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Ashley Oelsen Newsletter — August 17, 2026
🌎 Protect What You Love with Ashley Oelsen
📅 August 17, 2026
Dear neighbors,
What a week this was. It started on Monday, August 10, when more than three hundred Californians from up and down the coast filled the Hilton Santa Monica for NOAA's only in-person hearing on its federal review of our state's Coastal Management Program, many of them waiting hours for two minutes at the microphone. It ended with a milestone much closer to home: on Friday, I officially qualified for the November ballot.
In between came a new twist in the Waymo court fight, a $2.4 million budget surprise at City Hall, and a Daily Press feature on a nonprofit born from the Palisades Fire. This newsletter covers all of it, plus a federal comment deadline this Saturday that I hope you will not let pass quietly.
🗳️ From the Campaign Trail: We Made the Ballot
🔹 The November field is set, and we are in it: On Friday, August 14, I officially qualified for the ballot for Santa Monica City Council. The Daily Press reports the filing window has closed and every local race this fall will be contested, with three four-year Council seats up for election. To everyone who signed a nomination petition, challenged me to think harder about an issue, or simply stopped for a conversation: thank you. My promise is unchanged. If you elect me, my responsibility is to all of Santa Monica, renters and homeowners, workers and small businesses, families, seniors, and students alike, and my vote will never be promised in advance. It will be earned by the facts and the public process, every single time.
👉 See the full November ballot lineup
🔹 Why I stepped away from the SMRR endorsement: In June, I withdrew from consideration for the Santa Monicans for Renters' Rights endorsement. As a renter, I care deeply about tenant protections and housing stability, and I respect SMRR's long history of advocacy. But there is a real difference between listening to stakeholders and committing to Council votes before the public process has even happened. I chose the public process, and I will make that same choice on the dais.
☀️ Why I'm Running: The Email I Almost Sent
🔹 Before Friday's milestone, a hard decision: I want to be honest with you, because you deserve more than the polished version. In the days before the filing deadline, I seriously considered stepping out of this race. Not because I stopped believing in what we are fighting for, but because I care deeply about the outcome for this city. This is not about simply wanting a seat; it is about what is best for Santa Monica. With several candidates sharing similar values, I worried we could split the vote and create a result none of us want, and I was willing to set aside my own candidacy if I believed it would give our community a better chance. I was standing inside City Hall, drafting my withdrawal email, and I could not finish it. My phone would not stop ringing and the texts kept coming. What changed my mind was not the number of calls. It was the emotion in people's voices, telling me why they wanted me in this race and why they were counting on me to keep going. Standing there, I realized stepping aside would not affect only me. People had placed their trust in me, and I felt a responsibility to see it through. So I deleted the withdrawal email, and I qualified instead. If I am going to ask people to believe in me, I have to be willing to believe in what we can build together.
🔹 Consider this a new beginning: No one is going to vote for me to make the same choices in the same old ways, so I want to do things differently, starting with this campaign. I want to bring you behind the scenes, not just the polished moments: what I am learning, the conversations I am having, the problems I am trying to understand, and the solutions I am exploring. I want to talk honestly about what it is actually like to run for City Council, the good, the bad, the hopeful, the frustrating, and maybe even the ugly. My goal is for residents and businesses to understand how their city works, how decisions get made, where things break down, and how you can get involved. Most of all, I want people who have felt disconnected from their local government to feel like they have a way into the conversation.
This on-going newsletter is part of that promise to you.
🌊 Our Coast: You Filled the Room. Now Fill the Record
🔹 August 10 belonged to the public: More than 300 residents, surfers, students, scientists, neighborhood organizations, and leaders from coastal communities across California came to Santa Monica for the NOAA hearing, and many stayed the entire day to testify about clean water, public beach access, and the protections generations fought to establish. I attended and spoke for myself, not on behalf of the City, and I left prouder of this community than I have been in a long time.
→ 🎯 My take: Before the hearing, I publicly invited every Santa Monica Councilmember and every 2026 candidate to join us. Lana Negrete was the only invitee who came to the rally beforehand, and once the formal session began, no elected official or staff member represented the City of Santa Monica in the room. Whatever your view of the federal review, the host city's absence from a hearing about its own coastline deserves an explanation, and residents deserve to ask for one.
🔹 The written record closes Saturday, August 22 at 11:59 PM Pacific: The hearing was one chapter of NOAA's evaluation, not the whole book. If you spoke on August 10, put your comments in writing too. If you could not be there, this is your moment, because a written comment carries the same weight in the federal record. Three hundred people showed up in person. Let's make sure thousands more show up on paper.
👉 Learn how to submit a comment
🔹 Fifty years of the Coastal Act, three tests in one year: My guest commentary ran in the Daily Press's August 7 edition, tracing this year's challenges to coastal protection: AB 1740 as originally written, similar language in the June budget trailer bill, and now the federal review. In the first two cases, residents organized and the outcome changed. Assemblymember Rick Chavez Zbur narrowed AB 1740 to completing our Local Coastal Program, and the trailer bill language was removed before the Governor signed the budget on June 29. The pattern could not be clearer: when the public pays attention, the process bends toward the public.
