WE
ENDORSE 3 CANDIDATES FOR CITY COUNCIL
Creating a city that embraces resident-friendly, sustainable development has always been a core mission of SMCLC.
Our incumbent Councilmembers have failed us. They have approved huge commercial developments that residents have publicly and clearly opposed, consistently ignoring residents’ needs in favor of big developers. Catering to these developers has caused unsustainable growth, gridlocked traffic, less open space, and punishing costs to residents for our water.
Our current Council has also pushed Santa Monica into financial chaos. Years of unfunded pensions, vanity projects, and spending that far exceeds that of similar-sized California cities, has put our city and its residents into a deep financial hole, requiring huge cutbacks in services to residents, despite our paying the highest local sales tax in California.
On this Council’s watch, peaceful protesters were tear gassed while looters were left unchallenged to destroy our downtown, and so far, no one has been held accountable.
We need a change.
We need competent leadership who will work for Santa Monica’s residents and small businesses, not for the special interests who contribute to Councilmembers’ campaigns.
We wholeheartedly ENDORSE these candidates for City Council who will go to work immediately for ALL Santa Monicans.
Phil Brock
A native Santa Monican, Phil is a longtime entertainment industry executive who has an extensive history of active civic leadership in our City. He served as chair of our Recreation and Parks Commission and is a past president and current board member of the California Parks Board. Phil is a Santa Monica Arts commissioner, president of the Samohi Alumni Association, past president of the Santa Monica Kiwanis Club, Elks Lodge trustee and member of the Civic Auditorium Working Group. Phil is all about service to our community.
Phil believes we must protect our residential and commercial neighborhoods from huge developments that do not fit our City’s beachside character. He is deeply concerned about gentrification that causes our seniors and our longstanding diverse population to lose their reasonably priced housing and be pushed out of our city. He advocates for height limits of four stories downtown, three stories on our boulevards and two stories in our residential neighborhoods. He believes that big, dense, development proposals must be voted on by residents. Phil’s election website is: https://votebrock.org/
Mario Fonda-Bonardi
A 40-year-resident, architect, and a City Planning Commissioner for the past 5 years, Mario is intimately familiar with the workings of our City government. He supports reasonable development that factors in our increasingly scarce resources as well as our limited infrastructure. He favors adapting and modernizing existing buildings, a tenet of the Santa Monica Conservancy where he has served on the board for ten years. He is a member of Santa Monica Architects for a Responsible Tomorrow (SMa.r.t) and author of many Santa Monica Mirror articles on sustainable growth.
As an architect Mario has worked primarily on residential structures and affordable housing projects for such clients as Santa Monica Community Corp, Latin American Civic Association and West Hollywood Community Housing Corporation. He wants to ensure Santa Monicans have more public open space, having been instrumental in a multi-year process of securing the Historic Belmar Park at the Civic Center. He also believes strongly in finding ways to increase mobility throughout the city. Mario’s election website is: www.mario4council.com
Christine Parra
As Culver City’s Emergency Preparedness Coordinator for the past 11 years, Christine knows how to navigate a city in crisis. She’s familiar with working within a municipal bureaucracy to address a city’s needs and sees successes in Culver City that could be applied to Santa Monica. She is a 20-year resident of Santa Monica’s Pico neighborhood, who, in advocating for her neighborhood, has experienced first-hand how residents are often dismissed and disrespected by our City Council while developers are granted access and influence. She will not take any developer money for her campaign and believes residents should have a strong voice in development projects.
As a mother of three school-age children, as well as an emergency management coordinator (including during the 2009 swine flu pandemic), Christine will bring a unique perspective and set of skills to the City Council. Christine’s election website is: www.christineparra.com
These candidates are part of a slate because of their like-minded positions. In order for them to have an impact on City Council we need all three to be elected. Therefore, we urge you to vote for these three candidates, and only these three, to ensure that their pro-resident agenda is implemented.
