For example, the school board has proposed tearing down Edison Elementary School and spending $23 million of BB bond money to rebuild it. The problem with this proposal is about 45 percent of the students who attend Edison Elementary live in the LA Unified and Culver City school districts. By building a school half the size, just to accommodate Santa Monica residents, probably $10 million would be available for Malibu schools. The Santa Monicans for Renters Rights political group controls the SM City Council, the SM College Board, the Rent Control Board and the SMMUSD board. They accomplish this through strict rent control, and they buy the renters votes. Forcing rental housing providers to rent apartments at below market rents, Santa Monica renters vote for the renters rights candidates to keep their low rent.
Flush with power, SMRR could care less what Malibuites think is best for Malibu. SMRR does not represent the residents and wishes of Malibuites and the word “transparency” is not in their vocabulary. A clear illustration of this is they did not solicit a Malibu resident to replace Ms. Bloomfield, who just recently resigned from the school board and with virtually no public notice or input, instead appointed SMRR insider and apparatchik Ralph Mechur.
The only way to send a message to the rent controlled school board that Malibu is tired of being cheated is to vote “no” on Measure R. Voting “no” will not hurt school children. The rent controlled SM City Council will be faced with having to prioritize their half billion dollar annual budget, and allocate an extra $10 million to the rent controlled school board to replace the expiring parcel tax money.
Mathew Millen