed you.

DN - I don't know. I don't know who to do. Anyway, let's try to wrap up. We're hitting the 30 minute mark. Are there any closing thoughts or do we think it's just we think we've covered all the big points?

JM - Stay engaged, stay involved, look at what's going on with the budget.

If more people are looking at it and holding both the council, but also the staff accountable, then I think we're going to be able to make sure that the budget is serving as many people as possible. And particularly in those areas of perhaps the greatest need of Santa Monica,which include, I think, in my opinion, um some of the social services and the funding that the city provides to maintain excellent public schools.

GD -People need to understand that the budget is a complex document. You know, for example, people will say things like, "well, why don't you just take money from Big Blue Bus to fund more police officers?"

And that's because they don't ride the bus and they want more police officers without understanding that we have a lot of enterprise funds in the city that are separate and untouchable from the general fund. In Big Blue Bus, there's a transportation fund, there's a beach fund, there's a water fund.

That really means the amount of money that's available to spend on most of the services that we provide to all residents, like public works, trash pickup, police, libraries, comes from just what is a subset of the entire budget.

It's a pretty complex process and it helps to understand the process before you start to complain about the process.

I've had so many people in my time on the council tell me that we just ought to take the money from X and give it to Y. But the money that X has belongs to can't be used for Y.

Some of those common misperceptions about the budget lead to a lot of anxiety that's just completely unnecessary. So I agree with Juan, stay engaged, figure out what's going on, you know, take the time, listen to the, read a budget staff report, listen to a budget hearing.

You'll find out that as I always tell people who are running for city council, they're really running to be on the board of directors of a corporation that's got billions of dollars in assets and a $750 million budget.

That's a pretty big responsibility, but it's also a complex responsibility.

DN - And you can also read Juan's coverage at Santa Monica Next because so far he's done most of our budget coverage. Although Todd's kicked in some too. And I'll try to re-explain the one versus two years in a couple of weeks when we get closer into budget season.

Anyway, thank you both for your time today. It was great. We covered a lot of ground. I'm sure I'll talk to both of you soon because you know we're all in the same signal chat.

GD - Absolutely.

DN - Topical joke, if you're listening to this you know years from now. Signal jokes were all the rage in April of 25.

GD - That's right. And and and and we're all we're all hoping that the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic is joining us as well.

DN - Yeah I think he'll be on any moment now.

GD - Well, thanks, Damian.

The first episode of our "Mayor's Roundtable" series at Santa Monica Next features Former Mayor Ted Winterer and local activist Chris Guitierrez to discuss what the city can do to protect its residents and the environment during a Trump presidency.

In 2017, Wintermer was mayor at the start of the first Trump presidency. Winterer led Santa Monica's response focusing on protecting undocumented residents and maintaining local climate action. The city organized meetings, created safety networks, and provided legal referrals to support undocumented residents. Santa Monica also joined the "We Are Still In" initiative with other local and state governments representing 50% of the US GDP, to pledge to continue to reduce carbon emissions.

"Our policy at the time was we were going to "box, not brawl" with Donald Trump," Winterer explained. " We did not declare ourselves a sanctuary city because we did not want to draw attention to our efforts, by putting a label on everything even though we were doing much of the same thing that the sanctuary city would do."

Guitierrez highlighted the need for local climate action, community building, and overcoming bureaucratic hurdles to implement sustainable practices. She also recounted the local efforts and groups that sprung up in response to Trump in 2017.

"I see our effort now is to both protect the vulnerable and protect our vulnerable planet," she said.

Transcript:

Damien Newton

I'm very excited to be here for our first podcast with former mayor Ted Winterer and with Chris Gutierrez, and we're just going to get right into it.

So it's 2025, we're a couple weeks into the second Trump presidency, and Ted, you are were the choice for our first podcast from our former mayor bullpen that we're using here, because you were the mayor when President Trump took office for the first time. And since we're talking about what the city can do to protect its citizens and to continue to be a progressive leader, you seemed like the natural person to lead off with. What did we do in 2017 and what should we be replicating this time around? ,

Ted Winterer

In January 19 of 2017, I was in DC for the US Conference of Mayors, and got out of there as fast as I could that day, so I would not be around for the first inauguration of Donald Trump… which, of course, was not attended by the millions of people he said were there.

I was well aware that we're going to have to react as a city to the new administration, which was going to be hostile, downright antithetical, to a lot of our values. I think the one of the most important things we did was to deal with our local undocumented population. They were hearing back then, the same cries to remove them from our country as soon as possible from the administration that they're hearing now.

Clearly this time around, the tenor is even less compassionate, more hostile, but better organized. So, we did a bunch of things. I think what was most important was to actually organize a gathering, a meeting at the Thelma Terry Center at Virginia Ave. Park, which was led by city staff. But the primary speakers were myself and police chief Jacqueline Seabrooks, to let those undocumented residents, and some of them came down from Malibu, because the word it got by word of mouth, right? It was intended for Santa Monica residents, but we opened up the door to anybody that is concerned.

The chief would explain that, "if you are worried about being pulled over by the Santa Monica Police Department for a broken tail light or whatever reason ,that the Santa Monica Police Department will never ask you about your immigration status, will never ask for any citizenship papers, etc, you don't have to worry about them working hand in club with ICE on the deportations, we will not be assisting ice in any deportation rates."

We made it very clear that the police department had their backs. They're going to be treated just the same as our residents who did have citizenship. And then I just helped along with city staff, particularly a wonderful woman named Carla Fantosa who has recently left the city. We created various safety valves for families, particularly those with families where maybe one of the parents was undocumented.

One major question was, "what do you do if you come home and dad's being hauled away by ICE?" "What if you come home and your kids and both parents are being taken away by ICE?" You created a phone tree network. This is who you call. You call your aunt, whoever, and she's going to be able to house you.

We created a legal referral network so that people knew what their rights were. We hand out paperwork explain to people what to do in the event of an ICE raid, how to legally challenge any attempts to incarcerate them, and explain this is where you can get some free legal help. That pretty much covers that. That was particularly useful because for so many people, and I think particularly for for undocumented residents, who have to live a little bit below the radar to hear voices from government speak with compassion and kindness to them about their situation. That really resonated with that community.

We've got this lunatic at DC who's telling us we're horrible people, but in our local government, we're just like the rest of us, and we have your backs to the best of our ability within, within the limits of the municipality's ability to resist federal law enforcement.

And it's still, a grave concern. Even more of a grave concern is that Trump pulled us out of the Paris Climate Accords, and has done so for the second time. And the City of Santa Monica became part of a resistance program which was called in. Mayors and governors and legislators from states around the country representing 50% of the of the US is gross domestic. Product. Went to the upcoming Climate Change Conference, you and climate change change conference and bond and to so other countries in the world.

Look, the US itself is pulled out, but 50% of the US is still with you, and we are still going to do local and state efforts to reduce carbon emissions. So don't give up, right? You shouldn't just throw in the towel. We all know that the US is the largest per capita emitter of greenhouse gasses. So if the US is not pulling its weight, why should other countries do so? We wanted to get out there and assure them that we are going to do all we can to reduce our carbon emissions.

And of course, the city has had a very aggressive, sustainable city plan and a climate action and adaptation plan, so we did our part there. It was significant to let the rest of the world know. "Hey, don't give up.: Hopefully the city will be able to do something like that again. I know this time around, they're doing much of the same things on the immigration and undocumented residents front.

Our policy at the time was we were going to "box, not brawl" with Donald Trump, right? We did not declare ourselves a sanctuary city because we did not want to draw attention to our efforts, right by putting a label all even though we were doing much of the same thing that the sanctuary city would do.

The concerns are even greater this time about lying below the radar the Trump government. They just, they just went after Chicago and Illinois, right? Those are big targets. We're a city small, fewer than 100,000 people, so we're not as big a target, but there's this guy, Stephen Miller, right? He probably reads Santa Monica news every now and then, just out of curiosity. So we've got to be very careful about not poking the bear in ways that have nefarious repercussions for us.

Damien

And Elon Musk, of course, famously likes to retweet the Santa Monica Observer, which is the city's number one purveyor of misinformation. So that's a nice feather in our local media hat.

You said a lot of different things that the city can do. I did get to see Mayor Lana Negrete speak last week. Chris, you were there too. I think I was actually standing next to you when she spoke at a rally held by students where they were asking the city to basically do something and do more to protect us and to protect the environment and to protect our undocumented friends and neighbors and to protect our LGBTQ+ friends and neighbors, you know, all across the spectrum of different things you could ask for help for.

First off, Mayor Negrete was there, which I wasn't expecting, not as a reflection of her. I just not used to Mayor showing up to this sort of thing. And she had on a Santa Monica High School sweatshirt. She didn't get the microphone to say, we're going to do XYZ, ABC, but she did speak compassionately about the importance of students being able to voice their opinions and how the city should respond to that, and how the city will talk with them, and even work with them on resolutions, and create "a student city council."

I thought she did a really good job.

You were talking about respect and compassion from a city leader, a government leader, and I heard that from our last week. I wanted to see if, Chris, if you heard the same thing as me and Ted, if you had any other sort of thoughts about that? Because the mayor really is a city council member with extra powers in the city. You know, as far as running the meeting and showing and the symbolic powers, it's not really like it's not a strong mayor system.

Chris Gutierrez

It's not a strong mayor system, but Lana Mayor Negrete did have a strong presence, a kind and supportive presence at the at the walkout last week, on Thursday, the sixth of February.

I was really pleased that she also stepped back to let all the youth speak first and for very long time, and when she did have a chance to speak, it was welcoming, affirming and strengthening for us to know that we're all looking out for each other.

And with respect to her position, as you've already said, she really invited them to stay in good touch with her, as well as her paying attention to what the requests are. And I think the council will duly follow that. I love that Ted started with the challenge to our vulnerable, diverse community, and I think in conjunction with that, with the climate. We don't have a healthy community without diversity among ourselves and we don't have a healthy planet without biodiversity being strengthened.

I've always been impressed with how Santa Monica can meld those two together, and I see in the second madness of the regime in DC. that will become even stronger. Ted, we look to you so much. I will always remember we began the Climate Corps in 2016 just before the first Trump regime started. And when we had the training, we assured the young people, because even though Trump was going to pull out of the Paris Agreement.

We were ready.

And then 2017 we reaffirmed that. And you all were at the climate mayors, you did what you you said you were going to do. And frankly, climate is a local matter. Yes, we need the macro policies. Yes, we need the investments like the Inflation Reduction Act, investments that are now threatened, and many of us are going to work to protect them. But on clean energy, those get emboldened by national policies, but we did a lot on clean energy. We started in 2018 the Clean Power Alliance, and Santa Monica was one of the foremost agencies in climate action.

Santa Monica helped kick that off, to make that a reality, from the state law office being facilitated to us creating the Clean Power Alliance, and that immediately helped us reduce 17% of our greenhouse gasses. We have equally managed to continue that reduction.We're at, I think, 35% below our 1990 emissions and that Climate Action and Adaptation Plan, which the city approved in 2019 after we in the community, with city council and leaders. From the staff, we issued climate summits. We had all sorts of engagements.

We helped people realize climate is a personal matter. It isn't this abstract, elusive thing. It is how you move your body on a bike versus a car, how you concentrate more on a plant based diet. how you have clean energy. How, when you're getting a new appliance, it might be an electric appliance, like a water heater?

Those are personal decisions. And Ted, I remember the council was also highly promoting transit and with with all sorts of "two for ones." And while that preceded Trump, it continued throughout, throughout and and we continue that today. So I see our effort now is both on protecting the vulnerable as well as protecting our vulnerable planet and how we all... Hey, we all breathe, we all eat.

We're all part of nature. So how we work together locally on that is critical, and I'm proud to say, Climate Action Santa Monica, Safe Streets, Alliance, all sorts of organizations are much more intensified. Closing the airport even becomes a significant opportunity for a resilient, stellar, great park. And those are the ways local communities such as Santa Monica...I love your idea of boxing Ted. I think it's also boxing him in because we are going to stand up for what is a sane and humane community and the way we work together to ensure we all have a healthy planet.

Ted

Chris is absolutely right about all this stuff, but I've had some sobering realizations lately about the issue of local carbon emission reductions. The city's budget is still not fully recovered from the COVID pandemic induced budget cuts. The office of the sustainability and the environment is not staffed to the same levels that it was, and there's not the money for the grand sort of projects like this SWIP, which is part, major part of the city's climate mitigation strategy.

Make sure that we have local water supplies for decades to come. So there's that. And then I've been somewhat dismayed by the response of some of the Palisades Fire refugees. I have not met any of the ones from Altadena, but I've talked to a lot of ones from the Palisades. I don't think there's any self awareness, any connection being made between these fires being caused by climate change?

Maybe it's not enough for me just to drive a Tesla and feel good when I go tonight, because I drive a Tesla. Maybe I should have been doing more and maybe if I move back and I rebuild, I should be doing more to reduce my climate footprint. Some of the decisions made in the higher levels of government.

I understand Karen Bass has said, "Well, if you want to rebuild your homes, you can still put in those old gas appliances you had, even though the city code says it has to be all electric." and Gavin Newsom suspended the state requirement to have solar rooftop panels to generate local clean energy. I don't understand that. I don't understand that at all...the disconnect between the fact that it's carbon emissions that cause your houses to burn down, so why shouldn't the next round if you're going to rebuild this community and make sure those carbon emissions are reduced, I find that very disappointing.

Chris

I do too. Having grown up in Palestinians, I know a lot of friends and family members who lost homes. My sister lost her home completely…everything. I waited about a week before on a family thread that I raised the issue of our climate conditions, and one of my siblings smacked back at me. I said, "No, this is not about politics. This is about physics, and let's just get real on this."

Those of us who can pressure leaders…so called leaders…like Bass and Newsom to realize that frankly, if we rebuild the old way...as the LA Times had a good article earlier this week on what we didn't learn from the Bel Air fires.

I remember those Bel Air fires when I was seven years old standing on top of a chair in my father's shop, watching those houses burn, and that's why I've always been afraid of fire, and so watching Palisades burn again, and then to not learn those lessons, again. I think that's where community leadership, local leadership, like Santa Monica's, really is necessary. We cannot back pedal on this. This is a big test if we miss this opportunity with Palisades. I'm just one voice, but you better bet I'm talking to people that I know that you can't, we can't just take the easy road, because the easy road is a road of doom.

Damien

Let's be honest, there's probably going to be more climate related disasters in the next four years, and unfortunately, some of them will probably be more local than we would like. I don't know if we'll have evacuations inside the city's borders, like we did with this particular case, where it was very, very close and there's some businesses that never reopened after evacuations, and there were lots of secondary impacts.

Hopefully, we don't see anything that has a primary impact in the city. But you're talking about, how does a city and how does leadership learn from these situations, and arguing that in the meta sense we haven't learned about thinking about long terms. Does that make it harder you think, for people though, to think locally about this sort of stuff, "What is my plastic bottle versus, you know, having a refillable glass bottle really mean, if we're not doing anything about these meta issues?

Chris

Community building is number 1-2-3-4, all the way down to number 10, the most important part of climate resiliency. If we don't build a strong community understanding - both the personal as well and the interpersonal - as well as the city policy work together then, then we, frankly, don't take good care of each other right now.

I was happy to see how people really reached out during the Palisades fire, and that's how we have to capitalize. In my conversations with people, on different platforms and in person, sharing knowledge and understanding is critical, but also giving each other a pat on the back for taking some risk and how we model our lives.

I think it does matter, Damien. I just think it's harder sometimes to feel that it would matter, but it's even more important. You know, we had a big garden gathering last week on herbal plants and native plants, and I was impressed that there were like 45-50 people at the community garden on Saturday. And I know that was not just the workshop people wanted to be together. People wanted to be doing good work. We had lots of volunteers come out when we didn't even expect them. So I think community building is essential to how we approach these problems together.

Ted

To your point, Damien, you're talking about people trying to acknowledge that little decisions they make on a daily basis do have significance, right?

We're out of the Paris Climate Accords. The world's going to hell on a handcart. Why does it make a difference if I am using plastic water bottles that are made from fossil fuels, as opposed to using something more sustainable that quenches my thirst on a regular basis. There's that old expression about death by 1000 paper cuts.

