city official

It’s been a rough few years for Santa Monica.

Businesses have abandoned its once-thriving downtown. Its retail and office vacancy rates are among the highest in Los Angeles County. The crowds that previously packed the area surrounding the city’s famous pier have dwindled.

Homelessness has risen. City officials acknowledge crime incidents had become more visible and volatile.

The breadth and depth of the issues became apparent just last month when the city was forced to declare itself in fiscal distress after paying $229 million in settlements related to alleged sexual abuse by Eric Uller, a former city dispatcher.

Now, Santa Monica is trying to plot a new path forward. A significant first step could come Tuesday.

That’s when the City Council is set to consider a plan to reverse its fortunes.

A shuttered business on Broadway in Santa Monica.

(David Butow/For The Times)

The plan includes significantly increasing police patrols and enforcing misdemeanor ordinances, investing in infrastructure and new community events, and taking a more business-friendly brush to permits and fees. Officials also plan to be more aggressive in making sure property owners maintain unused properties.

The blueprint tackles many “quality of life” issues that critics say have contributed to lower foot traffic in the city’s tourist districts since the COVID-19 pandemic.

It’s far from clear the tactics will work. But given the city’s current trajectory, officials say bold action is necessary.

“We’re trying to usher in a rebirth — a renaissance of the city — by investing in ourselves,” Councilmember Dan Hall said.

Hall, 38, is part of a relatively youthful City Council majority that swept into office in recent years as voters opted for new leadership and a fresh approach. Five of the seven council members are millennials, and six members first joined the council in either 2022 or 2024.

Also new on the scene is City Manager Oliver Chi, who five months ago was hired away from the same position in Irvine.

“The city is in a period of distress, for sure,” said Chi, 45. “We’re not in a moment where the city is broke. The city still has resources. … But right now, if we do nothing, the city’s general fund operating budget is projected to run a structural deficit of nearly $30 million a year, and that’s because we’ve seen big drops” in revenues, such as from hotel taxes, sales tax and parking.

“But part of that is the private sector hasn’t been investing in the city. And we haven’t had people traveling to the city,” Chi said.

Santa Monica is far from the only city — in California or nationwide — to face the pain of a downtown in decline. Brick-and-mortar retailers have long bled business to online offerings, and the pandemic upended the cadence of daily life that was the lifeblood of commercial districts, with many people continuing to work from home at least part of the week.

Birds fly over and people walk on the Santa Monica Pier.

(Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times)

But the hope is through concerted, planned investment that Santa Monica can shine once again and modernize to be competitive in the postpandemic era.

The City Council had already decided to set aside $60 million from its cash reserves to spend over the next four or five years to cover any operating deficits. But with Tuesday’s vote, Santa Monica would instead use those dollars as an investment in hopes of getting the city back on track.

“Those things really are issues related to public safety, disorder in town, the disrepair that we’ve seen in our infrastructure,” Chi said. “All of those things are preventing, I think, confidence in the local economy.”

In downtown, the city’s plan would include doubling the number of police officers assigned to a specialized unit to at least eight to 10 a day, deploying an additional five patrol officers daily, creating a new police substation, adding two workers daily to address homelessness issues, and hiring eight public safety employees to provide a more constant presence across the city’s main commercial district, parks and parking garages.

Staff in the city attorney’s office would also be augmented to boost the ability to prosecute misdemeanor cases.

An unhoused man naps on a bench in Palisades Park.

(David Butow / For The Times)

Also on the agenda: moving the city’s homeless shelter out of downtown; making a one-time $3.5-million investment to address fraying sidewalks and streets and freshen up trees and trash cans; funding monthly events at the Third Street Promenade to attract crowds; creating a large-scale “Santa Monica Music Festival” next year; upgrading restrooms near the pier and Muscle Beach; and increasing operating days for libraries.

Another proposal would require the owners of vacant properties to register with the city, in hopes of addressing lots that remain in disrepair.

The city is also looking to be more business friendly. It’s seeking to upgrade the current permit process, utilizing artificial intelligence to get nearly instantaneous permit reviews for single-family homes and accessory dwelling units, as well as reduce permit fees for restaurants with outdoor dining.

The plan also outlines strategies to boost revenue. Santa Monica is poised to end its contract with a private ambulance operator, McCormick Ambulance, in February and move those operations in house.

