What about Santa Monica?

Okay, since you asked:

Although the campaign against Pam O'Connor has been so extreme and unfair as to almost make you want to vote for her in protest, I intend to cast ballots tomorrow for Frank Gruber, Mike Feinstein and Richard McKinnon. I decided against a protest vote for O'Connor for the same reason I wouldn't vote for Kevin McKeown: I think the council will benefit from some new blood. Gruber and McKinnon in their service on the planning commission -- and Gruber in his writing -- have demonstrated they can bring both experience and reasonableness to the council chamber. While Feinstein is not exactly new blood, during his previous council tenancy he showed a capacity to learn from experience, and his time away from city government has given him the opportunity to reflect on policy decisions past and future.

As far as the local measures, my votes will be no, no, no, no and no.

With all the spending for and against measures D and LC, you'd think they actually mean something. They don't. Santa Monica's agreement with the FAA expires at the end of June. When the smoke clears from the current battle, the City will still need to negotiate with the FAA and it is the federal agency that will have the final say in what changes there will be at the airport. While both measures are pointless, D has the added negative of challenging the idea of representative government; elected officials and city staff negotiating with the Feds have disadvantages enough without having their authority undermined further. The likelihood that the FAA will agree to close Santa Monica Airport is close to nil. (As an aside, current FAA rules have two interesting side effects: the presence of the airport forces planes flying to LAX to approach at a higher altitude, cutting noise; and take-off and landing regulations near Clover Field limit building heights.)

Measures H and HH would raise the city’s real estate transfer tax for commercial and non-commercial parcels selling for $1 million or more -- that's pretty much everything in Santa Monica -- from $3 per $1,000 of sales price to $9 per $1,000. We need more affordable housing in Santa Monica, but we need to find a less regressive way to pay for it. Meanwhile, measure FS would take the local rent control department's current maximum annual registration fee of $174.96 per controlled rental unit to $288 (reality check: Los Angeles' rent control stabilization fee is $67.83 per unit), 50% of which a landlord can (and any rational landlord will) pass on to tenants. The effect of all three measures would be to make Santa Monica an even more expensive place to live.