People need to understand each one of those daily decisions is a paper cut into the future of our planet. So, don't look for other people to do things. We all need to do things at the same time. I've been a climate activist for years. Our house, we've got EV panels. We had a solar thermal panel situation. I've been trying to electrify my house as the old gas appliances go out of commission. We placed our dryer with an electric dryer, etc. Hot water heater is on the skids. The heat is on the skids.

I've been trying to get through various state agencies. The first one that's called the switches on to try to get contractors to do these jobs. None of them ever came by and then they ghosted me. I went to a new organization. Signed up with them last summer. I still do not have, I still do not have a heat pump or water heater installed. I still don't have the split system, a track system that run on heat pumps installed.

It's a little frustrating when you are really trying to do the right thing. And somehow, the Byzantine process that's been constructed by the government to get these rebates and find these contractors, it's getting in its own way. I think that's something the state and the cities need to take a look at. Why do we make it so hard for people who really want to do the right thing? Because I guarantee you, 90% of the people in my situation would have gone, well, screw it. I just got a gas water heater.

Chris

Exactly. I know the Clean Power Alliance is trying to put together a one stop shop to that and have a climate, excuse me, energy efficient advisor to make those...I don't know how that's working yet. I don't know if it's gotten off the ground very much, but Ted, it sounds like a really good thing. I can connect you to see if we can push on that. You just said it was the Byzantine structures we established from more than 150 years ago. They are wearing us down, which is all the more reason undoing them piece by piece, however small it might feel, is critical.

I've been without a car since 98, my husband since 83-84. In the last century, that seems like such a boutique thing, but it's not. People are seeing other people reject a kind of life that is detrimental, not just to one's own health, but to climate health.

We're at, we're at a precipice - 89 seconds to midnight. That's what the doomsday clock was moved to a couple of weeks ago. And that's not just about nuclear weapons, that's about climate change, that's about all sorts of anthropogenic problems that we humans have caused. I love that. The same brain and consciousness that gets us into this trouble is also one that can create the Sistine Chapel and create the aqueducts of Rome, or...Notre Dame has now been restored. Our great park could be one of those.

That's where I think the stamina the city needs to have with us as community leaders is critical. I know young people are looking at us. We saw that on Thursday. That wasn't just a rally for little things. That was a rally for big things in little steps.

Damien

We have probably about five minutes left in our goal time for this podcast. Do either of you see things the city could be doing that it's not doing yet, or maybe that are in the works that they should focus on? "Oh my goodness, there's this terrible, scary president and administration that seems to be tromping around unchecked. What can we do to sort of bubble wrap our own city, that they're either said that they either should be doing and aren't yet, or are talking about doing, but maybe haven't fleshed out completely?"

Ted

On the immigration and our undocumented residents, from everything I can tell, the city is doing everything we decided to do back in 2017...doing it a little bit more cautiously. But there was that rally last week, and they have 10,000 of those little red cards that they handed out at the student rally. My son gave it to someone who was concerned might be at risk. So they're doing all that.

But as we mentioned, trying not to poke the bear in DC, on the climate front, I have not heard anything that is similar to that. We are still in the pledge that went around in 2017, I don't know whether that is despair or, "oh my gosh, we're doing this all over again."

It was a lot of work, but I have had the idea today that maybe we should be doing something to the same effect locally. There are 88 cities in LA County and Santa Monica could be in a position to try to bring along the City of LA and the City of Long Beach. The two biggest cities in the county, and any other cities in the county that do have a climate strategy that do have a plan to reduce their emissions and put that into a larger group that says, "Well, here we are in the largest county in the country, both geographically and by population, and we are going to still do our bit to try to reduce climate missions, the Trump administration be damned."

That would be a challenge to our San Monica leaders today to try to put something like that together. We have a local group that says that we are still going to be doing our part.

Chris

Ted hit the mark on both of those. The only thing I would add to those is that's where I think community heft will be really important to ask to help our newer council members to take that step. And because they have past practices to see how that is vital. The fires now call us to do it with renewed energy, in a way that can really assert some hopefulness, however daunting it may feel. Also, when it comes to protecting the vulnerable, I think there's more of a sensitivity.

I see this time around among younger and regular community folks. I was at a vigil last week, and not, not the youth vigil. I was at another one, and it was striking how people were feeling more concerned about other people because they feel the hits of this new regime, this new Trump administration, being much colder, and we can feel it coming down on many fronts. The community with the city can make these stands in a very positive way.

I don't know what that means in terms of maybe putting out signage and banners. We just celebrated 30 years of sustainable city leadership. So I think renewing that in a vital way would be really precious and but I would also note on a more modest, but Empower powering way the permitting, yes, we all need to work with the city on how do they facilitate permitting and in ways to get those changes made when it's a home issue or it's a business issue.

Damien

Well, thank you both for your time today. If you're listening with us all the way through. Make sure to tell your friends and neighbors about this podcast. I think we're going to have Gleam Davis be the co-host on the next one.

So I look forward to that probably end of the month. And of course, while we'll be certainly talking about President Trump and what Santa Monica can do a lot, I imagine in a lot of them, hopefully, maybe everything's going to calm down enough that this will be our last one focused on that. But if not Ted, you're going to be our go to for this one.

Ted

Yeah. Well, as we all could tell, it's different this time around than before, there was a lot of ugly rhetoric, but it was sort of run like the Keystone Cops, right? They kept stepping on their own feet. They seem to have a much more deliberate and even more spiteful strategy this time around, and we can only hope that the courts will do what they can to slow them down. And more appallingly, we can hope that the presidential administration recognizes that the courts do have authority over them. That's the really terrifying part.

I keep telling people, look, we've lived through the Northridge earthquake. We've lived through COVID. We've lived through 9-11. There's always been these existential moments in recent history, where we thought life as we know it is coming to an end. We're in the middle of one of those. Now let's try to be strong and cautiously optimistic and persevere. Persevere through these...at least these next two years, and hopefully we can take back at least one half of Congress and at least throttle down some of this stuff. But it's going to be tough sledding for a couple of years.

Chris

It will be, but I think it really puts the test to "We, the people." That's not a slogan, that's a commitment.

Damien

All right, what a good ending that line was.

This week's episode of Who's Next features an interview with Dr. Paul Drew, familiar to Santa Monia Next readers as the editor/publisher of The Swish, the YMCA's youth basketball newsletter. Every issue, Drew profiles some of the people (players, coaches, refs, etc...) that make the hoops program work.

We thought we'd turn the microphone around and point the microphone at Dr. Drew himself so listeners could meet Doc. Drew and find out more about the great program he runs at the Y.

Signup for the summer session that begins on July 20th is underway. Boys and girls of all skill level ages 5-14 are invited to play. You can get more informaiton and signup, here.

Damien welcomes back Maya, Emery and Willa for our second "Who's Next" podcast. The three guests are all seniors at Santa Monica High School and leaders of the environmental group Team Marine.

On Wednesday, SMMUSD celebrated becoming a school district completely powered by renewable energy, and in the first ten minutes or so of the podcast, we talk about what achieving that goal means for the District and what these three leaders did to push the district to make that change happen faster.

The second two parts of the podcast are more fun. Emery, Maya and Willa are departing for college in the fall and we talk about some of the things they enjoyed about growing up in Santa Monica and some very specific things that they'll miss about their hometown.

00:00.78 Damien So we're back for our second podcast with Emery, Maya and Willa. It just so happens that earlier today they were part of a ceremony at Santa Monica high school, Samohi, for a big announcement about some of the school's environmental initiatives and their roles in it. Rather than me reading the press release,why don't one of you just explain what it was that today was about and what it was you all were doing up there and what it is you all did to sort of get the ball rolling on this project?

00:35.57 Maya We were at Santa Monica high school today celebrating the school district's transition to 100% renewable energy. We worked on just getting them or pushing them to transition in January through March of last year when they voted to transition. It took about six months to complete, and then by October we were running on 100 % renewables. Yeah it was really cool.

We got to celebrate with board members, with city council members, with Team Marine which is the Samohi environmental activism organization that helped push for the switch and Human Rights Watch student task force was there.

01:34.37 Emery I feel like you 2 having actually spoken at the board meeting might have the most to say about that. I was there at the meeting. You two spoke ah excellently. I guess one of the takeaways from the celebration today was like how much we've seen this throughout our advocacy. How much student voices really matter when people like people really like listening to us.

Because we have chosen to lend our voice to this cause it seemed significant in making it happen.

02:34.89 Damien So you mentioned going to the board. Can you describe the process?

I know the district has made a commitment years ago to transition to renewable energy, and to become more carbon neutral and that what you guys did really accelerated the timeline. I think twenty thirty was like the earliest they were looking at until just a couple years ago so maybe talk a little bit about what actually did to push them to make this change faster.

03:03.63 Maya Well actually, the school district had what it called a climate adaptation plan or sustainability plan. They actually laid out for a switch to renewable energy by 2020 and so it was actually really interesting how it happened. I think it was in 2019 that the district switched to 100% renewable energy and then when covid happened and there were some things in transition in terms of staffing at the district level and the district switched to a new plan.

The schools were receiving 40% renewable energy. But then Samohi and I don't know if it was the district offices or Malibu, which were the biggest consumers of energy, weren't running on renewable energy at all.

So it was just this really interesting thing where we made progress and then we kind of took a step back. I think we just wanted to make sure that we kept the district accountable and went back to meeting that sustainability target. In terms of what our role was, I think we've been really lucky to have the privilege of working with Austin Toyama who's the sustainability manager and all of the sustainability people at the district level Carrie Upton.

I think just meeting with them figuring out how we could convince the board…the board's transition to renewable energy. I think once we get in contact with them, it just kind of happens.

Naturally, we got Team Marine folks out to board meetings to testify and to really push them in the right direction and I think the board was very receptive. I think we're lucky to live in a place like Santa Monica where people actually care about sustainability.

We helped push for it but there were a lot of other people that were involved too.

05:18.40 Damien So Willa, Emery mentioned that you were one of the people that spoke at the board meeting. As I have never been to a Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District board meeting…is it, is it I don't know, weird or intimidating? Do they have a dais set up? How is it to do a public comment there.

05:32.73 Willa I used to be a very outgoing person before the pandemic and then afterward I became extremely shy and now have a crippling fear of public speaking. So when Austin came to Maya and I and was saying, "we want to do this." I felt this is so important.

And then he said, "it would be really awesome if you guys spoke in front of the board." I was thinking, "uh-oh" and alarm bells are going off in my brain.

I always feel that if there's something that's important enough to me, I will overcome some sort of fear to do it. And by no means did that experience cure my fear of public speaking…I still do not like it. It really scares me. Bu, I did it and like there was a very positive outcome.

I think I played it up a little too much in my head. Honestly, having spoken in front of the school board now multiple times, I feel like they're honestly…really lovely…and super supportive.

So it's funny to look back and be, "oh my gosh like I was so scared of them like they were so intimidating" because they are just like the sweetest, most supportive people ever. Especially as a student, they are just so excited to see students getting involved in caring about issues.

But I was very intimidated when I went up to that podium with Maya. So I was glad to have her there with me. It was very nice.

07:15.24 Damien Okay, oh and know and it worked out! I mean it. It is cool that you got to do the public speaking and you got to win out of it.

It's always really depressing when you have to face down a fear and then you don't get a win out of it.

But I guess it sounds like there had been a lot of work put in ahead of time too. So that's ah that that always helps. So is it just Santa Monica High School that's now hundred percent renewable or the whole district?

07:37.31 Willa This whole district.

07:39.72 Maya So yeah, the whole district.

07:51.95 Damien That's impressive. Well, thank you for that good work. Is there anything else you guys want to add about that? It's okay to say no.

08:00.32 Emery Yeah I mean at least for me I think that's it.

08:06.49 Damien So then I will transition.

Originally when I first pitched this podcast to you guys back in March, one of the things I wanted to talk about was some of the advantages, or disadvantages if you choose, of sort of growing up in Santa Monica and being in Santa Monica.

You guys just talked about this activism experience that sounds like it was pretty good but is there so anything things think anything sort of.

See "professional broadcaster" and I still trip over my tongue. My ego is so low that I won't even edit this part out.

Anyway, I was hoping there'd be you got we could talk a little bit about that like what it's like to grow up in Santa Monica you think it's different what advantages or something and then even at the end wanted to talk about something like. Fun or cool that you think might be somewhat unique to the city or something you like to do that you're going to miss when you're away at your fantastic colleges next year

09:10.57 Damien I'll start with a more pointed question of like do you have any good impressions or I should say a more direct question, any impressions of some advantages in what life was like growing up in Santa Monica versus I don't know anywhere else in the world.

09:28.95 Maya I can talk about this real quick because I actually don't live in Santa Monica anymore. I go to school there, but we moved when I was 8 so I live closer to LAX now. I don't think I really appreciated while I was in Santa Monica and now I really do miss the walkability of Santa Monica. Everything is so close like there's always a park nearby. You can walk places.

Public transportation is not perfect by any means but it's pretty doable. I think now where I live, there's not that same friendliness and people don't really walk outside so it doesn't feel as safe.

I would say that is something that I do really miss from Santa Monica, and I still go to school there so I do still get to enjoy that for the most part. But yeah I think that's one really great thing about the city.

10:31.10 Damien As a distance runner living in West Los Angeles the first thing I do on any run that's more than three miles is I run into Santa Monica. I never run east towards Westwood or or Palms. My first thing I do is I run into Santa Monica. Then my route changes from there in part because the sidewalks are great. People are great. It…of course if I run far enough there's a beach path so that's pretty great too. Anything Emory or Willa want to add to this?

11:03.11 Willa Like you just mentioned, the beach is really fun. I definitely take it for granted.

In my college process, I looked at places on the East Coast which is ironic because I'm. Going to school in California…in L.A. County… which is very funny.

When I thought about leaving, I realized just how unique the landscape is in Santa Monica. You have all of these gorgeous walkways that are literally on bluffs overlooking the ocean and it's just gorgeous. You have the PCH, which I really loved during the pandemic, my family and I would just go on drives down the PCH because we couldn't go outside and it was just so…nice to kind of have that natural scene.

I also grew up around Main Street and I feel like that's just such a fun community as well. It's a little bit lesser known among the tourists, but it's kind of nice because all the locals are there and it has so many awesome small businesses and things like that. I feel like that's so important.

12:23.95 Damien Well Emery you have to say something now because everyone else went.

12:27.25 Emery Before I say the more interesting thing, I'm gonna say the boring thing that you said…or that you said would be boring..

12:39.39 Damien I accused you of having a more boring answer than I would have had, even though you're young and hip and I'm neither of those things.

12:49.13 Emery I would point out the great bike lanes. Our bike lanes are really good for the Los Angeles area. I bike to school and back…to most places that I can bike I will just do that. Why take the effort of going in the car when it's gonna be like 20 minutes?

Anyways, you touched on the beach. I definitely take for granted and underutilize this. I pretty much don't go to the beach, maybe I'll miss that when I'm on the East Coast.

The sun,that's a pretty great thing in Santa Monica that we do get that not all places get. I appreciate that about Santa Monica more specifically.

The privilege of going to SMMUSD and Samohi is a winning experience. I think about the college process and the experience of being at a university that can be something that's wildly different from what the rest of life is. I think Samohi does a good job of being a school that represents. Ah…is closer to representing the entire community closer to representing everyone…it shows different walks of life and there's a place for everyone.

I guess I have found my place so it's easy for me to say that but that's been my experience.

14:28.26 Damien Do you even own a pair of gloves or like a winter hat like what's the plan?

14:35.63 Emery I had gloves when I was like 8. I have gardening gloves. Yeah, that's what it is. We will have to stock up before going out.

14:40.57 Damien Gardening gloves.

My son who's 14…one of his best friend's brother goes to MIT now and the dude had never left…I don't think it'd ever been outside of Southern California in his entire life except for like a trip to Japan. The first thing he always says every time I see him…it's been 2 years…he wants to talk about how cold it is.

So I know you're not in Boston, but maybe but get a hat or a little scarf all right? Right?

So we talked about some of the good things about growing up. So the follow-up question is to talk about something fun, something fun that you'll miss next year. So no, don't just say, "bike lanes" but maybe like this particular bike ride you like doing that you're not going to be able to do next year or you'll have to find something very similar to it to be able to do next year …something that might be unique to here, a specific place or memory or event or something like that.

15:56.66 Damien And while you think, I'll give you mine to give you an extra minute or 2.

