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Ashley Oelsen Newsletter — September 14, 2026
🌎 Protect What You Love with Ashley Oelsen
📅 September 14, 2026
Hello, neighbors,
Hurricane Marie never came within hundreds of miles of our shoreline, and it still managed to rewrite Santa Monica's September. Its swell carved away the sand south of the Pier, forced the cancellation of the Ocean Way Festival, and made a better argument for coastal protection than any of us ever could. The same week, our City Council voted unanimously to bring red-light cameras and a new street-safety playbook to our roads, and I published a new op-ed about a 550-foot piece of Santa Monica history that we cannot afford to lose. There is a lot to walk through, so let's get to it.
🛟 Public Safety: A Unanimous Vote for Safer Streets
🔹 Red-light cameras and a new playbook for our roads: On Tuesday, September 8, the City Council voted 7 to 0 to authorize an automated red-light camera program and to adopt a "Safe System" framework for eliminating traffic deaths, along with a neighborhood traffic-calming toolkit. The numbers behind the vote are sobering: from 2021 through 2025, Santa Monica recorded 214 fatal or severe-injury crashes, including 21 deaths, and 20 of those 21 people were walking or biking.
→ 💡 What this means: Under the state law enabling the program, violations go through a civil process rather than criminal citations, with penalties starting at $100, reduced amounts for low-income drivers, and cameras that operate completely separately from the police. Council also added guardrails I appreciate: strict limits on image retention and a bar on facial recognition.
→ 🎯 My take: As a scientist, I love a framework that starts from evidence, and the evidence here says our crashes are scattered across the city, not clustered at a few bad corners. Streets should be designed so that a human mistake is not a death sentence. I will be watching how the pilot intersections are chosen and whether the follow-through matches Tuesday's ambition.
🔹 Transparency follow-through on Palisades Park: This weekend, SMPD released its Critical Incident Community Debriefing Video on the August 22 fatal officer-involved shooting near the 1400 block of Ocean Avenue, including body-worn camera footage. The investigation is ongoing and these findings are preliminary, but when I first wrote to you about that terrible Saturday, I said our community deserves a complete and transparent public accounting. Releasing this video is a meaningful step toward that standard, and I will keep following the case until the final findings are public. My compassion remains with everyone touched by that day, including the man who lost his life and the officers who responded.
👉 Read about the video release
🔹 Twenty-five years since September 11: On Friday, our Fire Department marked the 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks with its annual ceremony at Fire Station #1, joined by police and City Hall representatives and open to the public. If you missed it, an artifact from the World Trade Center site is on display outside the station's community room during business hours. To every firefighter, officer, and first responder who serves this city: thank you, today and every day.
🌊 Our Coast: The Storm That Made the Argument
🔹 Ocean Way is canceled, and the beach did the talking: On Friday, the City and Goldenvoice announced that the inaugural Ocean Way Festival, planned for September 26 and 27 on the sand south of the Pier, cannot safely go forward. Marie's swell stripped away so much beach that the festival's safe shoreline setback would have had to move 96 feet inland, while runoff from the Pico-Kenter storm drain cut through the southern end of the site. The Pier itself was not damaged and remains open, all tickets will be refunded automatically, and plans are underway for a 2027 return.
→ 🎯 My take: The irony is overwhelming. This festival was held up as a reason to weaken the Coastal Act, and then nature made the case for the very protections some wanted to dismantle. I have spent my career studying coastlines like ours, and here is the plain truth: our beach is natural infrastructure. It protects our homes, supports our economy, and provides critical habitat. The environment is not an obstacle to our economy in Santa Monica. It is the foundation of it, and we must protect what protects us.
👉 View my post on the cancellation (Instagram)
🔹 The mystery of the vanishing warning signs: After the storm's runoff, water quality matters more than ever, which is why it troubles me that the yellow "do not swim" advisory signs posted at our shoreline keep disappearing. Whoever is removing them, whether for bad optics or as a prank, is gambling with swimmers' health. Until the signs stay put, please check conditions before you get in the water.