“It’s going to cost roughly $2.8 million a year to stand that operation up. But the reality is, once we start running it, it’ll generate about $7 million a year in new ongoing revenues,” Chi said.

“That’s part of what we’re thinking through: How do we invest now in order to grow our revenue base moving ahead?” he said.

Parking rates are also going up, which city officials estimate should generate $8 million to $9 million in additional annual revenue — though officials say they still charge a lower rate than those of nearby cities.

The city also plans more traffic safety enforcement and will cut the current 90 minutes of free parking in downtown parking structures to 30 minutes.

There’s also been talk of a new city parcel tax, though no decision has yet been made to pursue that. A parcel tax would need voter approval.

Another priority is building back the city’s cash reserves, which have dwindled over the years, largely on account of legal payments. Eight years ago, Santa Monica had $436 million in cash reserves; today, there’s only $158 million in nonrestricted reserves.

The planned $60 million in spending would further reduce the city’s unobligated cash down to $98 million.

Santa Monica’s annual general fund operating budget is nearly $800 million a year.

Beachgoers enjoying the scene near the Santa Monica Pier.

(David Butow/For The Times)

The city is also looking to redevelop some of its underutilized properties, including a 2.57-acre parcel bounded by Arizona Avenue and 4th and 5th streets, which includes branches of Bank of America and Chase bank, the leases of which are expected to expire in a few years. Also being eyed are a 1.09-acre kiss-and-ride lot southeast of the Santa Monica light rail station; the city’s seismically vulnerable Parking Structure 1 on 4th Street, which sits on 0.75 of an acre; and the old Fire Station No. 1, which sits on 0.34 of an acre and is being used for storage.

No firm plans are in place just yet. The parcels could be sold, leased long term or redeveloped as part of a joint venture. One likely possibility is that the developments would include new housing.

“When you look at any revitalization effort of any vibrant downtown core that’s eroded, there’s always been an element of repopulating the area with people,” Chi said. A smart redevelopment plan for those properties will not only “hopefully help bring back vibrancy to the downtown, but also help replenish the city’s cash reserves.”

The seeds of downtown Santa Monica’s decline actually started before the pandemic. But COVID hit the city hard, and commercial vacancies rose significantly, Councilmember Caroline Torosis, 39, said.

Santa Monica also sustained damage in 2020 from rioters who swarmed the downtown area in what appeared to be an organized attack amid a protest meant to decry the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

Tourists never came back in the numbers they had before the pandemic.

Torosis said the new council majority was elected on a promise to boost economic activity in the city.

“We need to absolutely ensure that people feel safe, welcome, invited and included in our city,” said Torosis, who serves as mayor pro tem.

Hall called the plan a bold bet.

“What we’re trying to do here is move us away from a scarcity mind-set, where we’re nickel-and-diming businesses trying to stay open, restaurants trying to open a parklet, residents trying to build an ADU,” Hall said.

The council’s relative youth, he said, is a plus for a city trying to write a bright new chapter.

“I think that that’s something that millennials are finding themselves needing to do as we take ownership of society, and we see a world where past generations have been afraid to make mistakes or afraid to make decisions,” he said.

When federal prosecutors arrested a man Wednesday for setting a small fire that reignited days later into the deadly Palisades blaze, they suggested the arrest largely settled the matter of blame.

“A single person’s recklessness caused one of the worst fires Los Angeles has ever seen,” Bill Essayli, acting United States attorney for Central California, said as he announced the arrest of Jonathan Rinderknecht, a 29-year-old Uber driver.

But the new details they offered about the cause of the fire only added to residents’ anger and dismay about how city officials handled the fire that killed 12 people and destroyed more than 6,700 structures across Pacific Palisades and Malibu. It also renewed calls for City Hall to be held accountable.

The Santa Ynez Reservoir in Pacific Palisades was going through maintenance and empty during the Palisades fire. Photographed on Wednesday, Jan. 29, 2025.

(Myung J. Chun/Los Angeles Times)

Until this week, the focus of Palisades residents has been on a reservoir that was supposed to be a key source of water for the neighborhood being dry and other issues related to the fire response. But federal investigators concluded Wednesday that L.A. firefighters thought they had put out the small fire Rinderknecht allegedly set Jan. 1 only for it to smolder and burn underground and then rekindle in heavy winds Jan. 7.