So, on Friday mornings I get up very early because it's the only time a friend of mine we can both meet up to go running. It's like five fifty in the morning, that's when we start. We get there at 5:45 and we stretch for 5 minutes first but we meet at Ocean and Main… no excuse me, Ocean and Main don't cross…we meet at Ocean and Santa Monica Boulevard. While we're stretching we have that overlook on the pier. Ah and it is one of our traditions that we have is we try to guess what the pier is going to look like, what the Ferris wheel is going to look like. All that sort of stuff based on the holidays.

So I get press releases from the pier communications. Sometimes it's about what the thing's going to look like and if it's going to be if it's something special like a holiday or Dodgers blue or something like that. I haven't told her why I'm so much better at guessing than her..;.this will also be I can find out now if she listens to the podcast or not. She listens to some podcasts when she's runs and I never asked if she listens to mine. Now I'll find out maybe not this Friday but next friday

17:17.86 Maya And that's such a good strategy. Oh my gosh.

17:20.69 Damien Well I wasn't doing Santa Monica Next when we started doing this but when those press releases started to come to me I was like, "oh it's going to be red for a week to celebrate API month."

17:29.15 Maya So cheat codes unlocked.

17:40.93 Damien And I can't do ones that would be weird, like when Wrestlemania was in town. They had a big WWE like logo on the wheel like if I guessed that that would have tipped her off that something was up because that's you know a little outside of normal.

18:00.13 Damien All right? So though I want to pick on Emery. He went last time. Maybe you should go first this time.

18:06.56 Emery Could you repeat the question. We.

18:09.28 Damien Can I repeat…I just I just vamped and all that..

Ahem, so what's something specific that you do here that you will miss. Maybe not being able to do is regularly next year. So I gave a specific example if I were not in Los Angeles so close to Santa Monica I would still go running on Fridays obviously because I'm mentally ill and like to run a lot apparently; but I wouldn't be able to do that stuff with the pier and that that I get to do with my friend every every week while we're stretching because there's not a big ferris wheel everywhere in the world.

18:46.38 Emery Something that I appreciate is being a suburb while having access to LA is cool.

That is, I play something that you can do elsewhere but I go to the Collins and Katz Family YMCA and I'm able to do that in West LA while being in walkable, bikeable San Monica. I appreciate that.

I also like going Downtown sometimes to Union Station to engage with LA and I appreciate being able to have something like this more peaceful.

19:34.70 Damien You know that is like a great answer but he seems to be nervous about it. It was such a good answer, like you get to be in like this wonderful community of Santa Monica and then you have access to all the stuff especially with like Expo and that it's not even like a half hour train trip apart. You don't even need a car.

20:03.81 Maya I don't think I can top that. Mine was going to be that I'm going miss Samosa House, because I love Indian food. There's Indian food everywhere. But there's not Samosa House everywhere. So it's going to be rough. I don't know.

20:17.80 Damien I want to say that I can see these guys because we have video up but we're only recording the audio. People popped at the words Samosa House so that was a very popular answer.

20:28.67 Maya I feel like Santa Monica food is just on top. It's so good. Yeah, that's that's the thing.

20:32.36 Willa I eat vegan food. It's so easy. I mean, that is 1 thing that I really like.

Maya and I are both vegan but I've had chronic migraines and so apparently gluten can sometimes trigger migraines.

So I've been trying to reduce my gluten intake, that would not be possible anywhere else to be gluten free and vegan even for a little bit anywhere else. I would be dead and so that's really nice.

Santa Monica just has so many options. It's a very health conscious place, very into very hippie things. That's very nice for me.

I already talked to you guys about this but Small World Books. The best bookstore on the entire planet. There are 2 cats that live in the bookstore and you can pet them and they're so cute and it's just like a really great small business. I buy every single book that I have on my shelf from there because they are just so wonderful.

Support local bookstores!

21:53.62 Damien And as I mentioned, they've got a great cafe in our pre-interview. They've got a great cafe. It's also right on the boardwalk because that's where I have met people to eat and drink after boardwalk runs.

But I will say Maya…you shouldn't have too much trouble finding good vegan food in Berkeley California

22:12.93 Maya I think I'll be okay but I'll still Miss Samosa house

22:13.16 Damien Ah, yeah, that might be our ah that might be the um winter break catch up podcast with you guys. We'll have to find out if .. how the vegan food is stacked up.

22:22.40 Maya The reunion. Yeah no I will say also just to add to what makes Santa Monica so cool…I didn't realize how accessible like city council members and city staff were to us. Two weeks ago, I'm part of Youth Climate Strike and we had protests down at LA City Hall.

We went to the city council because we wanted to give public comments and present our demands for the strike. It was such a different experience. I'm used to being in Santa Monica City council where all the council members will come and introduce themselves to people and there's like 10 people there, tops.

And there were just like so many people wanting to give public comment but then also like the leaders were coming in and out of the chambers. Most of them weren't even there and if they were there they were on their phones, not even listening. It was insane.

It just didn't really click how lucky we are to have leaders, and I think part of that is also just Santa Monica being such a small city compared to the City of Los Angeles, but I think it still is a very big deal.

23:49.59 Damien I mean compared to LA..but it's got 80000 people at nighttime. That's not nothing. I actually like covering the Santa Monica city council now as an outside reporter for a year and a half and some of the members don't trust us because of our perceived politics.

But, I actually find your council to be pretty fantastic. Members that are on what I would consider the wrong side of the issues more often than not still seem amenable to talking or hearing people out…actually caring about things.

I've seen people change their minds on hot button issues. The single gender bathroom bill that the city passed, second in the country to pass: some council members said some things in the press after it was proposed that maybe weren't super progressive.

People reached out to educate them about the issue and 1 of them spoke extremely movingly about the civil rights struggle he grew up with and how he hadn't seen this as a civil rights issue.

Now, everything has changed. He's what I would consider one of the more conservative members, but he was able to sit there and bring in this experience of his life and see other people struggling and get an understanding and ultimately changed his vote.

I thought it was one of the best things I had actually heard at any city council meeting and said he's not someone that politically would probably find the editorial positions of our publication to be in line with him very often. B

But it was a really powerful thing that you wouldn't see in LA because the politicians stick to their guns as opposed to listen and learn.

So yeah, it is. It is pretty cool. Right?

So we're starting to approach the 30 minute mark and I'm hoping to get 1 more in with you guys before you graduate, but it is only like five weeks away. We'll see in like two weeks, I'll start bugging you to try and pin down a time. But if for some reason we don't get together again as a group. Thank you guys so much for these 2 podcasts.

They were wonderful.

They were fun.

You guys are great and did some really cool work and I said I didn't know that it was going to be the same day as the big event that SMMUSD did to celebrate 100% renewable energy. But that is really cool timing and I'm really happy. You guys were able to make time for me today.

But if any of you have a closing thought or anything you want to say that's. Not on any agenda that I have, you've got 3 minutes and 48 seconds so we hit the 30 minute Mark so you know keep it moving.

26:18.44 Emery Yeah, um, actually could I add something to the first part of our conversation..

Okay, so one thing that I guess I just want to highlight and maya and I kind of highlighted this in our speeches at the celebration event was that we were really happy and grateful that everyone had come together and worked together on this change to make one hundred percent renewable energy in SMMUSD.

But we also look to emphasize that renewable energy is just one part of sustainability and that sustainability is like a process. It's not. :"Oh we did it. It's done. Congratulations, guys."

It's more, "We've done this. That's great There's so much more to do there will always be more to do." I just wanted to emphasize that here because I think it's important to know that um there is still more to be done and there is also cause to celebrate.

27:19.45 Damien And I guess I should warn you Chris has told me she's got all your video speeches from today. So just a warning, I don't know that's it I'll just interview the speeches as though I'm as and we're doing a podcast together. But no I'm kidding I wouldn't do that. That's way too much work. But so you might be seeing those speeches again on our website sometime soon.

Well again, thank you all. I hope we can get together again in June and maybe we'll try again next December too. Ah, but if not, you guys are great. Knock 'em dead. Next year and beyond.

27:54.89 Maya Thank you, and thank you for taking the time to meet with us. This has been really fun.

27:59.76 Willa Yeah, it's always very enjoyable.

28:04.67 Emery Yeah, thank you for putting this together.

Welcome to our new podcast series, Who's Next, where we talk to youth leaders in Santa Monica about the issues that are most important to them. With California's primary election next Tuesday, I had a chance to talk with three co-captain's for Samohi's Team Marine.

The conversation jumps back and forth between a discussion of the election and issues that youth are concerned about nationwide and a discussion of their personal advocacy efforts and those of Team Marine.

I don't want to ramble on too much, so to learn more you can listen to the podcast immediately below, or a transcript of the discussion immediately below that.

Damien Newton

As I said in the intro my name is Damien and we're here with this week's Santa Monica Next podcast. We're gonna be talking with 3 leaders from Santa Monica High School's Team Marine, and they're gonna we're gonna talk about the election, what matters to high school students…specifically the ones we're talking to, but broadly what matters to high school students. Those that are eighteen about what is going to influence their votes both next week and in the fall. We have Emery, Maya and Willow with us today: and why don't we just start off with some brief introductions..

Maya

Hi everybody. My name is Maya. I'm a senior at Santa Monica high school and I use she/her pronouns. I'm one of the 3 co-captains of Team Marine. I'm just really excited to be here, talking about the election and its relationship to the climate crisis and just all of the issues that the youth are really concerned about. I'm glad to be here today and to be able to be in the space to talk with you all.

Emery

Hi everyone. I'm Emery. I'm also a co-captain on Team Marine as a senior at Samohi as well. I'm very excited to talk about different perspectives on the election upcoming and in the fall and express how our communities have reacted to the whole discussion around politics and as emerging voters.

Willa

Okay, hi everyone. I'm Willa. I'm also a co-captain of Team Marine and as basically everybody else said "I'm really looking forward to talking about the upcoming elections" and how youth has a voice in elections even if you're not old enough to vote yet.

Damien Newton

So the timing of this is fortuitous because we do have a primary next week. The presidential election primary is kind of dull in California. We pretty much know who the candidates are for the 2 major parties. Outside of some protest voting, or if you know you're going to vote for the US senate race or something that's a little more exciting.

But when we talk about climate and climate issues, it is one of the biggest factors in deciding who to vote for and 1 of the ways that you can look at candidates and start to see differences.

Emery

I'd say it's an important issue for the youth as a whole.. It's something that is sometimes at the forefront and for some it can probably be a very influential factor. I wouldn't say that it's the only one. There's a lot of different issues. But it's one that at this point in time is getting a lot of attention and that I think does have the potential to sway a lot of votes.

Maya

As youth climate activists, when we talk about the climate crisis. We're not just talking about nature and the environment. But we're talking about our future and the future of our society. And so, when we're looking at different candidates,like Emory was saying, there are so many issues nowadays that we really have to weigh the pros and cons of the stances of each candidate. But I think that the climate crisis has emerged as one of the most important issues, especially for youth voters.

Willa

I definitely agree. I think Maya said it really well. When we're voting for environmental policy, we are voting for our future because this is something that as people who are in their late teens; it's going to be something that is going to impact the rest of our lives and also the lives of many many future generations. That is something that's so important to consider, for me at least as somebody who will be voting in the general election. I can't vote in the primaries because I'm not quite old enough.

Damien Newton

I should have done this before we jumped into climate issues, but.. Team Marine deals directly with climate issues. But I'm going to guess that there's going to be people that are listening to this podcast that have no idea what Team Marine is…I mean Santa Monica high school sort of has a reputation of being a very environmentally conscious school going back to things like WalkIt!BikeIt! which was groundbreaking for bicycle pedestrian advocacy in a high school, to what Team Marine is now. So could you guys just describe a little bit what that is and what Team Marine does.

Maya

Team Marine is Santa Monica High School's environmental advocacy and activism organization. We talk about a plethora of issues. We were founded in 2006 and our main issues are the climate crisis and more specifically plastic pollution. We deal with all sorts of projects nowadays.

We've done climate policy: passing a climate literacy resolution at our board of education this past November. We look at green spaces in the city of Santa Monica and at the waste management practices of our school and school district. We work with teachers and administrators to educate our students. Team Marine is really involved in a little bit of everything 06:30.80

Willa

I just want to add that we um historically started out as a competition team and so it used to be much more stereotypical STEM kind of things. Generations of Team Marine have built a solar powered car, or were integral to Santa Monica's plastic bag ban. We're trying to continue that legacy; not really a competition team anymore, but more of an environmental activism group.

Emery

Team Marines history is largely not so much as a mission driven action so much as passion driven. There's obviously the overarching goal of fighting climate change in the way we can, but that's always been dictated by the interest of people in the club at the given time. It started out as a competition because STEM kids were interested in this as it was more an emerging movement. Now seventeen years down the line, we're doing fast fashion green space climate literacy. Things that members now are interested in.

Damien Newton

You were just talking about their climate literacy. How does that work for a high school club, do you work with other students, is there a curriculum? In addition, do you think there's sort of a general consensus even amongst students that aren't politically active that Climate is something that's going to be the issue, maybe possibly the defining political issue of their lives.

Maya

I think when we talk about climate, there's a general understanding among the majority if not all students that climate is an important issue; but I don't think everybody on our campus grasps the true severity of the situation. That was part of what we were hoping to accomplish with our resolution, just to make sure that everybody gets an adequate climate education that allows them to really understand all of the complexities of the climate crisis, be able to apply that to their everyday decisions and also empower students to become climate activists. My hope is that through that extra environmental education that the resolution mandates;n students will truly understand what the climate crisis is and be able to leverage the climate crisis to make political decisions.

Damien Newton

As we talk a little bit also about elections as we go forward. There is a presidential primary next week, California has a US Senate election. There are congressional races, state senate races, assembly races. How much, if at all and (I will be honest when I was your ageI could probably tell you who my US senators were, and who my governor and president were…but I do not think I could tell you my mayor's' names, and my city council members assembly members or anything like that) but…Is there a greater awareness ah of any of the local elections or is the focus, "oh my god are we really going to you know, have to try to stop Donald Trump from being president."

Willa

Um, I mean I.

Damien Newton

I'm going to make a note to myself. I love that you all look to each other to see who's going to answer this. We didn't have video when I was growing up so there the pauses were actually much longer than they are now.

Willa

From my experience… Emre and I are in an AP US gov class together… and as much as our school tries to make us engaged in politics, it is kind of hard because as young people because we have so many things that seem to come first. I personally am really excited to get involved in voting.

Just like my family has always brought me up to see voting as such an incredible privilege and so it's very exciting for me to be able to use my voice. But from what I've seen most of our age group kind of doesn't really realize that they can actually have a genuine impact even on just local things. As Team Marine we are so lucky because we get to work with the city council and the school board and we are there and involve ourselves so that we can see how we truly can make a difference. Even though Maya and I both can't vote yet, I think we can definitely do better in terms of encouraging people our age to see how they can have a voice.

Maya

Building on what Willa said, and what you had mentioned in your question about this general awareness of who our leaders are, it really comes down to the student or the person. If you want to be involved in politics and be an influence on your community, it's very accessible like Willa was saying, way more accessible than most people would think. But if somebody's not motivated then yeah, they don't necessarily have that awareness of who your city council members are and who your state assembly members are. All of us have been to city council meetings and board of education meetings to testify and give public comment. But I don't think that everybody is engaging in those opportunities and I don't think everybody truly understands that those opportunities are available to them. I think we need to be doing a better job of showing young people "Hey you can actually have a tremendous influence on your community and on the politics of your city" even if, like Willa said, you're not a voting age yet.

Emery

I really like that point that you made about the realization that accessibility is right there. We've decided to go to city council meetings and go to school board meetings because we decided it. No one said, "Oh this is an option. Go ahead and do it." And no one thought to themselves to do it themselves. Talking about Santa Monica high school, there's a big emphasis I'd say there's a very clear political feeling on campus. It's pretty uniform. If you don't have that, or if you disagree with that you're going to be an outsider in some way. That's not to say that you can't fit in, but there's a lot of attention on national issues. Because we're looking so far up, we don't see the local world around us. And we don't pay attention to who gets elected on our city council and our and our school board even though maybe those things do have an impact on the issues that we care about. They're just not ah those things are definitely not as focused on.

Damien Newton

Well one of the reasons Santa Monica Next exists, even though I don't live in Santa Monica, is because it really is a tremendous place as far as the city expresses and is very strong about the values and sometimes it…

Emery

By the youth I'd say.