👉 Check current beach advisories
🎨 Protect Our Public Art: A Whale of a Fight
🔹 My new op-ed, published yesterday in the Westside Current: For over four decades, Daniel Alonzo's Whale of a Mural has turned 550 feet of Ocean Park Boulevard into an underwater world of whales and dolphins. Daniel, whose family roots in Santa Monica reach back to 1902, fought for years just to win the right to paint that wall, then poured more than 13,000 unpaid hours into it, painting 52-foot whales with brushes no wider than an inch. We have already lost too much of our public art, from Jane Golden's Ocean Park murals to the Millard Sheets mosaic that now sits in a museum 40 miles away. My op-ed asks the City Council to initiate landmark consideration for the mural, commission a professional condition assessment, and explore funding for its restoration, the same path that saved Chain Reaction.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: Hispanic Heritage Month begins tomorrow, and heritage does not live only in proclamations. It lives in our families, our neighborhoods, and our public spaces, and this mural is one of them. One note: please do not donate through Change.org, as those donations do not fund the mural's preservation. Your signature is what we need.
👉 Read my op-ed in the Westside Current
👉 Sign the petition to landmark the mural
🧾 Sound Finances: Resilience Is Economic Policy
🔹 What a canceled festival costs, and what a healthy beach saves: Refunds for Ocean Way will be issued automatically, and I am glad the City and Goldenvoice plan to move forward with many of the community benefit programs built alongside the festival. But the bigger lesson belongs in every budget conversation we have. Tourism is a pillar of our local economy, and a wide, healthy beach is one of our greatest economic assets. Every dollar we invest in stormwater maintenance, dune restoration, and coastal resilience is insurance against weeks exactly like this one. When I talk about sound city finances, this is what I mean: resilience is not a luxury line item. It is how a coastal city protects its revenue, its jobs, and its future, and I will treat it that way in every vote.
👉 View my sustainability post (Instagram)
🗳️ From the Campaign Trail
🔹 Saturday on the Promenade: Our Volunteer Kickoff filled the corner of Third and Wilshire on Saturday with music, snacks, postcard writing, and neighbors signing up for canvassing teams and lawn signs. Thank you to everyone who came by, whether for five minutes or the whole afternoon. Meeting so many of you reminded me why we say this campaign is powered by community. No experience is needed to join us, and all ages are welcome.
🔹 Grateful for the Blue Wave: On Wednesday, I was honored to receive the endorsement of the Blue Wave Democratic Club, which reflects our shared commitment to protecting the environment and building a more accountable Santa Monica. I am grateful for every endorsement, and I will keep measuring this campaign the way I always have: by the neighbors who volunteer, chip in, and put their trust on the ballot. Organizations endorse candidates. People elect them.
👉 View the endorsement post (Instagram)
🤝 Community Notes
🔹 A Labor Day rooted in family: Monday was Labor Day, and it is always personal for me. My family counts more than 150 years of union membership between us, and I was a union member early in my own career. My uncle, Franco Harris, walked the NFL players' picket line in 1974 when he had every reason to protect his own career instead. On Monday I thought about him, and about the generations who fought for fair wages, safe workplaces, and dignity on the job. To the union workers who keep Santa Monica running every day: thank you. Solidarity matters.
👉 View my Labor Day post (Instagram)
🐚 Dates to Know
🔹 Tuesday, September 15: Hispanic Heritage Month begins and runs through October 15. Signing the mural petition is a fitting way to start it.
🔹 Saturday, September 19: California Coastal Cleanup Day. After the week our beach just had, this one matters more than ever. Grab gloves, bring the kids, and join thousands of volunteers along the Bay.
👉 Sign up for Coastal Cleanup Day
🔹 Tuesday, September 22, 5:30 PM: City Council is scheduled to meet at City Hall, 1685 Main Street. If the road-safety rollout, coastal resilience, or the mural moves you, public comment is your microphone.
👉 View the latest Council agenda
🔹 Tuesday, November 3: Election Day, 50 days from today.
💙 Join the Movement
This campaign is powered by people, not special interests. Every contribution, whether $10 or $100, helps us knock more doors, print more signs, and reach more voters, and every donor proves there is real community support behind what we are building. 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 possible right now, an hour of volunteering or a forwarded newsletter carries us just as far.
🌊 Onward
This week, the ocean reminded us who is really in charge, and it left us with homework. So here is your next step, and mine: sign the petition to protect a mural that tells our story, and meet us in the sand on Saturday to care for the beach that just spent a week protecting us. The coast is never saved. It is always being saved, by people who show up. I hope you will be one of them.
💙 Ashley