This latest revelation is fueling debate over whether the city of L.A. or the state of California can be found civilly liable for its role in the fire.

Already, a flurry of complaints have been filed over the last 10 months accusing various L.A and California officials of failing to prepare for and respond to the fire.

Most legal experts agree that cases against government entities are tough because California law gives public officials broad immunity from failing to provide fire protection. Some argue that a criminal case against Rinderknecht could ultimately hurt residents’ civil complaints.

“Now those civil cases are dead in the water, because you have an arsonist,” said Neama Rahmani, president of the L.A.-based law firm West Coast Trial Lawyers, which is handling Eaton fire cases against Edison.

“That ultimately means that the already weak civil cases against the government became even weaker,” he said, “because now you have the person who’s really at fault for all this.”

EPA crews comb the ruins for hazardous material at a home on Miami Way, that was burned in the Palisades Fire, Thursday, February 6, 2025.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

But lawyers suing the government on behalf of Pacific Palisades residents disagree, and maintain that Rinderknecht’s arrest does not undermine their case.

Just hours after federal law enforcement officials announced Rinderknecht’s arrest, attorneys representing thousands of Palisades fire victims filed a new master complaint against the city of L.A. and the state of California, plus about a dozen new defendants, including Southern California Edison, Charter Communications and AT&T.

“We never allege that the state or the city started the Palisades fire,” said Alexander “Trey” Robertson, an attorney representing 3,300 Palisades fire victims. Rather, he said, their case against the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power and the California Department of Parks and Recreation hinged on the lack of preparations in advance of the fire and the response after the fire started. “That has nothing to do with what started the Lachman fire,” he said. “It is what transpired after that fact.”

The 198-page complaint, filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, was not a response to Rinderknecht’s arrest or the new details provided by federal prosecutors. Wednesday just happened to be the deadline a judge set for lawyers to file an omnibus complaint on behalf of 10,000 residents and business owners.

Robertson noted that his complaint did not include the Los Angeles Fire Department: California government code gives it broad immunity against claims of negligent firefighting.

But Robertson argued that the LADWP is liable, because the draining of the Santa Ynez reservoir resulted in fire hydrants running dry and their energized power lines came down on homes and vegetation that ignited additional fires. And the state of California is also liable, he said, because it did not inspect its land in the days between the Lachman and Palisades fires to ensure that no smoldering embers or residual heat remained that could reignite during the predicted Santa Ana wind event.

Robertson said there is case law that holds that a public entity is liable for a “dangerous condition” allowed to exist on its property that causes a fire.

“We allege that the embers from the Lachman Fire which the state allowed to burn for six days on its land (Topanga State Park) constituted a ‘dangerous condition of public property.’ This claim is expressly authorized by statute and not barred by the immunity statutes.”

Rahmani, whose law firm is handling cases against Edison in the Eaton fire, said that would be a very tough ‘dangerous condition’ case.

“What was the dangerous condition here that caused this fire?” he asked. “You’re saying the state has a legal duty. Think of all the hundreds of thousands of square miles of state parks in California to inspect the land. I don’t think any judge would say that there’s a legal duty to inspect forest land for smoldering fire.”

David Levine, a professor of law at UC San Francisco, said Wednesday’s arrest ultimately didn’t seem to change the limited liability public officials have in a fire through government immunity.

“It would be hard to prove liability on that because they’re going to have so much protection due to immunity,” Levine said. “Because these are public entities, they’re not going to be liable for punitive damages.”

Still, Levine said, plaintiff lawyers’ could try to thread the needle by using a ‘dangerous condition’ exception. “The statutes allow for that kind of a claim, but you have to prove it,” he said. “That’s a factual matter that would have to be developed.”

Rahmani said he always thought the cases against government entities in the Palisades fire were weak because California statute gives officials broad immunity from failing to provide fire protection.

“I personally feel that they’re leading people on, giving them hope that does not exist,” Rahmani said.

The emergence of a criminal suspect in the Palisades fire further hindered attorneys’ case, Rahmani said, because judges and juries tend to put all the fault on the criminal, even if there was a claim for negligence. “Because you have an intentional criminal act,” he said, “liability would have to be apportioned between the bad actors.”

