OUR STATEMENT - WHAT WE STAND FOR

Over the past 20 years, our city has approved an unprecedented amount of new commercial development, greatly exceeding its own growth projections. This commercial development has negatively impacted our city on many fronts, most noticeably by creating a traffic nightmare.

We believe that Santa Monica is currently experiencing too much development pressure and that the city's own aggressive growth projections for the next 20 years will again be exceeded, as they were in the past.

Over the past six months we have done extensive research into the amount of commercial development Santa Monica has experienced. We have also organized meetings both with the city (including the city manager and city planning director, the planning commission and members of the city council) as well as with the heads of all of our neighborhood groups. Based on our research and extensive discussions, we have concluded that the best way to address our ever worsening traffic mess is to place reasonable controls on the amount of new commercial growth, which typically generates at least three to four times the amount of traffic as residential.

The “Residents’ Initiative to Fight Traffic” (“RIFT”) (aka Proposition T) would, for the first time in our city’s history, place modest limits on the amount of annual commercial development.

We believe it can’t come too soon.