Damien Newton

…doesn't always live up to them. A lot of times it does, sometimes it doesn't. But it's also a nationally famous city for a city with 80,000 people in it. I remember people telling me, "Hey you know they made a Santa Monica joke on Ted lasso." "You know they made a Santa Monica Airport joke on some other show." "You know, Elon Musk blames Santa Monica for his daughter being transgender…" So what you do with the city,l really matters and it really ripples out because so much attention is paid to the city. It presents a unique opportunity for you all in a way that. Growing up in Reading Pennsylvania, the advocates that I knew in high school didn't talk about testifying and the city council on the school board. It's like what you do actually is going to ripple out more than folks that are in other cities just because it's Santa Monica which for whatever reason has captured the imagination of a lot of people.

Maya

Building on what you were just saying, I think one of my favorite things about Santa Monica is it's looked to globally as a leader in sustainability and so many other issues. One of the beautiful things about being an activist here in Santa Monica and Los Angeles is that really so many other cities are watching us and looking to us to see what we're doing. Like Willow was saying about the plastic bag ban a few years back, Santa Monica was one of the first cities that adopted that. Suddenly so many other cities around California adopted that same plastic bag ban. Then the state adopted it. so I think even though our actions might move people and projects outside the city.

Maya

Seems small on the surface like what we do influences the policies that other cities end up adopting and then it's just this ripple effect. Um, but yeah, really really cool to see.

Damien Newton

We're starting to approach 20 minutes…we're past fifteen… which usually is the point where I ask if there's something that you all really wanted to talk about that I totally missed. But I have a backup question in case, no one has something like that or if you're just too polite to do that to me on our first podcast. So, "Is there anything else sort of related to the election or general values that any of you would like to touch on that we haven't touched on yet?

I'll make it easy, my other question is whether or not you have any predictions for next Tuesday beyond "that Joe Biden and Donald Trump are going to win."

Emery

Specific.

Damien Newton

All right…anyone want to guess whether or not Nikki Haley will get more than…that is 30% of the vote in California or 30% of the Republican vote.

Emery

Oh that's interesting more than 30% what does she get in South Carolina?

Damien Newton

She got 40 in South Carolina but she was governor there, so you would hope that she would do better there than in California. But I think there's more of the Republican Party in California that is moderate than in South Carolina…California is not a major player in the Republican PartY, so it really would be a guess when we want to give it over/under on 30.

Willa

I'm going to say that she goes over thirty, because especially even in Santa Monica, like Emory said, it's very skewed politically. That's something that obviously is true for our entire conversation.

Willa

We're talking about all these environmental things and how our school reacts to politics and environmentalism but we also are the only public school in Santa Monica which is an extremely liberal place so you know….

…We don't represent everybody nationally but I think Nikki Haley definitely could do over 30%. Like you said there are many more moderates here and I think a lot of Californians, even the Republican ones, are unified in the fact that they just don't like Trump. I'm interested to see how it plays out, especially as this is my last year not really voting in the primaries. So I'm kind of watching to see how I can do it next time around.

Damien Newton

I would put it at over 32 for the simple reason that I think a lot of republicans are planning to come out and vote in the US Senate race for Steve Garvey, and I think the more people that vote the lower the Trump share is going to be. He's got hardcore people who will go out and vote no matter what as we've seen, but those more moderate people that are going to come out to try and get Garvey into second place will be enough to bump up Haley's numbers.

Emery

I would expect Nikki Haley to get less than 30% of the republican vote in California mostly because even in the place where she would have perhaps a stronger advantage, she didn't. She didn't win. I think that there we might underestimate or overestimate how overall liberal California is because you have the cities but you also have the rural areas. I don't know well enough to say where but there are rural areas in California but it's my understanding that city centers and more rural areas have the strongest divide.

You can get pretty far to the right even being in California you're just in a different community. I know maybe 1 person who is a member of the Republican party. And he supports Trump.

Damien Newton

I've been to a NASCAR race in Fontana with my son a couple years ago who likes race cars. It was a different world than even in the NASCAR race that's downtown every year at the Coliseum. Going to Fontana, it was like stepping into another planet. It was something else.

Anyone want to give a closing thought?

Emery

In this age where there's a lot of information, as youth who are emerging into our political minds and perspectives. There's a lot of misinformation, disinformation. There's a lot of opinions and it's very easy if you want to get an opinion to just get one handed to you.

What the media is essentially marketing right now. Mostly, "here is an opinion that already exists" and I think that makes it a bit difficult for a youth who hasn't fully formed their own perspectives to get data and come up with their own conclusions. They're not able to get their own perspective because it's essentially handed to them prepackaged.

Damien Newton

It doesn't get better as you get olde. Well hey thank you all so much. I'm going to check in right after the election and we'll let you know whether Willa and I were right or Emery was.

Emery

Okay.

Damien Newton

And I'm hoping to be able to do these, maybe check in once a month on some different topics. Thank you all for being here with us.

This weekend the American Political Science Association (APSA) rolled into Los Angeles for its annual conference. But this year, the annual confab was roiled in controversy as the association was moving on with its conference after Unite Here Local 11 asked them to cancel the conference or move it online in a show of solidarity as their strike and picketing against hotels in the region continued.

APSA's board voted 17-4 to move on with the conference, but move the meetings, lectures and everything else out of the hotels and into the convention center. This was not enough for Unite Here who noted that the official hotels for the convention were the same ones they were picketing.

This was also not enough for many of its members who boycotted the convention. A few, including today's guest Dr. Nicholas Toloudis, came to Los Angeles, didn't stay in a picketed hotel and joined a picket line instead of a plenary.

For anyone just joining the controversy, but finds this topic interesting you can read APSA's statements and messages to members before the conference (here), follow Dr. Toloudis on Twitter (here), read the most confused tweet about ways to not cross a picket line (here), or read some of the coverage of the APSA controversy (here). And for more coverage of the strike and the actions in Santa Monica, we have lots of coverage of that here at Santa Monica Next.

A full transcript of the interview can be found after the podcast.

This week's podcast features Katie Neginsky with the International Women's Resource Center. IWRC is a "community of learning, support, and resources for refugee and immigrant women and their families focused on building joy and momentum." It offers plenty of ways for people to get involved with helping refugees adjust to American culture from teaching classes online, to helping at events, to fundraising. To get more involved, there's plenty of resources on their website.

This podcast is the first of a new series we'll be doing to introduce readers and listeners to non-profits in the region where they can volunteer time and treasure to make a real difference. If podcasts aren't your medium of choice, you can read a transcript of the interview below and Katie wrote a piece for Next about IWRC and the value that volunteers provide people adjusting to, or preparing to come, to America.

In the interview, we talk about two of the websites that they run: their official webpage and curiosity literacy.

But the interview isn't all business! In our "fun" section we talk about both Barbenheimer and how some cultures find peanut butter to be the weirdest thing imaginable.

If you're just joining us, you can catch up on past episodes of Santa Monica Next: Episode 1 with Jesse Zwick, Episode 2 with Kate Cagle, Episode 3 with Rick Cole, Episode 4 with Abby Arnold, Episode 5 with Cynthia Rose, Episode 6 with Daniel Ivanov, and Episode 7 with Jon Katz.

Transcript:

wn 8

Tue, Aug 15, 2023 4:25PM • 35:09

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

volunteers, participants, people, class, work, podcast, barbecue, english language, students, kids, american culture, fun, peanut butter, programming, refugees, la, patsy cline, santa monica, knitting, dolly parton

SPEAKERS

Damien Newton, Katie Neginsky

Damien Newton 00:01

Welcome to Episode 8 of the Santa Monica Next podcast. What's next? Today I'm here with Katie Neginsky with the International Women's Resource Center. This is the first podcast in what's going to be a series that will accompany some articles on the website that's aimed at introducing people in Santa Monica and the westside and anyone who might be listening to some great nonprofits that you can plug into, and you can do some volunteer work . That's going to have some great impact locally, or in this case, locally and beyond. Rather than me going into a large explanation. Why don't we just kick it off right away with Katie, why don't you just tell us a little bit about what IWRC is and some of its recent history.

Katie Neginsky 00:39

Thanks for having me. My name is Katie. And Neginsky and I founded the International Women's Resource Center, or IWRC affectionately, in early 2022. So, we're a young organization just about a year and a half old. We provide educational programming, and community building programming for refugee and immigrant participants. Our main focus is on refugees and immigrants in LA County, and Orange County, but we have three different international programs as well running in different countries. And we have so much fun just providing great educational programming, family literacy, health literacy, workforce prep, and community building opportunities for this population. And all of that relies on volunteers. So all the more the merrier.

Damien Newton 01:41

Now, actually, in our notes, I had that we were going to talk about volunteerism in a little bit, that was the "topic that I want to talk about" for our regular listeners. But why don't we just transition right into that since you just mentioned the volunteers, and you had mentioned when we were talking just a couple minutes ago, that you do an English language learning podcasts also. So there's lots of different programs that that IWRC has that that people locally can get involved in.

Katie Neginsky 02:06

Absolutely. So our program is designed to be very nimble, flexible, and responsive to what the participants request. So we get all kinds of requests from our refugee and immigrant participants of things that they would like to see out of our programming, or materials they would like us to produce or events they would like us to host. And we find a way to do it. And a lot of that is through the very generous, generous work and dedication of our volunteers. Right now we have about 250 volunteers in LA County, the majority of them work virtually as one on one English language tutors. So they submit a short intake form to us about their availability, there background as far as what languages they speak, but it's not required to speak another language, if they have any preferences about the length, first language of the student. All of that sort of fun information. And then we match the volunteer tutors with participants. And then they meet virtually for tutoring, and the students have a wide variety of goals. Some of them are just starting out with English. Some of them are quite proficient, but they want to learn more American slang and conversational English, which is always fun. Some of them want more specific workforce preparation. So we try to match them with a volunteer who works in the same field that the participant worked in in their home country. So everything's very tailored for the best possible experience for the participant and for the volunteer. We also use volunteers to lead workshops or short term group classes online, if they have an area of expertise they would like to share so some volunteers lead health literacy classes or family literacy classes for participants. Other volunteers lead really fun classes like it could be a knitting class, it could be a meditation class, it could be a class about American stand up comedy. All of these topics are really interesting and fun for the participants. And they all help the participants learn English. And usually it's more memorable because it's coming through some fun content. We also use volunteers for our kids club, which is really fun. So once a month. We have a group of kids that meet together and I talked to them about different refugee and immigrant issues so they're learning more about this population. And we have different projects that we do one of them being a birthday kit fundraiser, not a fundraising drive, but a materials drive. So they will go out into their communities or their schools or within their friends and family and collect birthday party supplies. And then we all meet together and have a session of creating birthday party kits. And those go out to the participants so that they have those materials ready to create a fun and memorable birthday party for their kids. So that's another really fun way to get involved with volunteering. We have many more items all listed out on the website that you're welcome to check out. But the main three are English language tutors, the workshop leaders and the kids club.

Damien Newton 05:50

Do you want people that are teachers or certified teachers? Or is this something where people can if they have an interest in helping with this, or even if it's somehow related to something else that they do in life, just be able to plug in?

Katie Neginsky 06:09

Yeah, and anyone's welcome. Of course, English proficiency is necessary. But other than that, we need the volunteers where they are and the participants where they are. So we do have some very experienced English teachers, they may be retired teachers, or teachers that are just finishing their master's in curriculum and instruction and they want some practicum hours in we tend to place those teachers with beginning level students that may be pre literate in their native language. Because that really requires a more structured class. But we have other people who have different specialties. So if it's someone who is never taught before, but they work in tech, then we could place them with a participant who has intermediate or advanced level English and worked in tech in their home country. And maybe this is an area where they can build up common language.

Damien Newton 07:09

As you were talking, I was flashing back to the virtual taekwondo classes. I was running online during the earlier years of the pandemic, remembering those and was like, "I wonder if that's something that would work. Although I'm not really much of a I'm not a formally trained teacher."

Katie Neginsky 07:27

Taekwondo would be great. We've run to yoga classes online in the participants love it. It's all in English. It's a great way to practice the body parts. We had a volunteer who was in India, so we do use volunteers that are in other countries. And he is a yogi master in India, and he led the classes in English for our students in Los Angeles. So that was really cool.

Damien Newton 07:55

No, yeah, that's cool. All right It's been awhile. I'll have to set up my matts outside again.

Katie Neginsky 08:17

I love when volunteers bring their passion or their hobbies. Like I mentioned, the knitting, this one was really popular. We collected all the materials that the students would need to knit, and mailed them to all of the students that enrolled and then one of the volunteers would sit and do knitting classes with them virtually. And some of the students already knew how to knit and maybe they could embroider and so and they were very experienced in that area, or some of them were new to knitting. But they liked the community aspect, and they liked learning the English vocabulary for something that they were interested in. So really, anything could be a class as long as it's held in English.

Damien Newton 09:00

You do allow people of all all genders to take the classes or is there a focus or children is it just children and women are included together?

Damien Newton 09:17

The The classes are for adults of any gender. But the kids club is for volunteering. So we do want to make sure we can get have opportunities for elementary and middle school aged kids to volunteer with us. So that's how we do it.

Katie Neginsky 09:45

But we do have we do host some family literacy events throughout the city and when we do that, then the participants are welcome to invite their children. So typically the children of the Refugee and Immigrant participants are not participating in the English language programming. But they are welcome to attend the family literacy events that we have. So for example, we had one event in Griffith Park where a children's book author came. And everyone received a copy of her book. She read it to the kids, and she walked them through an art activity. So we do a lot of things like that. That's, again, the emphasis is on community building, and family literacy. And then there's an opportunity for families to participate together.

Damien Newton 10:41

IWRC isn't just local, and one of the transitions here and weeks, if I remember correctly. And for IWRC related work, because this isn't your only day job. What is it that you'll be doing while you're overseas?

Katie Neginsky 11:02

So IWC works quite closely with the State Department and quite a lot of embassies and the embassies, the US embassies all have a program called Regional English Language Offices that they shortened to RELO. So they look for experts in this field to help them develop English language programming in other countries. So they contract with us often to provide training for English teachers in to write curriculum for students. So right now, we're doing a lot of curriculum writing around English language learning and American culture, which has been really fun to think about: how do we want to present American culture and not rewrite these normal textbook texts about this is the fourth of July. This is Thanksgiving, like, this is not true American culture we're trying to get get below the surface a little bit. So we have videos and curriculum, and a podcast, that's all English language and American culture. And that is being used internationally. And then we also have all the same programming that's available to IWRC participants in LA. We have programming for women who are displaced from Ukraine, but are still within Europe, and are applying to come to the US or Canada. So in this way, they're able to start thinking about workforce preparation in English language learning, while they're waiting for for their papers to come through so they can come to the US. Then we have programming in Africa for South Sudanese in Congolese refugees who are in Uganda, and a third program for women displaced from Myanmar who are in Bangladesh and applying to come to the US or Canada. So all three of these are intended to give those participants tools to either self study or have an online tutor in the US, help them prep before they arrive in the US because the typical model is for refugees and immigrants to be resettled. And then they start English the day after they arrive. And it's quite stressful. So we're trying to take advantage of that time while they're waiting for their paperwork to be processed. So I do a fair amount of traveling to go and check on those programs. And on Friday, I'll be leaving for Geneva to do some work at the United Nations Office, but also to meet with two partners from Kyiv, who helped with the Ukrainian project. And then in the fall, I'll be going to Moldova to work with the on the Ukrainian project as well.

Damien Newton 13:59

I mean, this is pretty amazing. Like the officially the nonprofit has existed I think you said I mean, for less than two years I can do that math is pretty quickly in my head. And you have a pretty thriving local program and an international program at the same time. With some crossover between between the two. Is there a is there a secret you can share with me about how you expanded so quickly?

Katie Neginsky 14:23

I think the the magic in it in was, again, the this platform of wanting to be really responsive to what the participants need and listening to the participants. And we weren't trying to reinvent the wheel. There are a lot of really fantastic agencies and service providers in Los Angeles County who do fantastic work with refugees and immigrants. However, they do have some restrictions based on their funding model. So a lot of them can't provide certain services or or they can only provide certain services for a short amount of time. And then they can't provide those services if the participant moves out of the state. So we've just wanted to design our funding so that we don't have those limitations. And that makes us able to provide services that are a complement to those agencies. So we work very closely with all the resettlement agencies in LA and some of the other service providers. And that way, we can be sure that we're not duplicating services, but we're complementing services. So we've really struck a need that was there. So it's just taken off really quickly. And a lot of that wouldn't have been possible before COVID, because it wasn't so common to have so much virtual programming. So now timing and design this, is the magic combination.

