But old assumptions that Brown’s main foes would be environmentalists and trial lawyers have been undercut repeatedly in recent weeks. Instead, perhaps his most formidable obstacles to making the Golden State more hospitable to new construction are local officials eager to maintain control over what their communities look like. Across California, they’re preparing or considering ordinances that require local voter approval of projects of a certain size or density or otherwise put hard limits on certain types of development — measures that would block key provisions of Brown’s plan.

A recent Voice of San Diego article noted such efforts in Del Mar, Costa Mesa, Los Angeles, Santa Monica, El Dorado County, Cupertino and Gilroy. Among the requirements that those communities may impose: requiring voter approval of most new construction higher than two stories and creating zones in which any construction required ballot OKs.

NIMBYism popular in many communities

Critics claim this would worsen the California housing crisis, not help it. But in city after city, officials say they are responding to local sentiment.

This gets to a key weakness of Brown’s strategy: While there is a growing understanding that the best way to relieve California’s housing crisis is by adding more stock, people are often only enthusiastic about the idea in the abstract. When it comes to one’s own community, enthusiasm usually wanes as part of a “not-in-my-backyard” attitude.

A classic example of this NIMBYism is now playing out in Millbrae, just south of San Francisco, in the region with the highest housing costs in California. A proposal to build 300-plus homes with office buildings and retail space next to a Bay Area Rapid Transit station — a prototypical “smart growth” project — is facing growing opposition.

The project would be on 116 acres already owned by BART. It complies with local housing policies and comes after years of complaints from area residents that their children can’t afford to live near them.

But at a July 12 City Council meeting, residents jammed the chambers to warn the project would worsen crime and traffic and harm quality of life. According to a local newspaper account, one resident even said the BART effort amounted to a criminal enterprise — “like the Wild West for outlaws to come and take stuff.”

Former San Francisco mayor touts status quo

That same day, the San Francisco Chronicle printed an op-ed by former Mayor Art Agnos blasting Brown’s housing proposal and offering a defense of the status quo of strong regulation. Agnos challenged the idea that adding more housing stock is the best way to bring down housing costs and said “rent stabilization” — i.e., rent control — should be an option for every city.

Agnos also called for more government funding for affordable housing programs that critics say amount to lottery programs which only help a relative handful of families.

From 1993-2001, Agnos was the western regional director for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. On his personal website, he depicts his efforts to help poor people find housing in San Francisco with government subsidies as a rousing success story.

Agnos doesn’t mention this claim in the Chronicle op-ed.

By CALWATCHDOG STAFF

• CA Republicans diversifying
• What can be done about mass shootings?
• Tragedy averted in Santa Monica
• Recalling a judge is harder than it looks
• Daylight savings time in Legislature’s crosshairs 

Good morning!

With a little luck at the ballot box, Republicans in the Legislature are set to expand on their increasingly diverse delegation, a far cry from the “Party of Old White Men” it’s been thought of by some for years.

And while Republicans have the primary goal of holding the relatively few seats in the Legislature they already have, increased diversity would show a modernizing party that could expand is electoral appeal. 

“Our party does not engage in the identity politics of the left, but we have placed an emphasis on recruiting and supporting the best candidates for every district,” said CAGOP Vice Chairwoman Harmeet Dhillon. “In our culturally rich state, that candidate is often someone with a minority background.”

CalWatchdog has more. 

In other news:

• The tragic shooting in Orlando yesterday left Americans again wondering if there is anything to be done to curb mass shootings, but sadly there’s not, reports The Orange County Register.
• Apparently unrelated to the Orlando tragedy, an Indiana man armed with three assault rifles and chemicals used to make explosives was arrested in Santa Monica on Sunday, with a gay pride parade as his ultimate target. The San Jose Mercury News/AP has more.
• Calls to recall the judge who sentenced a Stanford University athlete to six months in jail for sexual assault have only increased since the controversial verdict last week. But recalling a judge is more difficult than it seems, reports Capitol Weekly.
• A bill to abolish daylight savings time in California gets its first committee hearing today. The Sacramento Bee has more.   

