Protect our neighborhoods!

We must protect our residential neighborhoods from outsized development that does not fit into the fabric of the neighborhood. From mega-mansions, to workers from neighboring commercial streets scrambling to find parking and, of course, the auto-trailers on mid-city residential streets, enough is enough! We know our communal well-being is suffering in Santa Monica. Noise pollution is just one of the many types of pollution we suffer through. On top of that, there are the indignities of having to buy a parking permit to park on your own street, watching your new neighbor build a house the size of a small shopping mall next to your 1950's ranch style home, and having your street become the only way out of town for workers desperate to get home at the end of the day.

When do our residents have a voice? It seems you are ignored every day in the City you chose to live in, with high mortgages, out of sight rents, and fees that border on usury. Let's make a pact now. All pre-schools must open in a neighborhood only with the consent of the people who live around them. Large private schools can't double glaze their windows to stop the noise from their students from permeating into their classrooms without doing the same for the neighbors' homes surrounding them. No new commercial developments should be approved without sufficient parking to keep their customers and employees on their own premises. And, if Santa Monica College or our noteworthy hospitals want to intrude further into the residential areas then they must pay for our parking permits. Who decided that a business can destroy the peace and solace of a neighborhood, our ability to park and to enjoy our yards? - and then we still have to pay to park on our own street!

Apartment dwellers need green space within ten minutes walk of their house and a children's playground close by. We also need to make sure that new apartment buildings re-establish the feel of the garden and courtyard apartments that were the norm in Santa Monica fifty years ago. Why are we allowing new apartment structures to look like barely assembled giant Tonka Toys? That's not how any of us should be living in our beachside town!

It stops now!