Damien Newton 16:04

We should have done this about six or seven minutes ago. But we talked you talked a lot about the different ways that people could get involved. And we will have again, the links with the text accompanying in the podcast, but what is the website where you go, the first portal, someone should go to if they want to? If they're interested in volunteering, is it obvious from the IWRC webpage? Or should they be going somewhere else?

Katie Neginsky 16:27

Yes, it's quite clear at the website is IWRCenter.org. In there is a tab that says "Get Involved." And that has all of the different volunteer roles. It also has information. If you would like to pass out flyers within your community to let participants know that we exist and that our services are available to them. We can work with refugees, immigrants, asylees undocumented people, we don't have any restrictions. Or if you'd like to host a fundraiser or if you want to get involved with the kids clubs are helped spread the word in any way. Or if you have other ideas. Again, we're super flexible and responsive to the participants. But that extends to the volunteers as well. So if you have ideas, I'd love to hear them.

Damien Newton 17:22

Right. I sometimes will shorthand nonprofits that just their initials. And I should remember that the iwrc.org takes you to the Iowa Waste Resource Center. So IWRCenter.org

Katie Neginsky 17:35

They sound very important as well, but very different.

Damien Newton 17:38

Yes. different missions. Yeah. I remember it was one of the Iowa colleges that had that too. But anyway, yeah, cuz of course, I punched that into my internet when Natalya first introduced us and was like, oh, that's probably not right.

Katie Neginsky 17:52

They they preempted my handle. Yeah.

Damien Newton 17:55

I believe the Los Angeles County bike coalition's Lacbc.org is something weird, too, which is why there something else. But yeah, we got Streetsblog first. I guess some people in New York got Streetsblog first, but they became friends with us. So I think that kind of wraps up the sort of basics. If people want to learn more, they should really go to the IWRCenter.org. There's some information that's in the essay that wasn't here. I don't want to preempt it too much, because people should read the essay to that you wrote. And there's contact information all over the website. For people that have more questions, or all of any of that. It's really cool work that you do. And I said, as we were talking, I was thinking of ways that either possibly me or some of our events we do at our church might be able to cross over we have a quilting group. So as you were talking about knitting, that was natural...

Katie Neginsky 18:46

oh, I have an idea. Oh, light bulb, so we'll talk about it. All right. I'll add if there are any teachers or participate possible participants tuned in, if we have a little section of IWRC that we fondly call curiosity literacy. And if you go to that website, curiosityliteracy.com, which you can get to it from our regular website as well. We have a full curriculum that we've written, and it's translated into several support languages. So Ukrainian, Russian, Bangla, Burmese, Swahili, Farsi and Dari. So if you are a teacher who's working with English language learners, and you would like those materials, they are all available for free. You can download them as fillable PDFs. We have an amazing graphic designer, and so they're very beautiful. And they're designed for adults, and they're all trauma informed, and they're really fun and interesting. Those are great resources for teachers, but also for any English language learners who would like to study independently. They're designed to be used by either group.

Damien Newton 20:10

So we're running up against what I always joke is our artificially created time limit. Because, you know, it's the internet, we can go as long as we want to. But we do try to keep the podcast to about 30 minutes as three segments. So that again, very easy math. We are recording on Back To School Day in Los Angeles. And so I all four of our combined kids, you have two also,

Katie Neginsky 20:33

yes, nine and five. So all four of our combined kids are away, hurray

Damien Newton 20:40

...at the moment, which means we can talk about them in our fun question segment. So one of the things we've asked a lot of people that have been on this podcast, that are involved in politics about their kids' future plans are what they do and how they tie into that. So you, obviously, a passion for you is creating volunteer opportunities for people. Do either of your kids have a volunteer activity that they do regularly? Or have just started doing something like that, that you really enjoy and that they enjoy?

Katie Neginsky 21:17

Yeah, great question. My parents really emphasized this when I was growing up in rural Appalachia. So it looked different than it does in LA. But that was really instilled in me from an early age. So want to make sure I do the same with my kids. My son is very into marine biology and sharks right now. So he's been going to the Heal the Bay Aquarium camp in Santa Monica. And it's really fantastic. They talk a lot about conservation, and they do beach cleanup. He's five but at least for now, he's very passionate about this. My daughter has really taken a page out of her aunt's book her aunt is Natalia Zernitskaya, who ran for Santa Monica City Council.

Damien Newton 22:15

She might run again one day to.

Katie Neginsky 22:17

I believe so. And she's very passionate about many things, but especially housing. And my daughter is very interested in this issue as well. And she is adamant that when she is old enough, she will become involved in politics in that she will be the one to solve the housing crisis in Santa Monica and LA.

Damien Newton 22:39

I mean, I hope we'll have it figured out by then. But I mean, that's a good goal.

Katie Neginsky 22:44

So y'all, y'all have nine years to figure it out. Otherwise, my daughter's coming in?

Damien Newton 22:48

Oh, yeah. Coming in hot. All right. Um, so on the same sort of thing talking about volunteerism and young people. I was gonna say you were young once, but you might still think of yourself as young I'm old enough now...You were you were younger ones. Do you have you come to have some sort of of history or background in volunteering when you were a child?

Katie Neginsky 23:19

Again, in rural North Carolina, everything's attached to the church. And my mother was very involved with the church. So we did so many, so many different activities, through the church to help serve the community. Samaritan's Purse is based in my hometown, so we did a lot of volunteer work with them as I was growing up. Additionally, my dad had an oncology practice in North Carolina in a rural area. And my mom was a hospice nurse. And so, it was an interesting area to do this sort of medicine, because not everyone has running water in their house. Not everyone has electricity, not everyone has a phone. So if you're working with a patient, before, you can think about a medical treatment plan, you also have to think about reducing some of these barriers they have. So they really instilled this ethos in me of serving the whole patient in order to best treat them and I really take that to heart now in consider serving the whole student. When I have ESL students in my class, I'm thinking about making sure that they have stable housing, that they have food security. All of these things, of course, are really important if they are to learn in class. So that was a big part of my upbringing.

Damien Newton 24:45

Um, so generally, we call these the fun questions, but they're more get to know your questions, but we haven't really hit anything. I think that's super fun yet, so why don't we do more of an easier fun one. All right. So I turned my phone off and my computer text message just dinged so there we go. Um, you know, I'm gonna leave that in so people don't think I'm getting too professional

Katie Neginsky 25:11

humanizes you.

Damien Newton 25:12

Oh yeah, absolutely. So is there anything interesting that you have read or seen in theaters recently? Maybe a summer Boobook orker, a recent movie I guess you have kids maybe you I don't know saw Spider Man this summer now he's probably too young for Spider Man.

Damien Newton 25:29

No Spider Man yet. I did. I did indulge in the the Oppenheimer Barbie combo ... not in one day, but two days apart. Yeah, I Barbieheimmered. So that was great. I thought that that was cool to have this almost monoculture moment in the US that everyone could come together. over And then before we started the podcast, I was gushing about Dolly Parton. Because I recently re listened to the Dolly Parton's America podcast, which is a mini series. I think it's eight episodes. And it's so fantastic. It's of course she is our queen. But the podcast is all about how she is relevant across barriers. And I think it's really important in the US as it's so divisive here. And as I'm thinking of how to present American culture to new Americans who are arriving, it's hard to do without thinking about divisions. But Dolly is popular regardless of wealth, education, sexuality, gender, anything. I mean, she's fantastic. Everyone loves her. And they have data to back it up in the podcast about how she's beloved across all division. And, yeah, she's so fantastic. And I actually am going to be making Dolly Parton brownies today. I don't know if y'all know she has it.

Damien Newton 27:04

Oh, and she has a cornbread mix too.

Katie Neginsky 27:10

It's good. If you're gonna make something out of a box, Dolly does it right.

Damien Newton 27:13

Maybe coconut cake. There's another cake. Coconut Cake?

Katie Neginsky 27:16

I've made it. It's great. Okay.

Damien Newton 27:22

We've done the brownies also. But we haven't done the other two yet. But is as I was relaying we're I don't know that I call said "Dolly Parton family" but we've had we're all big supporters and fans of the amazing work she's done with her life. You know, from country music star to adult literacy and youth literacy champion, like, what's not an absolutely what's not the love

Katie Neginsky 27:45

And all the students that have from around the world? No, "I will Always Love You." The Whitney Houston version. It doesn't matter what country they're from Mynamar, Ukraine, Uganda they know and love this song. So of course I have to let them know who wrote it.

Damien Newton 28:00

That's That's right. Don't let them don't let Celine Dion and get away with anything.

Katie Neginsky 28:05

Whitney Whitney?

Damien Newton 28:07

Oh god, I'm thinking My Heart Will Go On which Kenny Rogers I think anyway.

Damien Newton 28:12

Well, maybe I'm wrong here. I'm going to look it up later. But I remember Celine Dion wasn't the one who wrote that someone else did. But anyway.

Katie Neginsky 28:25

If Kenny Rogers wrote My Heart Will Go On that would be the greatest fact of my week.

Damien Newton 28:30

Ya know, Kenny Rogers wrote Patsy Cline's big hit "Crazy." So I don't think he also would Celine Dion's big hit.

Damien Newton 28:37

Patsy Cline. We're about to start a music class at IWRC. And I've just been really excited about all of the American music we can introduce the students to.

Damien Newton 28:48

I don't remember how but somehow Patsy Cline fell into my CD collection in high school. And it's always shocked people knowing me throughout the years that I can belt out like six or seven Patsy Cline songs. So I'm a terrible singer, that I'll just sing Patsy Cline to people that like whoa, that's, I guess it's not part of my part of my look or something.

Katie Neginsky 29:08

I love this area of music. I really wanted to name my daughter Loretta, after Loretta Lynn. But I was vetoed.

Damien Newton 29:21

So we only did three questions, but we had multiple answers to them. And we're again running up against our artificially created time limit so I'm gonna call it three as people that have listened to the podcast our tradition is you can turn around and ask me one of the questions which is both to stop me from asking super crazy questions. And also to give people that listen or read a chance to know me a little better so that they can better understand where we're coming from with our stories. It's okay not to ask me something this is actually the first time we haven't had a question about food in our in our fun questions.

Katie Neginsky 29:53

Oh, this is a good topic. Can I ask you something you did not ask me.

Damien Newton 29:59

I mean I guess it's there's no hard rules.

Katie Neginsky 30:03

Okay, so if you were going to talk to one of my classes with students from all around the world and they ask you what is American food? Because they all come into class and say hamburgers, and then I, I am campaigning that this is not. Of course Americans eat hamburgers, but we eat other things as well. So what is something quintessentially American to you? That's not hot dogs or hamburgers,

Damien Newton 30:28

I would say we like to cook outside as a country. You know, if you don't live in an area that's too cold, we do really like putting things on grills, which would lead to hot dogs and hamburgers, but I would have gone with I wouldn't have gone with either of those, I would have gone with barbecue. And it's something it doesn't have to be meat, you can have barbecue on lots of different things. And both, you can take that to either mean the sauce or go back to my cooking outside.

Katie Neginsky 30:57

Regional because in the south, barbecue is pulled pork. Yes. And it's not a verb.

Damien Newton 31:04

And there's a lot of places that would also say that to Kansas City, St. Louis,

Katie Neginsky 31:10

but then Texas, it's going to be different.

Damien Newton 31:12

But right but we'll also you know, barbecued ribs. I grew up in central Pennsylvania, if you said barbecue, there was a 50% chance you meant ribs. And then other people just say you know something on the Barbie, you know, which I know is the bad Australian accent. But you know, we barbecued shrimp just usually mean shrimp on a stick. It can but doesn't necessarily mean there's barbecue sauce on it. So I would go with barbecue and let that be an expansive that you can go regional categories. Yeah, it means ribs or pulled pork or you can go that it just means on a barbecue.

Katie Neginsky 31:48

In North Carolina, we usually won't use barbecue as a verbal site cookout. Yeah, I'm gonna cook out. But that's the fun and the beauty of the US in the English language. You know,

Damien Newton 32:03

and I actually looked up other other cultures and eating outside once because as ridiculous as this may sound there's a part in Mulan the Disney movie which my daughter loved where she was. She was trying to prove she was a guy to the other soldiers and she lists off a bunch of random things. And one of them was I like to cook outside and at that point, they're all talking over her. Is that something they would have done in China there is I always sort of maybe it's because again Central Pennsylvania I always picture like, you know, outside with your circular barbeque grill covered in charcoal. But yes, they do do it in other parts of the world. But I still I always imagined like you know, Hank hill or me or with our with our propane or charcoal barbecues. You know, trying to cook something that you can cook just as easily inside.

Katie Neginsky 32:57

Yeah, absolutely. But it's way more fun.

Damien Newton 33:01

I think so too.

Katie Neginsky 33:02

These are all the all the fun topics we get to dig into in class. The other one the students mentioned is peanut butter, because this is horrifying to a lot of populations. And they don't understand Americans need to put peanut butter and everything.

Damien Newton 33:17

Yeah, you know, though, you could use peanut butter as a base with some oil. And to make a lot of Asian peanut mixes in Thai and Chinese and Japanese

Damien Newton 33:29

Southeast Asian students that I have like from Myanmar. They they're fine with peanut butter. Yeah, Eastern European students don't horrify or not on the peanut butter bandwagon. Especially that sometimes it's salty. Sometimes it's sweet. Like it's in smoothies. It's it's in all the things. So we recently had a class where we were talking about peanut butter in this as the guys to talk about George Washington Carver in the contributions of African American inventors in the US and then talk about race in the US. So usually, I start every class talking about food, and then Trojan horse some more substantial American culture pieces into the class.

Damien Newton 34:20

My significant other in college was Korean. Like her parents were from Korea. She wasn't born there. But her older sister was and she said that American peanut butter is like the the secret cheat. Don't tell if you're if you're having an Asian family over and you're making a peanut sauce recipe and use peanut butter. It's totally okay to do because they won't be able to tell the difference unless you tell them and then don't. And what a weird way to end our podcast. So again, yeah, it's IWRcenter.org or curiosityliteracy.com was the other web you mentioned and again all of that stuff will be linked in with the text that accompanies the podcast and thank you so much for being with us today

speaker 2 35:05

yeah thank you

The What's Next podcast is back, and this interview is a doozy. Featuring Democratic Club President Jon Katz, we have a wide ranging conversation discussing everything from how the Dem. Club makes endorsements and gets involved in issues, how Santa Monica IS safe, and even why Leslie Nielsen does a great job playing the President of the United States in Scary Movie 3.

If you prefer to read a transcript, a lightly-edited (for clarity) copy of our discussion can be read here. The audio is embedded at the bottom of this post.

And of course, we also discuss the Unite Here! and other hotel strikes happening throughout Southern California. Our next podcast will feature a worker explaining why they are striking and what they hope to achieve through direct action.

But in the meantime, the local dem club is making waves itself. The club announced this weekend that five members of its executive board were appointed to Standing Committees in the California Democratic Party (CADEM). These include:

Dan Hall, SMDC Vice President for Political Action, was appointed to the Justice, Equity, Diversity, Inclusion (JEDI) Committee, Susan Sheu, SMDC Vice President for Communications, was appointed to the Platform Committee, Natalya Zernitskaya, SMDC Recording Secretary, was appointed to the Rules Committee, Caroline Torosis, Santa Monica City Council Member and elected CADEM Executive Board Member, was reappointed to the JEDI Committee, Anastasia Foster, a Santa Monica Rent Control Board Commissioner, was appointed to be the Vice Chair of the Credential Committee.

If you're just joining us, you can catch up on past episodes of Santa Monica Next: Episode 1 with Jesse Zwick, Episode 2 with Kate Cagle, Episode 3 with Rick Cole, Episode 4 with Abby Arnold, Episode 5 with Cynthia Rose and Episode 6 with Daniel Ivanov.

A recent article at Next discussed the Rent Control Board and how next week they are expected to vote to increase the rent by up to 2.8% for properties governed by the city's rent control laws. To explain the process by which increases are set, the value of rent control for a city such as Santa Monica and other matters related to the vote; we brought on Rent Control Boardmember Daniel Ivanov for this week's episode of What's Next.

If you have any issues with your rent, or questions for the Rent Control Board, Daniel asked that we print his email address so you can get in touch with him directly. You can do so, here : [email protected].

