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Ashley Oelsen Newsletter — August 2, 2026
🌎 Protect What You Love with Ashley Oelsen
📅 August 3, 2026
Happy August, neighbors,
Ninety-two days. That is how much time is left before Election Day, and if this past week is any preview, these ninety-two days will shape Santa Monica for decades. A judge gave sleepless families on Broadway their nights back. Our Council overhauled how this city cares for neighbors experiencing homelessness. City planners opened a two-year conversation about the future of 245 acres of our beach and Pier. And the first campaign finance reports of the season became public, including mine.
In this newsletter: the three and a half years I spent reading the city's fine print and how they made me a candidate, a week of real wins for safe streets, the plan that will define our coastline for a generation, and where you can find me tomorrow night. Bring the kids.
☀️ Why I'm Running: Sound City Finances
🔹 Before I asked for your vote, I volunteered to read the receipts: From 2022 to 2025, I chaired the City of Santa Monica's Clean Beaches and Ocean Parcel Tax Citizens Oversight Committee. Our job was simple to describe and demanding to do: review every proposed and actual expenditure of Measure V, the parcel tax voters approved to reduce pollution in urban runoff and keep our Bay healthy, and confirm that each dollar actually served the water quality goals voters were promised. It is not glamorous work. It is spreadsheets, staff reports, and asking the same question a dozen ways: did the money do what we said it would? Those years taught me that public trust is not won in speeches. It is built line by line, in rooms most people never hear about, by residents who volunteer to pay attention.
→ 💙 What this means for you: When I talk about sound city finances as a pillar of my campaign, this is what I mean. I have already done the unpaid version of the job. Elect me, and I will bring that same line-by-line discipline to every budget, contract, and program this Council touches.
🛟 Safe Streets, Followed Through
🔹 Quiet nights return to Broadway: On July 27, the Los Angeles County Superior Court granted the City a preliminary injunction pausing overnight operations at Waymo's charging lots at 1222 and 1310 Broadway. While the case heads toward trial, no charging or servicing is allowed between 11 PM and 6 AM. Neighbors near those lots endured more than a year of noise, lights, and traffic disrupting their sleep, and they organized, testified, and refused to be ignored. Waymo has since filed an appeal, so this fight is not over. I welcome innovation in this city, but new technology has to coexist with the people who live next to it. Sleep is not a luxury. It is a public health baseline, and I will always stand with residents who demand it.
👉 Read the City's announcement
🔹 Swift work by SMPD after the Pico Boulevard homicide: My heart is with the victim's family and everyone shaken by the violence on Pico Boulevard. SMPD detectives, working with regional partners, had a suspect in custody within hours of the July 25 call and publicly identified him on July 28. That speed reflects a department at full sworn staffing for the first time in more than two decades, and it matters.
🔹 STEP Court proves accountability and treatment belong together: Since launching in January 2024, Santa Monica's Shelter, Treatment, and Empowerment Program has graduated 29 participants and dismissed 58 misdemeanor cases for people who completed individualized 90-day care plans. Fewer repeat offenses, more people housed, and lives genuinely rebuilt: that is exactly the kind of measurable result I want more of.
👉 Read the STEP Court milestone
🌊 The Coast This Week
🔹 A 245-acre conversation about our shoreline begins: City planners have launched the Beach and Pier Vision Plan, a roughly two-year effort introduced to the Planning Commission on July 15. It grows out of the Parks and Recreation Vision Plan adopted in January and will be coordinated with updates to our Local Coastal Program, the shoreline rulebook I wrote to you about last week. Outreach to boards, commissions, and stakeholders runs through the summer and fall, with community surveys and beach pop-up events to follow. I have spent my career on coastlines like ours, and the pattern is unmistakable: the plans that succeed are the ones shaped early by science and by residents. Get in at the ground floor. Our beach belongs to all of us, and its next chapter should be written by the people who love it.
👉 Read about the Beach and Pier Vision Plan
🔹 Pier Bridge progress, days ahead of schedule: Appian Way reopened to traffic on Tuesday, July 28, after just one day of closure instead of the eight that were anticipated. Crews used hydraulic breakers rather than saw cutting to demolish a section of the old Pier Bridge, finishing the job in a single day. When public works teams innovate and deliver early, they deserve our thanks, and our expectation that this becomes the norm.
