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The 10 Freeway, Looking West from the 17th St. Bridge | Photo by GarySe7en via LAist Featured Photos on Flickr
The battle over Proposition T, a ballot initiative Santa Monica voters will be voting on in November, is heating up. $428,879.00 has been raised since June by a group named "Save Our City" to oppose the proposition. 15 of the 37 givers, mainly developers, were from outside the city, according to a document Prop T proponents made.
Prop T would amend the land use element of Santa Monica's general plan "to establish an annual limit on commercial development" within the city until 2023. The working theory is that traffic can't increase much if new jobs aren't made available in new developments.
Proponents of Prop T are mostly residents who do not want to see unwieldy growth in the city and may not be able to fund their own campaign like developers are. "They’ve already raised almost half a million and the campaign has just started -- it's likely to be a million dollar developer-funded effort. That kind of spending against a residents’ initiative in this small town is an obscene abuse of our democratic process,” said one campaign consultant to the yes side.
If Prop T fails, will the alleged new development and construction be that bad? Maybe we're having a "density hawk" moment, but hey, we like more chances of living and working in a reasonable distance. Chime in the comments below.