In addition to rent control, we also discuss crime and public safety in Santa Monica and how some politicians and media outlets skew the perception of these issues for their personal gain. And of course we have five "fun" questions to help you get to know Ivanov, and myself, a little better.

If you're just joining us, you can catch up on past episodes of Santa Monica Next: Episode 1 with Jesse Zwick, Episode 2 with Kate Cagle, Episode 3 with Rick Cole, Episode 4 with Abby Arnold, and Episode 5 with Cynthia Rose.

Below is a transcript of the interview from today's podcast.

Damien Newton (DN): So I'm Damien Newton, we're recording on Zen caster with Daniel Ivanov. Thank you for being with us today. You were just elected to the Rent Control board back in November and we're about to vote on your first rent increase. How exciting. Daniel Ivanov (DI): Thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

DN: All right. So as I said, I believe the June 8 meeting, which if we put this up, tomorrow, June 1, will be one week away, is the first meeting where you're going to be voting on one of the rent increases. The rent increase is much smaller than it was last year. But I think some people who might not be listening to this might not even completely understand how rent control works. So could we start off with just a very brief primer on what rent control is, what sort of the controversies were last year and how that sort of been solved for this year? DI: Sure. It's called the GA, so a general adjustment. And this year, the GA is going to be we announced that our last meeting is going to be 2.8%. Now, that's a mathematical formula using the consumer price index that the rent control agency calculates. So the board doesn't necessarily approve or deny the 2.8. The 2.8 is what the rate is using the formula. What we can do at our next meeting on the eighth is we can set a maximum dollar amount cap, which this year, if same thing doing the same calculation, it would be $67. So that's, that's going to be all at our next meeting on the eighth, there's going to be a public comment period for the GA, and then we're also going to vote on our budget to approve that for the new fiscal year.

In terms of where we've been, and kind of how we got here. I think a lot of people remember that last year, around summer of 2022, I want to say July or August, we got hit with the news that the GA last year it was going to be 6%. And 6%, in my understanding, is either the largest GA figure that we've had in decades, if not ever. And so part of the reason why I ran and a proposal that eventually got onto the ballot was measure RC, which would have kept that 6% to 3%.

Thankfully, voters passed that overwhelmingly in November, I believe it was like by a 70 to 30% margin. So that was good news. That got passed, we got that implemented essentially right after the election. A lot of renters in Santa Monica felt that relief right away. And so, moving forward 3%, which is always going to be the cap. We ended up coming off at 2.8 this year. Thankfully, inflation stabilized a little bit year over year, which is part of why we got that lower rate. DN: So let's take it back into a little bit more basic level, if someone's listening to this and GA's, and rent caps, and all that seems strange, either they just moved to the area or they happen to be in a unit that's not rent controlled. Rent control is a big part of Santa Monica's history.

The city has its own political party that's basically "the rent control party." And until 2022, excuse me until 2020. They basically won every election, and they had a little bit of a hiccup. And then they did pretty well again last year. Like every level: school board, rent control board, city council, like they win on this issue, but let's get a real brief explanation of what is right and control. It's been around in Santa Monica for 50 years, sort of the very basics of how it works and why you have a rent control board that goes through all of these different things to try to keep the rent low for a large segment of the population.

DI: That's a great point because Santa Monica is the oldest rent control jurisdiction in the state. I mean, there's only about 14 in the whole state. We've had it since about 1979. And we're the first ones in the state to do it. Fundamentally, what rent control is, at its most basic level, is it essentially sets a cap either at $1 amount figure or a percentage about how much your rent could go up year over year.

It stops landlords from implementing exorbitant rent increases of 5% 10% 15%, I mean, crazy figures like that, right? So the GA, for people that, you know, don't know all the nuances of all those mathematical calculations, the GA is that cap that comes out every year, that tells you how much your rent is gonna go up that year. But it cannot go more than that. That's the ceiling that is going to be set so that you will not pay more money than that cap.

I think you asked, "Why is it necessary to have a rent control board? Why is it necessary to have an agency do these functions?"

We are already currently in Santa Monica…we are already pricing out doctors, lawyers, engineers, people that are traditionally upper middle class, right. And so we need some mechanism, some agency in the city that tries to level the playing field. We need someone to try to stabilize things a little bit. And when I'm talking about doctors, lawyers, engineers getting priced out. I'm not talking about, you know, retail workers or food service workers. If middle class people and upper middle class people are struggling; we're where our lower middle class people and those striving to break into the middle class, how are they doing? We have to figure out what kind of city we want to be. And what I mean by that is, Santa Monica can easily become like, a Malibu or the Palisades, where, if you want to live in Santa Monica, the only feasible way of doing that is being a celebrity with a multimillion dollar income.

I don't think any of us want to live in a city like that. I want to live in a city where middle class people can, can put down roots, you know, live thrive, raise a family. Those that are striving to break into the middle class have an opportunity to do that. So it's a value statement, right? I mean, it's just we have to decide, as a city, what our values are. And I think the rent control board is on the front lines of trying to level that playing field to make it just a little more equitable, to get more people to be able to afford to live here.

DN: It was interesting, because when you were mentioning the potentially exorbitant rent increases, you'll see in some places you said 5-10-15%, but that five is actually lower than what it was last year, with a rent control board. Which is, I guess one of the reasons why you got interested in running and one of the reasons the City Council put out, Measure RC, and it didn't seem to have much trouble passing. It got wildly high approval numbers.

DI: Correct. And to your point last year was really a very unique situation. That GA is calculated based on the Consumer Price Index, which measures inflation. And last year, we had the highest inflation rate in this country, probably since the 70s, and probably in over 40 years. So that really was an anomaly. That was, you know, a very unusual circumstance. But I'm glad that when it happened the voters in Santa Monica, you know, rose up and implemented a change to make that burden a little easier for renters in our community.

DN: It always it always feels like such a struggle to get certain things past but it really did seem that this is a core value that very few people were willing to budge on. A couple of weeks ago, I did an article on the 2.8% increase, which I think I still call the proposed increase, even though it's pretty much locked in because it's a math formula, not a political calculation. I talked about how the opposition to RC was really just landlords, the rent control party was for it, the Democratic Party was for it, the conservative columnist at the Mirror were for it…like everyone was for it, except for like, a handful of conservative really, really conservative groups. And the people that want to raise the rents more than 6% or more than 3%.

DI: Yeah, and I want to touch on one more issue because. You mentioned the RC and the 3% is kind of one of the one of the reasons why I ran. I want to talk about another issue I ran that was happening simultaneously around the time that 6% GA announcement came out. We talked about this before together as well. But last summer,I believe this was August of 2022. Somewhere around there. There was a proposal in the city council by councilmember Lana Negrete. That was introduced around, I think it was like three or four in the morning.

DN: It was, yeah, 11th hour as well, is how we referred to it, and someone actually said to me, it was after the 11th hour.

DI: And her proposal was a little more complex than how I'm going to describe it, but at its most basic functional level, so that people can understand: what it what it would have done was it would have means tested rent control. What means testing means essentially, is that instead of every single person getting the same benefit of what that GA is going to be, her proposal would have basically created these different income thresholds and brackets, where depending on what the thresholds were, and where and where you fell, based on your income within those brackets, people would have got some people would have gotten a certain amount of relief, other people would have gotten a different amount of relief. And some people would have gotten no amount of rent control relief whatsoever, because their income would have been considered too high to qualify, depending on the thresholds.

And so, just think about renters last year in Santa Monica, you know, first they got hit with the news of like, we're gonna get a 6% increase. It's the highest increase we've had in decades, if not ever. And then at the same time, almost simultaneously, they get this news that the city council is thinking about, potentially, getting rid of rent control whatsoever, and having people not qualified at all. Part of why I ran and part of why I'm serving on the board, is it remains to be seen if counsel is going to explore anything like that again. But, I just want to make it known that I will do everything in my power on the rent control board to put a stop to any kind of effort like that. And preserve the essence of rent control the way it was originally implemented in 1979. And has been throughout the decades in our city.

DN: It was certainly an election season last year where it felt like there was sort of a progressive push back after the 2020 election was an outlier as far as the city's politics go.

But we've already gone a little over 12 minutes. And we try to keep these to 3 10 minute ish segments. We just did the segment I wanted to talk about and you wanted to talk a little bit about public safety and our experiences in the city and how maybe the way that the public safety discussion is being framed by some of the loudest voices isn't the most productive.

I'll say to people listening a couple of weeks ago, when we met for the first time, we walked up and down the Promenade in the middle of the day, and basically had a discussion about how, it's not the experience of casually walking up and down. The promenade was a very comfortable and safe experience. There were plenty of open shops and things to do. I was writing down restaurants that I could bring them back and bring my kids to that evening. But sometimes when you hear the Promenade discussed, it sounds like Thunderdome in Mad Max, and we've got our masks and our flame throwers. And it's a very scary, terrible place.

That wasn't our experience on that day. And I think you're saying for the most part, that's not the experience.

DI: Yeah, well, so the reason why I raised this issue, and you talked about kind of the loudest voices, you know, saying these things. I bring it back to the last election cycle, you know, in 2022. You know, there were certain candidates, I remember in particular, Armand Melkonians, was running for council at that time. And every time that I saw him speak, whether it was at a debate or you know, at some kind of forum, he would essentially, you know, paint this picture, like you've said that Santa Monica is like this hellscape that's, you know, extremely dangerous and no one feels safe walking the streets. And this one line that he would always reiterate that rubbed me the wrong way, especially was, …he would talk about how he walks on Ocean Avenue all the time. And the parking lots are completely empty. No one's there. There's no tourists. The Promenade is empty. And that, you know, that was his bit. He said that no matter what time of day it was, whether he was going on a weekday on a weekend, morning, afternoon, evening, whatever, no matter what time of day it was, it was always like that.

The reason why I say it rubs me the wrong way is because I literally live on Ocean Avenue. My apartment building is on Ocean Avenue. I walk Ocean Avenue every day. I walk, you know, the trail by the pier almost every day. And, it's just not true. I mean, it couldn't be further from the truth. Every time I walk down the pier by the trail or on Ocean Avenue, the parking lot is jam packed. You cannot find a parking spot, do you go down towards Montana with those parking lots. Same thing, there's, there's not one spot to be had.

Same thing with the public beach parking right outside Santa Monica Beach is always packed.

And to your point, when we walked the Promenade, you mentioned that, you know, it might be a little less people than pre-pandemic. And that could be partially due to the pandemic, I can't, you know, attest to that, because I've only been in Santa Monica since 2021. So I don't have a frame of reference pre-pandemic. But I've lived here for, you know, going on two years now. I've never had a situation where I felt like I was walking in a ghost town where the streets were completely vacant. And frankly, I've never had a situation yet where I was ever walking in the streets and just felt unsafe to be outside. I'm not trying to say that Santa Monica doesn't have its problems.

I'm not trying to say that we're some perfect utopia that doesn't have issues with, you know, public safety and homelessness, and we have our problems every city does. But I think this notion of just painting, you know, Santa Monica with this crime ridden picture, and we talked about John Ali's billboard on the Promenade as well. It's not productive. If you care about those issues, those scare test scare tactics, those fear mongering tactics are not doing anything to productively solve the problem. So that begs the question, you know, why are we doing them? Or why are the people that are using those tactics? doing them?

DN: I always do like to qualify that, you know, I am a six foot two middle aged male who is in good physical shape and teaches martial arts to children. So maybe I'm more confident in situations that other people would find scary. But three times a week I'm running Ocean Park, Pico Boulevard, sometimes even Olympic, 17th Street, I'm running the streets, you know, it's dark out. And I don't feel intimidated or scared. Like, I might run into a homeless person sleeping in a doorstop, or something like that. Or someone might shout something at me, but it's not scary. It's like I live in a city. If I wanted to avoid all of that, I suppose I could live out in the forest somewhere where I grew up, but it's not. I don't have these kind of "Oh, my God vibes" when I'm out doing it. And I said, I'm out early in the morning.

DI: Yeah. No, I completely agree with you. I'm not going on runs like you are, I probably should be. But like I said, I walked the trail a lot by the beach. A lot of days in the evenings after work. Sometimes, weekend mornings, you know, are also different times of the day. And yeah, I echo your experience. I just haven't had those kinds of issues.

DN: Yeah, maybe we're just both too intimidating.

DI: Yeah. Or we've just, you know, gotten, you know, crazy lucky over this amount of time. But I don't think that's the case.

DN: Well, I mean, because when we talked, I talked about crime rates with people. You know, we talked about the city and the county and all of that. I do like to point out, you know, anecdotal information, which is a lot of what news reports are to is not always the best way to judge things. For example, the odds of getting shot in California are lower than the odds of getting shot in North Carolina. But there's not breathless news segments about the murder rates in North Carolina, like there are about Los Angeles and San Francisco. I'm sort of lumping Santa Monica into greater Los Angeles, but there's a perception, because these are dense places with a lot of people.

So those crimes, it's obviously always a horrible thing when something like that happens, but when you're in a county with 11 million people, you know, statistically speaking, that's going to happen. But then you have the news reports and you have people that take what's in those news reports and blow them up into big news.

I'm sure the Observer's article on whatever it was that happened at the pier the other night where some, I guess there was a stabbing in the evening hours, I bet the Santa Monica Observer story reads very differently than the Daily Press story, which is very different than the SMPD press release. But all that sort of stuff can create a perception for people.

DI: Not to get, you know, to necessarily be political on this. But if you actually crunched the numbers per capita in the aggregate a lot of red states like Oklahoma end up having higher murder rates, higher gun violence rates than states like New York, California. That doesn't always, that doesn't always make it into the headline.

But if you actually look at the statistical data, you know, that's just kind of where the numbers fall.

DN: So we're now past the 21 minute mark, which means it's time to ask fun questions. Hooray for fun. For anyone just listening or who has always turned it off right after I say "fun questions." Our ground rules are that these questions are usually supplied by readers. If we don't get good reader questions, or we don't get five good reader questions, I usually fill in with variations of questions that have gotten us fun answers in the past.

As always, Daniel has the option to turn around and ask me one of the questions at the end of the five questions, which is both a way for you, the listeners, to get a better sense of me the editor/podcaster. And a way to sort of make it so that I don't start asking totally insane, zany personal questions that no one would ever want to answer, because then there's a chance I would have to answer them, too. So are you ready? Are you fun?

DI: I am ready. I think I can be fun.

DN: So I have tried and failed several times to get good restaurant advice from people by doing this. Finally, Abby gave me a good one last time. And so I don't want to say what it is because then if you say the same thing, people will be like, "Oh, whatever." And then I find fun ways to ask it. But I'm just going to be blunt this time. What is your favorite place to grab a bite to eat in Santa Monica?

DI: So my absolute favorite restaurant in Santa Monica is called FIA. F-I-A it's on Wilshire. It's my favorite dinner spot. That's my go to great food.

DN: All right, and when you and I met, we met at a coffee shop. And I'll tell people I went to the wrong coffee shop with the exact same name. It was in Century City instead of the one in Santa Monica. But I have a feeling you just say its name now so I'm not going to ruin it and which will we'll go on with? I know you like to drink coffee. So what is that? What's the best coffee spot in the city as well?

DI: Well, before I answer that, can I know what your favorite restaurant is?

DN: Oh yeah, we're gonna go right to that. Well, my favorite restaurant to eat has good food but it's not…I don't think it's the best food in Santa Monica. It's really good. I'm a big fan of Il Forno for a couple of reasons. One, my kids love to eat there and my in- laws love to eat there. So I end up there a lot. The other thing is you can often find Supervisor Sheila Kuehl there with Judy Abdo. Just sitting there eating together, they do it a lot. And I always go over and say hi to them, and they recognize me. But the thing is I'm not.

I'm friends with Judy. And I barely know, Sheila. And so when I do these conversations with them the joke, it's not really a joke. They always say that I'm the one who's there to chat with Judy. And I'm like, "Oh yeah, and hi supervisor."

And then, Judy and I chat and catch up. Pre-pandemic, I'd see her, you know, a couple times a month. And now I see her a couple times a year. So it's always fun to see her and catch up and to have that little bit of time where someone is there to chat up the friend instead of the you know, the politician. Of course Judy is a former mayor. So I imagine she's got plenty of people that know her very well and her work with Forward as well. But I do like going there with my family and friends and just going there plus their $10 takeout lunch is a hit for somebody who lives a mile from there and works from home.