Assembly:

• In at 1 p.m. Multiple committee hearings.

Senate:

• In at noon. Multiple committee hearings.

Gov. Brown:

• No public events announced.

Tips: matt@calwatchdog.com

Follow us: @calwatchdog @mflemingterp

New followers: @PoliticalRTer @CupOfPolitics

Opponents say they’re killing neighborhood quality of life by bringing a never-ending series of loud, rude, drunken visitors to once-quiet communities. Defenders say they’re an economic engine and a bulkhead in the new sharing economy that can be made more tolerable and less disruptive with proper regulation.

But the loudest critics don’t want a compromise. They generally want a ban on rentals of less than three weeks, and some also urge limits on how many such rentals are allowed.

In Los Angeles, the leading concern is that the city won’t enforce existing rules that make short-term stays illegal in most residential communities. The Los Angeles Times reported last week on Venice residents who provided vast evidence that a home was being used as a de facto hotel — including a short-term rental contract for the property — only to have the city decline to pursue the matter:

As Airbnb and other platforms make it easier to rent out rooms or whole homes for short stays, the debate over regulating such rentals has revolved around what kinds of rules Los Angeles should enshrine. But for many Angelenos, the bigger question is whether the rules will have any teeth.

 

“They’re talking about writing a new law, when all they need to do is enforce the existing law,” said Patricia Rickles, one of the Venice Canals residents. …

 

The lack of action has convinced some critics that the online platforms need to lend a helping hand. “No city has the resources to send inspectors to all these properties,” said Judith Goldman, one of the co-founders of Keep Neighborhoods First, a group concerned about “commercialized” short-term rentals.

Goldman and others want a stern, Santa Monica-style assault on such rentals.

Anaheim passes restrictions, considers crackdown

In Orange County, Anaheim has emerged as ground zero in battles over short-term rentals. This is from a Sept. 15 Orange County Register story.

ANAHEIM – The City Council voted 4-1 Tuesday night to temporarily stop accepting applications from Anaheim homeowners wanting to join the lucrative business of renting out their properties to tourists bound for Disneyland, local conventions or Angel Stadium.

 

Dozens of residents complained about noise and the rapid proliferation of these short-term rentals, prompting the council to approve the so-called “urgency ordinance” for the next 45 days, with an option to extend the moratorium.

 

City officials said that the permit moratorium will give them time to study how to better regulate the businesses, which may include an increase of the current $250 registration fee charged annually to homeowners renting their properties. A report is due back to the City Council on Oct. 20.

 

Councilwoman Lucille Kring suggested that the city’s code enforcement officers crack down on unpermitted short-term rentals, revise the city’s occupancy limits for rentals and place a cap on the number of vacation homes allowed in each neighborhood. …

 

Anaheim police have responded to about 300 calls for service at short-term rentals over the past year, mostly to deal with complaints of loud parties and parking issues.

San Diegans complain about disrupted neighborhoods

In San Diego County, complaints are most common in the coastal strip from Ocean Beach north to Mission Beach and Pacific Beach. One Republican City Council member, Chris Cates, warns against making regulations too strict. Another, Lorie Zapf, sides with those who say their quality of life is under assault. This is from a story posted Sept. 21 by the Union-Tribune.

The widening debate over the proliferation of short-term vacation rentals intensified Monday as a newly formed residents group called on the San Diego City Council to significantly tighten restrictions on who can rent out their property and how often.

 

The latest proposal, offered up by a group calling itself Preserve Our Communities, comes as the council prepares to take up the increasingly contentious matter later this year.

 

At issue is the growing number of property owners who are renting out their entire homes or a single bedroom for short-term stays, thanks to the huge popularity of online platforms like Airbnb and HomeAway. …

 

“The biggest problem is not knowing what you’re going to get day to day: a peaceful family, a drunk person on the street, a bachelor’s party, a Marine Corps graduation party, people parking in other people’s driveways,” said Scott Gruby, a resident of the Bay Ho area and spokesman for Preserve Our Communities. “We wouldn’t be in this situation if this was just a few bad apples.”