🛟 Safe Streets This Week
🔹 The Waymo case takes a turn: On Friday, August 14, the Court of Appeal temporarily stayed the injunction that had paused overnight operations at the Broadway charging lots, meaning 24-hour operations may resume while the court considers Waymo's petition. Two things matter here: the trial court's findings in the City's favor have not been overturned, and the City's opposition is due August 24, with an expedited schedule proposed for the appeal itself. Broadway neighbors spent more than a year documenting overnight noise, lights, and traffic. A temporary order does not erase that record, and I will keep following every filing until those families get a final answer.
🔹 School is back, and so are crowded crosswalks: SMPD opened the school year with a timely reminder that drop-off and dismissal bring a surge of cars, bikes, e-bikes, and small pedestrians to our streets. Police Chief Darrick Jacob's advice is simple: slow down, put the phone away, and follow every direction a crossing guard gives you. The e-bike guidance deserves every parent's attention, because some models marketed as e-bikes are effectively electric motorcycles that children cannot legally operate on public roads. A few extra seconds of patience is a small price for a child's safe arrival.
👉 Read SMPD's back-to-school guidance
🧾 Sound Finances: A $2.4 Million Question on Virginia Avenue
🔹 The overrun nobody priced in: At Tuesday's Council meeting on August 11, staff reported that the city-financed rehabilitation of the 40-unit Virginia Avenue Apartments is projected to run about $2.4 million over budget, pushing the forecast from roughly $35.9 million to $38.3 million, largely due to mold and termite damage in buildings dating to 1947. I spoke during the meeting to raise concerns about the project's management and its request for additional City funding.
→ 💡 Why this matters: I want those 40 affordable homes finished and families living in them. I also want honesty about how we got here. Mold and termites in a 78-year-old building are not surprises; they are exactly what thorough due diligence exists to find before a loan closes, not after more than three quarters of it has been drawn down. Every dollar we spend absorbing preventable overruns is a dollar unavailable for the next family who needs a home, and I will keep asking the questions that protect both.
🤝 Community: From the Ashes, a Helping Hub
🔹 A story worth your morning coffee: On August 13, the Daily Press profiled the Santa Monica Helping Hub and its remarkable evolution from Palisades Fire relief operation into an ongoing community and environmental force. Founder Stephanie Inouye helped rescue an elderly woman from a burning apartment, an act the American Red Cross honored as a Hometown Hero award, then turned her surfing community network into a supply pipeline for displaced families. Today the Hub partners with Growing Hope Gardens on farm-to-neighbor produce, runs the Saturday Serve food rescue for unhoused neighbors, and since June has teamed up with The Coastal Alliance on monthly dune walks, where I lead the ecology portion. This is what I mean when I say environmental stewardship and community care are the same work: our food systems, our beaches, and our neighbors are all connected.
👉 Read the Daily Press feature
👉 Get involved with the Helping Hub
🔹 Around town this weekend: Saturday brought the It's Bigger Than Us back-to-school event and Music in Tongva Park, and Sunday featured the Beach Moms backpack giveaway and the Santa Monica Bay Audubon Society's annual board conference. So much of what makes this city work happens because volunteers show up with backpacks, produce, binoculars, and time. Thank you to everyone doing that quiet, essential work.
🐚 Dates to Know
🔹 Tonight, Monday, August 17, 7 to 10 PM: The Commission on Sustainability, Environmental Justice, and the Environment, where I serve as a Commissioner, holds its monthly public meeting at the Civic Center Parking Structure, 333 Civic Center Drive, SMI Room, Level 2. Water quality and Clean Beaches Measure V oversight items are on the discussion list, and the public is warmly encouraged to participate.
🔹 Wednesday, August 19: Back-to-school backpack giveaway and vegetable distribution with the Helping Hub at Growing Hope Gardens. All are welcome.
🔹 Saturday, August 22, 11:59 PM Pacific: NOAA's written comment period closes. This is the deadline that matters most this week.
🔹 Wednesday, August 26, 6 to 9 PM: Our campaign launch fundraiser. Come meet neighbors, talk through the issues facing Santa Monica, and help us kick off the road to November.
🔹 Sunday, August 30: Community Dune Walk and Beach Cleanup. Meet at 799 Palisades Beach Road, with parking at Lot 8 North near 800 Pacific Coast Highway. I will lead the walk through our dune ecosystem and coastal biodiversity before we clean the beach together.
🔹 Tuesday, November 3: Election Day, 78 days from today.
💙 Join the Movement
This campaign is funded by individual donors and powered by neighbors, and Friday's milestone belongs to every one of you. The maximum contribution is $1,200 per person and $2,400 per couple, but every amount makes a difference and is deeply appreciated. If giving is not in the cards right now, an hour of volunteering or a forwarded newsletter moves us forward just as surely.
🌊 Onward
This week I watched hundreds of people give up an entire day for a coastline, volunteers pack backpacks for kids they will never meet, and residents step up to a Council microphone over a line item in a spreadsheet. None of it was glamorous. All of it was Santa Monica at its best. A city stays strong when its people believe they have both a voice and a responsibility for what comes next, and everywhere I looked this week, you were proving it. Qualifying for the ballot on Friday simply made official what you already knew: I am in this with you, all the way to November and beyond. Thank you for being part of it.
💙 Ashley