DI: I'll have to check it out. Because I haven't, I haven't been there yet. So I gotta check it out.

DN: Yeah, it's right on Ocean Park like I think around 28th or 29th. Since the Starbucks down the block from me closed it's also where I go to pick up Starbucks when my kids want Starbucks for breakfast. So anyway, now we're going to talk about better coffee than Starbucks now.

DI: Yeah, yeah. So coffee spot…I really like Blue Bottle Blue Bottle coffee. It's on Santa Monica Boulevard. They have an iced sweet latte. I get the same thing every time. I'm not even interested to know what else is on them. I knew because it's like the best one. So yeah, that's my go to coffee spot.

DN: So this one might end up being a little self promotional-for you. But that's fine. As long as you keep it fun. You are young, and you've won an elected government position as a young person, and you're good looking. And I can tell from talking to you, you're smart. So when you look in the mirror, do you see a future President of the United States or a future county supervisor? Or are you really passionate about rent control and see yourself doing this for as long as you're not term limited out and then, you know, calling it an elected official career?

DI: That's a very flattering thing for you to say, I really appreciate that. I definitely intend on serving out my full term on the rent board. And I mean, I'll just be honest, in terms of next steps, I'm still kind of figuring that out. I don't know. But I'm very interested in public policy. I'm an attorney. I think a lot of those skills are transferable to, you know, politics and public policy. I definitely have an interest there. And I have considered you know, potentially running for some higher office in the future. I don't know how all of that is going to shake out yet. But it's definitely something that I've thought about doing and exploring for sure.

DN: Question for and we've asked variations of this to Kate Cagle. Someone else I can't remember who now, which is you're a lawyer by trade. Do you have a favorite television or movie or some other sort of pop culture lawyer that you'd like to tell us about?

DI: There's a lot I love. I do love legal shows, legal dramas. I think probably one of my favorites would have to be Harvey Specter on suits. I don't know if you've ever watched Suits before.

DN: I don't have USA but when I was younger, I think I had it for like a season or two of it. It was on rotation. After Burn Notice, I think…

DI: I love Suits. Love Harvey Specter. I love the Good Wife and the good fight spin off. Do you watch this show at home?

DN: My wife and I really enjoyed the Good Wife. We never we didn't have Paramount+ when the good fight came out. And now it's sort of on this like List of TV shows. We're gonna get around to watching one day. I'm familiar with The Good Wife characters, and I know that some of them crossover.

DI: Yeah, definitely. If it's on your list, I definitely recommend getting to it. Favorite lawyer from that show would have to be Diane Lockhart. I think she's awesome.

DN: She crosses over right? She's the Good Fight…she's the star of

DI: She's one of the main characters and you know, I just admire her on this show cuz she's like this, liberal democratic warrior, you know, an attorney and fighting the good fight. I mean, that's, that's the, you know, the name of the show. And yeah, so she's probably one of my other favorite TV lawyers out there.

DN: It is May 31. When we're recording this, hopefully, it's June 1, we're listening to this, which means we will have just gotten out of Bike Month. Did you do anything to celebrate Bike Month and I will tell you that we scrapped this question in our last interview because the person did not do anything for bike month, but that's okay. Because you don't have to. Sometimes Bike Month is in our heart.

DI: Yeah, no, I'll be honest, I did not do anything to celebrate Bike Month either. I probably should have. But I am curious. What you would have done to celebrate, like,

DN: What I would have done? What makes you think I didn't do something?

DI: I mean, what you did, I didn't phrase that properly. What

DN: If anyone is listening who listened to our May 1 podcast will know when we had Cynthia Rose with Santa Monica Spoke, I promised I was gonna get out to one of the Handlebar Happy hours and I did not. Those are Thursday night after work events that they put on throughout the year but they do one a week during Bike Month are great events. I haven't been to one since the pandemic started for Spoke and I will get out to one this year. I promise some personal stuff came up. So may I call for an apology for that. But my kids' school here in Mar Vista, we have the best Bike to School Day I think in the city...it's not as big as bikeit!/walkit!/busit!…I'm sure they've added scootit! and some other "it's" to it by now…it's not as big as the one they have in Santa Monica.

But one of the things we do, because we have a lot of kids that bus into the school or drive into the school. Yeah, we still have school buses for the school. A lot of kids do that. It's a French Immersion School, only one of the areas where we get lots of kids that come from far away for it. So we actually partner with a local church that lets us use their parking lot as a staging ground so people can get dropped off. And then bike to school with a ride that the one of the school administrators…super popular administrator leads. Another school administrator leads a walk from the church, so everybody can participate no matter how far away they are. There's some bike events that happen on campus that I'm working, so I don't get to manage what we do.

So I organized that this year. And it was back to its original numbers, we obviously didn't do it in 2020… in 2021 numbers were pretty low. But by 2023, we were back to our full numbers. And that was a lot of fun. And I look forward to it every year and the stupid kids are getting older and older every year. So eventually, they'll probably ask someone else to do it. Because you know, my kids will be in college and it'll be weird and creepy.

So that's, that's it for our fun questions, and you got me to do two and you did four. So that'll have to make up for Rick Cole not asking me anything. Thank you so much for being here. Of course, we're going to cover the June 8 meeting. And we look forward to following and talking more about what the rent control board does, because you do meet more than once a year and I think it'd be interesting for people to hear some of the other stuff that you guys do. I mean you're elected officials on the ballot. It's not like you're a neighborhood association or one of the appointed boards or commissions. This is a full elected position, city-wide position. And I think the more people know about what it is you guys do; the better everyone will be. It's good for democracy and I learned a lot talking to you last couple of weeks ago that we didn't get to cover today. So we'll probably have you back sometime in a couple months to continue to fill us in.

DI: I would be glad to. Yeah, thank you so much. This was a lot of fun. I really enjoyed it and you know for your your viewers and listeners if anybody has any questions about their rent or issues with their landlord, whatever. You know, my city emails on the rent control website on the city's rent control website, by all means email me ask me questions, whatever you need.

DN: And we'll put that email right in the text of the article that accompanies it. So if you're listening to this on Spotify, or Apple or something like that, instead of just off of Santa Monica Next and you don't have text, go to SantaMonicanext.org. And if you scroll down a little bit, there's a podcast section. Even if you're listening to this a couple of weeks from now. You'll be able to find this podcast pretty easily and there's a link to his email right in there. Alright, so I'm gonna say thank you, and we'll talk to you soon.

DI: Thank you. Looking forward to it.

Welcome to What's Next, Episode 5 featuring SM Spoke's Cynthia Rose. Cynthia has been involved in mobility, street safety and environmental politics in Santa Monica for decades and we're happy to have her join us as part of our coverage of Bike Month!

If you're just joining us, you can catch up on past episodes of Santa Monica Next: Episode 1 with Jesse Zwick, Episode 2 with Kate Cagle, Episode 3 with Rick Cole and earlier this week we dropped Episode 4 with Abby Arnold.

A full transcript of today's podcast can be found right here:

Damien: Welcome to Episode 5 of the What's Next podcast for Santa Monica Next. May is Bike Month and we are celebrating by having Cynthia Rose, the longtime head of Santa Monica Spoke and probably the most recognizable advocate for safe streets and bicycling in Santa Monica as our guest today. I'm not going to waste too much time with the intro. Cynthia and I had an over half hour conversation. So let's get right into it. Here is What's Next Episode Five with Damien Newton and Cynthia Rose.

Damien: So as we said in the intro, it is Bike Month and we have Santa Monica's longtime head of Santa Monica Spoke, Cynthia Rose with us today. Welcome to What's Next and happy Bike Month.

Cynthia: Happy Bike Month to you old friend. Good to be here.

Damien: I'm gonna be honest. When we were doing the "five fun questions." I had a question of, "Could you describe the first time we met?" But I realized that I couldn't remember when that was. I actually went through old Facebook posts. And I was like, "did we meet at the vegan fundraiser for bike month and 2011?" Or was it before that?

Cynthia: I can't think of when we...I just I can't think of when we met either. Yeah, it's been forever. Remember some of our first events together like for "Airport 2 Park" when your kids were just like babies in car seats? There is a picture of...car seats in bucket bikes. I should rephrase that. Yes.

Damien: And there's a picture of you at our first Santa Monica Next fundraiser, pre Jason Islas when Gary Kavanaugh was our editor. So yeah, we go back.

Cynthia: Wow. Yeah, yeah, old times old friends. Old times. Good friends. Oh, good times.

Damien: The friendliest intro I've done and I had Abby on last week.

Cynthia: Abby's my She-ro

Damien: Yes, Abby's an example, I point to a lot about advocacy. And we talked last week. I don't know if you had a chance to listen to it because we just aired it on Monday, and we're recording on Wednesday. But we had a whole section talking about developing leaders and the next generation of leaders. I've tried to follow the example that she did but I did not do the best job with that even when I was trying to be intentional earlier in my career. I was trying to get Carter Rubin to take over all this like five years ago and instead he's far more successful than me so I definitely messed up.

Cynthia: Well, I'll say that for us at Santa Monica Spoke and the Santa Monica Safe Street Alliance we're really focused on nurturing and empowering our youth leadership for the Santa Monica Safe Street Alliance. To be a mentor and bring them on and empower them to be the leaders within the Safe Street Alliance. So we're going to be looking to them to help us guide that entire project moving forward

Damien: Santa Monica has a long history of youth leadership on the issues of bicycle and pedestrian safety. I remember Bike It! and Walk It! Before we added "bus it" was a huge undertaking taken on by Santa Monica High School students and became sort of a national model for how to do bike to school. I still see it referenced on webpages in other parts of the state for Streetsblog California, or when I'm putting together materials for my own schools', walk-bike to school day.

Cynthia: That was Rachel and what was ...

Damien: I know they're probably in their 40s by now. Right?

Cynthia: No, they're still young. But you know, and they were also honored by President Barack Obama....

Damien: I remember that. That was an early Santa Monica Next story. I think maybe even pre-G that might have been when we were still in pre- launch.

Cynthia: My partner, my co host, co host, ha. My co-chair at the Santa Monica Safe Streets Alliance is Chris Gutierrez who led the Climate Action Youth Collective, and now we're focused together again, mentoring and empowering the youth with all the many facets of advocacy and government. And where they connect and intersect with climate and housing and mobility and all of those things, trying to put it all under one big intersectional bucket of topics.

Damien: Now, usually when we start the podcast, there is a format: one topic I want to talk about, a topic the guest wants to talk about, then our five fun questions. I usually go "yay, fun." But now this ties way better into your topic than mine. So why don't we do your topic first? We were talking about getting people involved in doing outreach, and how it's often harder to get people involved that are happy or content with something than it is people that are upset with it. Because people that are happy and content are focused on enjoying something, and maybe aren't going to public meetings. So let's transition into that because kids are usually not a group that you can get involved in things outside of advocacy in their school, or advocacy on national issues, like climate change, or gun control. So how do we get happy people more involved in things?

Cynthia: You know, that's been the egg that we've been trying to crack for a decade here in Santa Monica. We have done, I think, proudly, we have done so much good work, that many folks are happy and think that it's all going well, and that they don't need to pay as much attention and be engaged. And I think the flip side of that, as a lot of us know in advocacy work, is that every step we take forward is a hard fought step. And it may look easy from the outside. But it's a lot of work and a lot of interconnected dots, a lot of advocacy, a lot of education, a lot of just so many interconnected issues. And then on launch day, it all seems pretty and beautiful. Cynthia: And people go off and, and go and have their happy day. And the only people that stay engaged on either a project or the direction that things are going are the people that are angry, and the people that are mad that they feel something is being done wrong, or the roads are being taken away from them, or whatever it is. They remain engaged and vocal. And the people who are just so pleased that the way things are going just go on about their happy way and enjoy the infrastructure. And that literally has been our hardest thing to just continually navigate is keeping people engaged and trying to let them know that their voice is still really really important in moving us continually in this direction of of more equitable, sustainable mobility, safer streets, above all for everyone and how those things interconnect with the climate, and housing, and, and environmental justice, all of those things are just so intersectional and interconnected. And that's what we're really aiming to do with the youth core because the kids get this. Sometimes the part that they don't get is how mobility is connected to it. But the groups that we're seeing now really do get that they realized that if they can't move about how do they get to their job? How do they get to play? How do they get to here or there without using methods of mobility that they probably want to move away from, which is fossil fuels and things like that.

Damien: Now, I think it's interesting. So speaking of Barack Obama, he used to have this "Don't boo, vote," he would say. He would be giving a speech and mentioning Mitt Romney, and then everyone would boo, then he would go, "Don't boo, vote.: I think a lot of people, maybe especially in our generations, do the "Don't boo, vote." They vote, and they vote for the good people. And if the good people win they sort of think that's enough. In Santa Monica, with the exception of the 2020 election, where the world was in chaos, there was a huge reaction to the protests and the police crackdowns in Santa Monica, and the election was swayed because of that. Generally, the loud angry people don't win elections in Santa Monica. And I think a lot of people think well, that's enough. We have a good city council, we can go. And yeah, yeah, but that it's been sort of a different mix. It's been more of a split City Council the past couple years. And that's, I think that it's hard for some people to sort of gear up for the type of advocacy you're talking about because they think things are going okay.

Cynthia: Yeah, it's, it's definitely a challenge. We need to figure out how to keep people engaged with not just the vote, but following along with the people that not only they vote for it but the people that get into office, how they actually vote, how they, what voices are they looking to guide them. Are they being open and equitable to all of the community, or are they focusing in one area or another. And I think that that is, particularly for a group like Santa Monica Spoke, we're a 501 C three we do not get into and we will never get into politics. We can't, it's against the law.

We can't advocate for or endorse any candidate and never have. But what we can do is open ourselves to relationships with any council member that wants to be authentic in their conversations about the issues that are important to us and our community. And we can elevate those. Those conversations...we would elevate and we would share that with our community. And we cannot, we never show preference, we won't. But we also don't embroil ourselves with people who are opposed to what we're doing, which is making the streets safer for everyone. And that includes people walking, biking and driving their cars.

Damien: So we sort of had a conversation on their SGV Connect podcast at Streetsblog la about different types of outreach and what they could do with a group that was working on the 20 Hills landfill Park project. Now, it's pretty easy to get a lot of positive feedback when you're literally talking about turning a landfill into a park. Actually, probably even easier than turning an airport into a park. But they said that they wanted to do things differently, though, for their outreach. And so not only did they do a lot of rides, and a lot of activities, they would sometimes do things they didn't announce and just go out to the trails and meet people that were on the trails in the park surrounding Puente Hills go to the landfill and talk to people that were there, unannounced. So it wasn't like a public meeting or anything. It was literally like spot checks. Santa Monica Spoke has always been really good about having different rides and activities as a place to meet people. But I was just wondering what you would think as far as the city goes in doing outreach now, what should Santa Monica be doing to make sure that the loud angry voices assuming they're not the majority don't dominate the conversation?

Cynthia: I think with the pandemic's cities have started to pay more attention to making sure that the voices that are heard are not just the voices that show up to council meetings. That's one of the silver linings that we are able to take with us away from the isolation of lockdown. We can look to having more outreach that is beyond the typical suspects and the people that have time. I think it's for us, it's always been, we need to figure out how to meet people where they are. And it's a challenge. And for cities, it's going to be a challenge for us. You know, we know that when I am around like a school, say for instance, anytime between drop off, pickup and drop off, I am amazed at the at the increase in the people who arrive by bike, cargo bikes...it used to be when I rode around Santa Monica, I would see a cargo bike and I knew every single one. It's like, "Oh, I've seen that guy before. I've seen her before. I've seen them before." These days, every time I go out, there's a new cargo bike, not only the person, but the type of cargo bike. So going to schools and really engaging with those people is something that we've always wanted to be able to do. And that's one avenue that we tried to do with the Safe Routes to School. But again, these things are heavy lift, nothing is easy. So I don't mean to make excuses. But we need to keep we can never stop trying harder. But I think the baseline is we need to meet people where they are, we need to give people options to engage. And above all, we need to stop listening to only the group of people that show up because they have the same group of people, and also the loud and angry voices. If that's 10, if that's you know, 25 we're a city of 90,000 people; that's clearly not the majority. They're just the loudest. So we need to really find those voices, and those people that are not necessarily actively engaged. That leads into something that we've talked about before in our struggle To connect with our community at which, you know, we run into people on the street, and they're like, Oh, your Santa Monica spot. I love you guys, you guys are doing a great job. It's like, "Keep doing your good work." No, "how can I help?" Sometimes we're getting that. But in Santa Monica, as I said before people who live here or move here it's because of the type of infrastructure because of the way the city is being built. And even though they may ride their bike for many or all of their daily activities, they don't necessarily self identify as a cyclist. And therefore, they just let us do the work. And they just kind of feed a little bit of information in here and there. But we've continued to struggle on how we can connect with them more directly, so that they can understand how important their voice is, in keeping us going in the direction that we've been headed. That was a long answer.