 

Under the proposal offered up by Gruby’s group, in cases where owners are renting out entire homes but are not present, the minimum stay permitted would be 21 days or more. And for those renting out a room in their homes, stays of no less than 7 days would be permitted.

What if  beach neighborhoods are all short-term rentals?

A writer for an Ocean Beach-centric website and publication, the OB Rag, worries about more than neighborhood disruption. Frank Gormlie says the attractiveness of the San Diego beach lifestyle and the easy money to be made with short-term rentals could hollow out communities.

The problem occurs when for residents and local small property and home owners develop the motivation to turn their condo, cottage, second unit, apartment or house over to short-termers who will pay big bucks instead of keeping the interests of the community over that of the immediacy of cashing-in.

 

If there’s no one left to care about the community or that section of it, then there is no community. … [Take] a walk or bike ride along the boardwalks that run along Mission Beach and Mission Bay. Try to count the buildings where actual residents live. It’s depressing.

 

This is the same threat, now, aimed at Ocean Beach. If enough little cottages, homes, apartments are turned into vacation rentals, then this is a larger threat to the culture of Ocean Beach than gentrification. …

 

OBceans need to be vigilante on this issue. It isn’t over yet. Along with gentrification, short-term vacation rentals have the ability to undermine parts of the community, change the character of the neighborhood for the worse and turn a vibrant village into a beach resort for vacationers.

But Ocean Beach and other communities aren’t likely to get clarity soon from San Diego City Hall. The City Council has been considering updating short-term vacation rental rules for months, and nothing close to a consensus has emerged.

Uproar over classroom scuffle reflects a profession under siege

Groundswell of support for teacher who wrestled disruptive student to the floor shows the public is fed up with the disciplinary problems and bureaucracies that impede education.

Here’s a video:

Santa Monica is one of the richest cities in the country, with median home prices, incredibly, above $1 million. So the solution isn’t “more money,” because the schools already are overflowing with money. And the city long has been run by liberals.

I guess the takeaway from this is that, if you’re going to become a teacher, you better know wrestling because you’re going to need it to keep your students in line.

By Wayne Lusvardi

The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution guarantees the free exercise of religion, but without the establishment of a state religion.  Nevertheless, for Christmas in Santa Monica in 2012, the proverbial inn has no room for a nativity scene in a public park.

A federal judge has ruled that Santa Monica has the right to ban all displays, whether religious or not, in its parks at Christmas time. The ban on all displays in public parks is as politically interesting as the 2,000 year old Nativity Story: a Jewish man and his pregnant wife trying to find shelter in an inn while fleeing King Herod’s order to kill all male infants.

Ironically, Santa Monica was given the nickname of “City of the Christmas Story” for nearly 60 years of a continuous nativity displays during Christmas in its public park. The city originally got its name in 1827 from the Catholic St. Monica of Hippo crying for her incorrigible son, St. Augustine, as symbolized in the flow of water from two local springs in Santa Monica.

Nativity scene driven out of public square

What drove the nativity scene out of the park was an atheist named Damon Vix, a resident of Burbank.  Vix applied for an atheist display booth in the same park. He additionally recruited 10 others to erect similar booths depicting the winter Solstice, Poseidon, Santa Claus and Satan. The reason for Vix’s display was not to enter into a dialogue with Christians or to celebrate democratic religious plurality.  Contrary to either the religious or secular commercial spirit of Christmas, Vix attacked the Nativity display as myth. This year, Vix won a lottery for 18 of the 21 booth slots at the park. This reduced the annual Nativity display from 14 to 2 booths.  A protest followed.

The city responded by banning all booths in the park.  But the Santa Monica Nativity Scenes Committee sought a court injunction to re-open the park to their Nativity display.  A federal judge denied the petition and agreed with the city’s reasons for banning all displays in public parks because there were other options for public religious speech.  The nativity scene has since migrated to private property.  So figuratively speaking, the offspring of St. Monica is still causing his mother city to cry.