Jurors, he said, already tended to be reluctant to put a lot of liability on government defendants. “They’re thinking, ‘Hey, my taxes are gonna go up, who’s gonna pay for all this?’.. That’s why it’s very hard to get massive verdicts against government entities.”

Asked about potential liability for the state or other jurisdictions in the Palisades fire resulting from the reignition of an earlier fire, California Gov. Newsom said, “We will look at the facts and judge on the basis of those facts.”

“When it comes to the issue of fire liability, I know a thing or two, going back to Paradise…” Newsom added. “This is done without political interference. The facts need to be pursued.”

Some lawyers expect that claims will be filed against Uber, Rinderknecht’s employer.

“Obviously, Uber is going to fight that,” Rahmani said. “In terms of someone to go after, Uber seems to me to be the only entity, and that’s gonna be a tough argument.”

Legal experts appear to agree on one thing: Even if Rinderknecht is convicted, he cannot possibly compensate the thousands of residents in the affluent coastal neighborhood of Pacific Palisades who lost loved ones and homes.

“I’ll assume he’s not an heir of Elon Musk or Estee Lauder,” Levine said. “The private and public loss is so vast here. Whatever assets this guy has, I would say, wouldn’t even qualify as a drop in the bucket.”

“Criminal justice — having someone be held accountable — is important,” Rahmani said. “But obviously, as far as money in the bank, it’s not going to be helpful.”

If an arsonist was found responsible in the Eaton fire, Rahmani said, that would have a huge impact on legal claims.

“That would be a home run for Edison,” Rahmani said. “That would save them and the California Fire fund billions of dollars, because then they wouldn’t be a fault. It wouldn’t be their tower. It wouldn’t be the electrical fire. This sort of arson with an accelerant, it would completely change the game, and the value of those claims would go to almost nothing.”

Times Staff Writer Daniel Miller contributed to this report

In downtown Los Angeles, Gov. Gavin Newsom was holding a news conference with Democratic leaders when the Border Patrol showed up nearby to conduct a showy immigration raid.

In Washington D.C., hundreds of National Guard troops patrolled the streets, some in armored vehicles, as city officials battled with the White House over whether the federal government can take control of the local police department.

President Trump has long demonized “blue” cities like Los Angeles, Washington and New York, frequently claiming — often contrary to the evidence — that their Democratic leaders have allowed crime and blight to worsen. Trump, for example, cited out-of-control crime as the reason for his Washington D.C. guard deployment, even though data shows crime in the city is down.

But over the last few months, Trump’s rhetoric has given way to searing images of federal power on urban streets that are generating both headlines and increasing alarm in some circles.

While past presidents have occasionally used the Insurrection Act to deploy the military in response to clear, acute crises, the way Trump has deployed troops in Democratic-run cities is unprecedented in American politics. Trump has claimed broader inherent powers and an authority to deploy troops to cities when and where he decides there is an emergency, said Matthew Beckmann, a political science professor at UC Irvine.

“President Trump is testing how far he can push his authority, in no small part to find out who or what can challenge him,” he said.

State and local officials reacted with shock when they learned Border Patrol agents had massed outside Newsom’s news conference Thursday. The governor was preparing to announce the launch of a campaign for a ballot measure, which if approved by voters, would redraw the state’s congressional maps to favor Democrats before the 2026 midterms.

Border Patrol Sector Chief Gregory Bovino told a Fox 11 reporter: “We’re here making Los Angeles a safer place since we won’t have politicians that’ll do that, we do that ourselves.” When the reporter noted that Newsom was nearby, Bovino responded, “I don’t know where he’s at.”

However, local law enforcement sources told The Times that the raid was not random and that they had received word from the federal authorities that Little Tokyo was targeted due to its proximity to the governor’s event. The raid, the sources told The Times, was less about making arrests and more of a show of force intended to disrupt Democrats.

Whatever the reason, the raid generated news coverage and at least in the conservative media, overshadowed the announcement of the redistricting plan.

Trump’s second term has been marked by increased use of troops in cities. He authorized the deployment of thousands of Marines and National Guard troops to L.A. in June after immigration raids sparked scattered protests. The troops saw little action, and local leaders said the deployment was unnecessary and only served to inflame tensions.

The operation reached a controversial zenith in July when scores of troops on horseback wearing tactical gear and driving armored vehicles, rolled through MacArthur Park. The incident generated much attention, but local police were surprised that the raid was brief and resulted in few arrests.