Damien: That's a great answer, though, man, don't sell yourself short. Besides, I feel like we've already pretty much covered what was supposed to be my topic. But let's do it anyway, officially, which is Santa Monica is being held up right now as the city in California for good bike infrastructure. It's the place you know, maybe some of the folks in NorCal are gonna argue about Davis or the, you know, the Central Coast people talking about San Luis Obispo, but I've been hearing Santa Monica a lot more. And there's that great video that we're probably going to post tomorrow that's been making the rounds. About how things are going in Santa Monica. Does Santa Monica deserve this level of praise? And whether they do or don't? What should they be focused on right now as I'm talking about a city, like from a staff level? What should the city be doing to keep going forward?

Cynthia: So firstly, to address do we deserve the accolades of being like the next Amsterdam or however it is that they're putting it. I am also the Chair at Cal bike, as you know. And we have infrastructure. That's brilliant, all over this state. And we have cities like Davis, we have cities like Long Beach, we have what was the other example you used?

Damien: San Luis…

Cynthia: San Luis Obispo, beautiful, beautiful bike infrastructure. Santa Monica is very unique. We are a very dense beach town .We're on a grid. We have busy streets and neighborhood streets almost completely across the city. So long way around? I am beyond proud of the work that we've done in Santa Monica, and the work that the city has accomplished in the time that we've been working with them. And I think that we deserve the accolades that we've been getting. Does that mean we should rest on our laurels? Or that we've done everything perfectly? No. We have some definite deficits that can and should be addressed. And hopefully, we're starting to tick those away. But in the broader answer to the question, I think that the mobility team, previous and current and the city itself has done an incredible job of really focusing and moving towards the future. And for the most part, the council has been completely supportive of that since 2009, that we've been that we've been involved with ...quite literally every bike project and area plan, and anything that even remotely could possibly touch mobility

in the city of Santa Monica . So then I think there was another part of that question.

Damien: In the short term, what should the city be doing? What should the focus be right now? And maybe you're going to tell us what something they're already doing. If there if things are moving in the right direction, still,

Cynthia: I think that things are moving in the right direction quickly. Santa Monica has always been really great at getting grant funding. They are good at getting grant funding and use it you know, to their best advantage. We have, we have so many projects in the pipeline right now, that are a result of tons of outreach. Well, tons of outreach and and and really listening to the community on what they want to see. The Wilshire safety study. This may, we're going to start seeing some real implementations that are as a result of that year long process of looking at Wilshire Boulevard, through the lens of how do we make this safer for everyone.That's primarily a car centric Boulevard. So we need to focus on pedestrian improvements where there's bike crossing infrastructure that we'll be focused on. But we're also going to be focused on making vehicular traffic safe, so that when drivers inevitably make an error, that it doesn't result in serious injury and death. And that is the whole purpose of like Vision Zero, and safe streets: designing the streets so that when errors do inevitably happen, the results are not catastrophic. I think the city is applying for a grant to do the same sort of thing on Santa Monica Boulevard, which is another high injury network within the city. And we would go through the same process where we're engaging the community and all the businesses along the corridor, hopefully working with us again at Santa Monica Spoke to do a lot of that outreach, and then formulating that into a plan on how we can improve the street so that everyone is safer.

Damien: Alright, so ready for five fun questions.

Cynthia: Oh, God.

Damien: So we have a rule on this, which is, after we're done, you can ask me any of the five questions also, which is both so that the people listening can get to know me a little better, because I'm not quite as public figure as my predecessors at Santa Monica Next, and partially to make sure I don't ask anything totally insane or inappropriate, because I wouldn't want to answer that question either. If it's something that's very unique to you, we might modify it a little bit. So it makes sense to me. And as I,

Cynthia: I'm on bike month preparation noodle brain. So hopefully, I can even remember the questions after we're through. So that's going back to you.

Damien: And I already told you that I answered the fifth question, which maybe we'll just switch around to make the first question now, which was about first time riding a scooter. So we'll start with that we'll go in reverse order. So have you ever ridden one of the famous Santa Monica e scooters and if so, what was your first trip on the scooter like?

Cynthia: So two confessions, I have never written the scooter

Damien: Neither had Rick Cole.

Cynthia: I have done scooter training. And we have organized through our partners at Lyft. Long ago, we did scooter training on the bike path. And all my favorite things were that we had a we did it on the Santa Monica Beach Campus, the bike campus, which is at the end for folks on the line who are listening, it's at the end of Ocean Park at the beach. There's an access road that has been painted with a bike lane and bike obstacle courses so that you can get better at riding on the road, get better and learn how to ride on the street without actually being on the street. So we held the scooter training there. And we had a roadie come by on his expensive road bike doing the beach path and he stopped to check out the scooters. And he was hilarious. He just loved it. He got his helmet on and he's got his spandex, from you know, fully kitted out with his spandex. And he's riding as if he's riding fast, although he's riding at the appropriate speed along all the way through the obstacle courses and doing the things he had a blast. I came back around to answering the question Finally, since I booted it, kind of kicked the can down a little bit. I have never ridden a scooter at this point. They're really just not for me. But my job I think as an advocate for shared mobility and multi mobility, which I do believe that I fully embrace, is that just because I don't want to ride a scooter doesn't mean that that someone else is not their absolute favorite way to get around. And I think our job as advocates is to make sure that people have options that are appropriate for them. And I think that for us that also means holding accountable the companies that offer these options, making sure that they're being authentic partners to our community. Whether that be safety, or or just the way they implement their scooters and making sure that they're keeping them, not only safe from, for the people that ride them, but safe for the people that need to navigate around them when they're parked on the street. And I think the city has done a pretty good job also at kind of improving that as we've gone along. Some people, maybe at this point, don't remember: we are ground zero in Santa Monica for scooters. Bird launched here as the very first place ever. And some people forget that. We couldn't have been ready for something that we didn't know existed. And I think that's something that we've said often is we are going to continue to be outpaced by technology. And we need to make sure that we set policies in place that are flexible enough and dynamic enough that we can be that we can react to keeping our community safe. And one of the ways that the city worked on that was a pilot program one and two. I served on the task forces. And then also figuring out where we park them with our mobility hubs that are painted either on the sidewalk or on the streets. We really give a visual cue on where people need to park those so that we keep them safe so that people are not tripping over them. And they're not causing a danger for people who may or may not write them, but definitely our most vulnerable in our community.

Damien: All right, question two, what is your favorite Santa Monica reference in pop culture?

Cynthia: I am not a pop culture person. I love the fact that Santa Monica is progressive, is rooted in sustainability. And that is and I think all things can come from that. If we focus on the main objective is to take care of and take care of mother earth. And I think Santa Monica has continuously proven you know, with ebbs and flows in leadership, but the consistent trajectory has been in the right direction. That's one of the reasons that I live in Santa Monica and I love it here.

Damien: All right, that's the opposite of a pop culture reference.

Cynthia: Thought it was the opposite today. I'm sorry.

Damien: That's in April. But all right, we'll keep moving on. Now. I've been trying to use this series to help people find good restaurants. One question has always revolved around food and restaurants trying to get people to give tips on best places, places they'll miss the most. And I've had mixed success and getting people to give up good places. But I know you're vegan. So what's what's your what's your what's your go to vegan place in Santa Monica?

Cynthia: There are more vegan places than there used to be. But unfortunately, I'm not sure which ones have survived the pandemic. So I'm a little cautious on that. But I think one of the things that I can say on just eating vegan or having, you know, an alternate diet is one thing I'm pleased about. A lot of restaurants are finally having good vegan options. I don't necessarily have to go to a vegan restaurant to have a good meal anymore. So places like Dagwoods have several vegan options. I would say that a little bit of that was prompting from people like me, but regardless. What is it Pono…no, what is it the burger that place the burger place that starts with a "u."

Damien: Umani

Cynthia: It is okay. They have they have Beyond Meat burgers. There is a wonderful vegan Thai place on Lincoln that probably is one of my favorites. Truth be told, but I really like going to what you would call a regular restaurant and and being able to have a vegan option. So what is it called? It's a pizza place that's near it's right near Santa Monica Brew Works has full on vegan pizzas and they are phenomenal. My favorite thing is to introduce my friends to a vegan option. and have them say this is some of the best pizza I've ever had. Or this is some of the best fill in the blank I've ever had. And it's happening more than it happens all the time.

Damien: So alright, I until you started talking about DAGWOODS I was like, this will be the fifth time I asked the question only Abby Arnold's given me a straight answer, but alright, you picked it up.

Cynthia: I think it's I think it's me squared, the one that's near Santa Monica Brew Works it really amazing pizza.

Damien: I don't know that one. I'll have to check it out.

Cynthia: Well, we have a Handle Bar Happy hour there in two weeks.

Damien: So that's good, because I was trying to decide I want to try to go to them. We do martial arts on Thursday as a family usually. And so it's tough, but our class ends at six. But it's basically on the LA side of Pico and Centinela. So it's not too hard to get into Santa Monica afterwards for dinner. So maybe we can take the beach path, maybe the expo path, maybe that'll be the one we do.

Cynthia: We'll be outside on the patio.

Damien: You're usually not hard to find a handlebar happy hour. I've never. I've never used to pre pandemic I went to one a year and I never was like, Oh, we've been here since the end everybody. Now that's never happened.

Cynthia: I'll take that as a compliment. Good. You can always see the bright shiny faces and then all the helmets around. So

Damien: For a long time you were wearing color coordinated clothing. So yeah, always purple. Yeah. All right. That's an easy, good transition, because the next one was my favorite bike month memory.

Cynthia: Oh, favorite bike month memory? Ah ha, I have so many. I think that one of my favorite, one of our proudest moments for bike month was 2018. Maybe around that, 2019 was a good year also. I organize and kind of coordinate all of the bike month activities in the city, usually with city partners, like "Buy Local." We work with the city always because we, you know, we consider them a partner because we all work in the same direction with the mobility division. But we had 20, over 20, I think 22 pitstops, just in the city of Santa Monica. And I think that was quite a and that was not including all of the bike month specials, all the bike month promotions that different businesses were hosting. I sit on the steering committee for the TMO, the transit management organization, and we really work with, we've connected with the local businesses and really helped focus on, you know, alternate mobility options to reduce traffic. I mean, that's the whole impetus of that, but also in helping support Bike Month. And a lot of them have come through on that. And when you looked at the map of LA County, you saw this blob in Santa Monica, and we had more pit stops there than in any concentration anywhere in the county. So I think that would be a favorite memory is other than that it's just I it's just like month is always just especially Back to Work Day is the time where I kind of have to buckle down and work because I want to interact and I want to be there for the community as opposed to out there doing something that I would maybe be doing just to have fun. Although it is fun.

Damien: And last, this is the one that's most specific to you is your grandma. I like saying that. And we've asked versions of this question to other people also. But what do you think your grandchild's first public comment is going to be about and you told me she's in Colorado now.

Cynthia: Both of my grandchildren are in Colorado now. They're just adorable. Kids, they're so cute. But I both like bike riding and I'm assuming that it would have something to do with safer streets but they're both so different. I would and I Yeah, it's a public comment would be something about protecting our climate and Mother Earth. I think I really think that they would focus on something that was about Mother Nature

Damien: That makes sense. Fits with the family profile as I understand it, so that works well.

Cynthia: Our very first critical mass ride was my grandson's very first time on a bike. I bought him a new helmet. I think he must. I don't know if he was under the back of my bike. So I'm in the kids seat. And he got his helmet and he slept with it. He was so excited. So those pictures when I think of that's not bike month,

So adorable. In those pictures. I still use those pictures today. Because he's just beaming. He's so happy.

Damien: You're there. Your other organization used a picture of me with my kids on a fundraising appeal, like two years ago. And that was like a picture from like eight years ago. So yeah, I hear you...

Cynthia: Was it the one with your daughter in the cargo bike?

Damien: My daughter and son in the cargo bike where they're holding their hands in sort of a victory pose while I'm pushing them. Yeah, that one's that one's I've seen used. And with my blessing and permission. And I love that picture. It's one of the few pictures I've actually gotten printed now that you know, we're all digital and stuff.

Cynthia: Kids are our future. And I really think that you know, we focus, as we were talked about earlier, about empowering the youth, our youth leaders, and those are, you know, high school and college students. But really, the kidical mass rides and the Safe Routes to School stuff that we do, which is education and encouragement for families to be able to get out there on their bikes and move themselves around sustainably and safely. But the kids are our future. And we really focus a lot of our work on just empowering them and, and really our view our mission is to make the world a safer, better place for them. Our battle cry out, do you remember what our battle cry is for critical mass?

Damien: And I don't. I've been to too many in other cities, they all bunched together.

Cynthia: Our battle cry is I say, who are you? "Who are we?" I should say, "Kidical mass!" And then I say "who are you?" and they yell "THE FUTURE."

Damien: As soon as you said "Who are we?" I could hear the rest of it in my head.

Cynthia: And that's really it. They're our future. And we need to work really hard to make the planet and our streets and our cities and our towns and everything a better safer place for them.

Damien: Well, we are super over already. So I guess. So if you want to ask me a question. I have fast answers to all of them.

Cynthia: You kind of answered them as we went along. We had the picture of you in the bucket by the kids. What is your favorite restaurant?

Damien: In Santa Monica or my favorite vegan restaurant? I can't do a favorite vegan restaurant in Santa Monica because like you I'm just not familiar with what's open and what's not.

Cynthia: Okay, so what what's your favorite vegan restaurant

Damien: I am a West Side cliche in that I really enjoy the food at Cafe Gratitude. And I do find it super weird to go there and order based on my emotions or whatever it is they want. I roll my eyes at all of that sort of stuff so hard I'm worried I'm going to spray them, however I do really enjoy the food there. I used to do meetings there pretty regularly when we were starting Santa Monica Next because I wanted to do the meetings because I wanted people in Santa Monica to have access to them but I didn't want you know Santa Monica people snooping on me. You know in case Santa Monica Now was going to also launch a new site. It is a little weird for me, but I really liked the food. So yeah, cafe gratitudes. were my favorite vegan. This is a good vegan place on in the on the Mar Vista Great Street and I can't remember its name, but I've been there a couple times and always enjoyed it too. And I should always promote the great street.

Cynthia: But tell me what that is so that I can try visiting it.

Damien: Yeah. Oh, no, it's not it's not a vegan restaurant. It's a Mexican restaurant where I get their vegan Mexican pizza.

Cynthia: And I think you know, I love that I love the fact that vegan food is just so much more mainstream now that you can actually get it in so many restaurants.

That's one thing I can add, maybe about Santa Monica. We made a commitment as a board years ago that at any of our events, we would only have vegan food. And that's not because necessarily I'm vegan, but our job is to expose people to different modes of mobility, and to be conscious about how that affects the planet. And we felt as a board and most of our board is not vegan, that shows giving people the option to try vegan food. Because as you well know the implications of non vegan food on the planet was our way of also sharing that another sustainable option for folks for our community.

Damien: Yeah, I've been to I've been I've been I think a handful of the fundraisers I've been to for Santa Monica Spoke over the years. We're at vegan restaurants. So I hear you. All right now we're super over our time. So I'm gonna thank you very much for the chat today I will commit and we will announce on the Santa Monica Next social media when I can make some handlebar happy hours. I'm going to try to make one or two of them. Awesome this month, although probably not tomorrow, or Thursday's, the one at El Indio's even though that's the one I really, really liked that place just because I'm running a marathon on Sunday. And my diet is very strict for the next five days.

Cynthia: They're so cool. Like Gilbert's family owned restaurant. Yeah. The most loved business forever. They're awesome.

Damien: Yeah, so have a good time tomorrow. Thank you for recording and I will see you this month and of course we'll have this up and posted in the next 48 hours.

Cynthia: Wow. All right. Thank you. Great catching up.

Damien: Great catching up.