It is not clear in the news accounts just who funded the erection of atheist booths and paid for 18 booth application fees.  Nor is it clear why the city accepted applications for booths by a non-resident; or how Vix won a strange public lottery to monopolize most of the booth spaces; or why large and small booth spaces could not have been made available.

An old story about taxes and religion

Maybe Santa Monica protestors against nativity scenes in public parks should be reminded of a little history. In first century Rome, Christians were persecuted by the state for being atheists: meaning for not worshiping the establishment’s pagan gods.

If Jews became Christians in ancient Rome, they became exempt from the special tribute — i.e., tax — that was imposed on Jews. But by avoiding paying the tax, Christians were prosecuted if they boycotted established pagan cults. Jews, on the other hand, were granted “vectigalis libertas” – loosely translated as the contradiction in words: “liberty tribute” or “freedom that brings in revenue [to the state].” The Romans would tolerate the Jewish religion but only if they paid the special tax.

In Santa Monica, some of the same issues prevail. Any organization in California that doesn’t bring tax tribute to the state and public unions would be similarly driven out of the public square and socially marginalized.  The Occupy Movement erected an encampment in a public park across from the Los Angeles City Hall for months, destroying the park. But the Occupy Movement was not evicted, required to get a permit, or required to make payment for the damages. That is because public employee unions funded the Occupy Movement. And the city allowed their park to be used as a political theater to demonize big business and justify higher taxes.

In California, any organization, religious or secular, that doesn’t bring tribute to the state would be similarly harassed and driven out of the public square.

In the Christian gospel of Luke 23:2 is the story about the indictment of Jesus before the Roman overseer Pontius Pilate in Jerusalem around 33 A.D.:

“Then the whole assembly rose and led him off to Pilate. And they began to accuse him, saying: ‘We should have found this man subverting our state. He opposes payment of taxes to Caesar and claims to be the Messiah, a king.’”

The story may (or may not) have been myth, as Vix contends.  Nonetheless, it was more likely that a Roman overseer would have dismissed a charge of tax evasion than a charge of not paying tribute to state established pagan religions; which was punishable by death.

The issues of so-called separation of religion and state and free religious speech in California are wrapped up in the issue of taxation just as much today as in first century Rome and Jerusalem, or when the U.S. adopted the Bill of Rights in 1791.

Katy Grimes: A fourth California city is on the verge of bankruptcy. What a surprise. Yawn.

The news that Compton is about to file for federal bankruptcy protection is not surprising. But news that Santa Monica may also file, is.

Sadly, this is probably just the fourth in a long line of insolvent cities and municipalities preparing to file for bankruptcy.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you about the consequences of gross mismanagement, corruption, legacy building, criminal negligence, and incompetence of public officials.

While some in the media have been blaring the warning bells, most elected lawmakers have been practicing public denial and distancing themselves from culpability.

But heads will roll if pension checks bounce, or aren’t issued, or bond payments aren’t made.

Take Stockton… please.

Ed Mendel at Calpensions writes, “A Stockton bankruptcy proposal does not cut pensions, but the city wants to eliminate $197.5 million in pension bond payments over the next 25 years, a plan opposed by the bond insurer that would be stuck with the tab.

The bankruptcy proposal would end pension bond payments from the troubled city general fund, which pays for most programs and is deep in the red with a $26 million deficit that could balloon if employee lawsuits overturn emergency pay cuts.”

“Stockton issued $125 million worth of pension obligation bonds in 2007 to cover an ‘unfunded liability that was largely created by enhanced retirement benefits in the late 1990s and early 2000s,’” Mendel reported.

“The city proposal said $124 million remains to be paid. With interest, the city is scheduled to spend $239 million paying off the bonds by 2038, about 62.6 percent from the general fund and 17.4 percent from special funds.”

But the clincher is not just what Stockton pays now–“the annual city payment to the California Public Employees Retirement System, listed as $16.8 million, is expected to jump to $22.3 million next year and nearly double to $30.2 million in fiscal 2020-21.”

Read the entire story HERE — Mendel is the best when it comes to understanding pensions, and pension debt. As more California cities file for bankruptcy, it will be very interesting watching how they manage pension debt.