After the MacArthur Park raid, Mayor Karen Bass complained “there’s no plan other than fear, chaos and politics.”

Beckmann said the situation is a “particularly perilous historical moment because we have a president willing to flout constitutional limits while Congress and the court have been willing to accept pretext as principle.”

UC Berkeley Political Science Professor Eric Schickler, co-director of the university’s Institute of Governmental Studies, said the recent military displays are part of a larger mission to increase the power of the president and weaken other countervailing forces, such as the dismantling of federal agencies and the weakening of universities.

“It all adds up to a picture of really trying to turn the president into the one dominant force in American politics — he is the boss of everything, he controls everything,” Schickler said. “And that’s just not how the American political system has worked for 240 years.”

In some way, Trump’s tactics are an extension of long-held rhetoric. In the 1980s, he regularly railed against crime in New York City, including the rape of a woman in Central Park that captured national headlines. The suspects, known as the Central Park Five, were exonerated after spending years in prison and have filed a defamation suit against Trump.

Trump and his backers say he is simply keeping campaign promises to reduce crime and deport people in the country illegally.

“Our law enforcement operations are about enforcing the law — not about Gavin Newsom,” said Department of Homeland Security spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin.

Federal agents “patrol all areas of Los Angeles every day with over 40 teams on the ground to make L.A. safe,” she said.

In Washington D.C., where the federal government has began assuming law enforcement responsibilities, the business of policing the streets of the nation’s capital had radically transformed by Friday. Federal agencies typically tasked with investigating drug kingpins, gunrunners and cybercriminals were conducting traffic stops and helping with other routine policing.

Twenty federal law enforcement teams fanned out across the city Thursday night with more than 1,750 people joining the operation, a White House official told the Associated Press. They made 33 arrests, including 15 people who did not have permanent legal status. Others were arrested on warrants for murder, rape and driving under the influence, the official said.

Thaddeus Johnson, a senior fellow with the Council on Criminal Justice, said the administration’s actions not only threaten democracy, but they also have real consequences for local leaders and residents. Citizens often can’t distinguish between federal or local officers and don’t know when the two groups are or aren’t working together.

“That breeds a lot of confusion and also breeds a lot of fear,” Johnson said.

Thomas Abt, founding director of University of Maryland’s Center for the Study and Practice of Violence Reduction, emphasized that pulling federal agents from their jobs can hurt overall public safety.

“There’s a real threat to politicizing federal law enforcement, and sending them wherever elected officials think there’s a photo opportunity instead of doing the hard work of federal law enforcement,” Abt said.

Already, D.C. residents and public officials have pushed back on federal law enforcement’s presence. When federal officers set up a vehicle checkpoint along the 14th Street Northwest corridor this week, hecklers shouted, “Go home, fascists” and “Get off our streets.”

On Friday, the District of Columbia filed an emergency motion seeking to block the Trump administration’s takeover of the city’s police department.

“This is the gravest threat to Home Rule DC has ever faced, and we are fighting to stop it,” D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb said in a statement on Friday. “The Administration’s actions are brazenly unlawful. They go well beyond the bounds of the President’s limited authority and instead seek a hostile takeover of MPD.”

The show of force in L.A. has also left local officials outraged at what they see as deliberate efforts to sow fear and exert power. Hours before agents arrived in Little Tokyo, Bass and other officials held a news conference calling for an end to the continued immigration raids.

Bass said she believes the recent actions violated the temporary restraining order upheld this month by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals prohibiting agents from targeting people solely based on their race, vocation, language or location.

The number of arrests in Southern California declined in July after a judge issued the order. But in the past two weeks, some higher profile raids have begun to ramp up again.

In one instance, an 18-year-old Los Angeles high school senior was picked up by federal immigration officers while walking his dog in Van Nuys. On Thursday, a man apparently running from agents who showed up at a Home Depot parking lot in Monrovia was hit by a car and killed on the 210 Freeway.

Bass appeared to be seething as she spoke to reporters after Newsom’s press conference on Thursday, calling the raid in Little Tokyo a “provocative act” and “unbelievably disrespectful.”

“They’re talking about disorder in Los Angeles, and they are the source of the disorder in Los Angeles right now,” she said.