Between crafting COVID-era return-to-school plans, fine-tuning Distance Learning, developing major district-wide campus improvements, giving fair process to the Santa Monica High School History Building (slated to be bulldozed this summer along with the cafeteria, main administrative building, a gym, and a wide swath of mature trees and greenspace), and appointing a new member to fill the SMMUSD School Board vacancy, our School Board has a lot on its plate.
And our newly-elected City Councilmembers, Phil Brock, Christine Parra, and Oscar de la Torre, have full plates too, arriving in office aware that “change” is needed in Council’s approach to local governance. So they recently joined Mayor Sue Himmelrich to reject the “build, baby, build” Council m.o. of the past decade, ending negotiations with the proposed developer of the City’s land at 4th/5th & Arizona. In…