Both CD5 Council Candidates Oppose Pico-Olympic Plan

9:19 AM PDT on April 3, 2009

I may not be thrilled with the reasoning, but each of the last two evenings one of the two finalists for the Fifth District City Council race attended one of the LADOT's open meetings and voiced opposition to the project in it's current form.

Reporting on last night's meeting, Ted Rogers, of BikinginLA fame writes of candidate David Vahedi:

As for Vahedi, he said that he absolutely opposed the project in itspresent form, and pointed out that he had filed the suit that initiallyhalted the project. He said that he would support the elimination ofon-street parking, which could add as much as 25% additional capacityduring rush hour, but only after the city builds off-street parkingfacilities to compensate for the loss of parking spaces and preventspill-over into the surrounding neighborhoods. And he noted that he andhis family would be personally affected by this plan, as both he andhis father live in the area bounded by Pico and Olympic.

An evening earlier I ran into Paul Koretz, Vahedi's opponent, who gave me a similar statement:

"I thought from Day 1 that removing parking without plans for anadequate alternative was a disaster...it make so little sense; I can'tbelieve it's still being considered."

Assuming that Bill Rosendahl is still opposed to the plan, and the changes that were made don't address his concerns; you have to wonder about the politics of Pico-Olympic. If both of the City Councilmen for the reasons effected oppose the project, and comments at public hearings close to 100% against; why exactly is this plan still being pushed? Who is the Mayor's constituency in pushing this plan besides Santa Monica residents who "deserve" congestion relief on their trips downtown?

Damien Newton @

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