👉 Follow Pier Bridge construction updates
🧭 From Speeches to Scoreboards
🔹 State of the City, in plain numbers: On Thursday, July 23, Mayor Caroline Torosis delivered the State of the City on Main Street and summed up the year in one line: "We are turning the lights back on." The General Fund is structurally balanced ahead of schedule. Nearly $110 million is going into parks, streets, libraries, public safety, and transportation. Serious crime is down, and all five library branches are back to full service for the first time since the pandemic. A balanced budget is not a headline. It is a foundation, and the difference between a city that makes promises and a city that keeps them is what happens next, dollar by dollar. My oversight years taught me exactly where to look, and I will keep looking.
👉 Read the State of the City recap
🔹 A new chapter for homeless services, with a safeguard I applaud: At its July 28 meeting, the City Council approved all seven staff recommendations to build a local Housing Focused System of Care, including negotiating to bring the Palm Motel under city control with services from The People Concern, and funding shelter beds at the Salvation Army's Bell Shelter. Critically, the Council also directed staff not to wind down the 60-bed SaMoShel shelter downtown until a concrete replacement plan comes back for review. That safeguard is precisely the standard I have been urging in this space: no bed disappears until we know what replaces it, and every agreement comes with outcomes we can verify. This vote landed the same month our city reported an 18.7 percent drop in unsheltered homelessness. The momentum is real. Now we protect it with follow-through.
👉 Read the report on the Council vote
🔹 Resident oversight meets tonight, and renters get real help this week: The Measure GS Resident Oversight Committee meets this evening, Monday, August 3, at 6 PM. Measure GS dollars fund the City's new $6 million Santa Monica Renter Aid program, which is accepting applications through August 20 and offering free in-person application help on Thursdays from 12:30 to 4:30 PM at the Main Library. As a renter, I know how fast one hard month can spiral, and as a former oversight chair, I love seeing residents watch these dollars in real time. Both doors are open to you.
👉 See the Measure GS Committee schedule
👉 Learn about Santa Monica Renter Aid
💙 Join the Movement
🔹 Our first campaign finance reports are public, and I am proud of ours: The first disclosures of the 2026 cycle, covering the period through June 30, are now out for every candidate. Mine tells the story I hoped it would: a campaign funded by individual donors, with strong roots right here in Santa Monica. Transparency about who funds a campaign is non-negotiable for me, because you cannot hold a city accountable if you will not be held accountable yourself. To every neighbor who has chipped in, thank you. The maximum contribution is $1,200 per person and $2,400 per couple, but every amount makes a difference and is deeply appreciated.
👉 Read the campaign finance coverage
🐚 Dates to Know
🔹 Tuesday, August 4, 5 to 8 PM: National Night Out takes over the City Hall lawn, themed Lights. Camera. Community. Expect free food and family activities, free parking in the Civic structure, and free Big Blue Bus rides when you mention the event. I will be there, and I would love to meet you.
👉 Plan your National Night Out evening
🔹 Tuesday, August 4, 6 PM: The Public Safety Reform and Oversight Commission holds its regular monthly meeting in Council Chambers at City Hall. Civilian oversight of public safety is worth your time.
🔹 Thursday, August 6, 12:30 to 4:30 PM: Renter Aid in-person application help at the Main Library, 601 Santa Monica Blvd. If you or a neighbor could use it, drop in.
🔹 Friday, August 7, 10 AM to 3 PM: SMPL at the Beach brings the library to the sand at the Annenberg Community Beach House. Beach reads, no library card required.
🔹 Saturday, August 8, 9 AM to 2 PM: Free Recycling Event at City Yards for Santa Monica residents. Mattresses, electronic waste, and up to five boxes of paper for shredding. Every item diverted is one less burden on our Bay.
👉 See the Recycling Event details
🔹 Tuesday, November 3: Election Day. Ninety-two days from today, Santa Monica chooses its future.
🌊 Onward
This week I am leaving you with a question instead of a to-do list. The Beach and Pier Vision Plan will decide what 245 acres of our coastline look like for our kids, so tell me: what do you want our beach to be in 2040? More dunes and native habitat? Better access for everybody and every age? A Pier that still feels like ours? Hit reply with your answer. I will carry your ideas into every outreach session, every hearing, and every conversation between here and November, because a vision for our coast should start with the people who love it most. That is what this campaign is, and it is why I am in this race.
💙 Ashley
