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Doug Trussler Newsletter — August 10, 2026
📋 The Game Plan with Doug Trussler
📅 August 10, 2026
Good morning, Santa Monica,
Tonight at 4:30 PM, a small stretch of Vicente Terrace officially becomes Silas White Street, named for the Black entrepreneur whose dream of opening the Ebony Beach Club for Black families was taken from him by our own city government in the 1950s. A street sign does not rewrite history, but it does something I deeply value: it puts the truth where everyone can see it.
That idea, follow-through, runs through this entire newsletter. This week the city published the fine print behind its big homelessness vote, crews removed the San Vicente coral trees before the community meeting about them, and a serious operator stepped up for the long-dormant Civic Auditorium. I am Doug Trussler, candidate for City Council, and reading the follow-through with you is exactly what this newsletter is for. It's also why I'm running. Let's begin.
💼 Economic Development
🔹 The Civic Auditorium finally has a serious suitor: Tomorrow night, Tuesday, August 11, at 5:30 PM, City Council will consider entering exclusive negotiations with Goldenvoice/AEG Presents, the concert powerhouse behind Coachella and September's Ocean Way Festival, to evaluate redeveloping and operating the Civic Auditorium at 1855 Main Street. That landmark has sat dark for more than a decade, and a world-class operator taking a hard look is genuinely encouraging.
→ 💬 My take: My first lessons in business came from my grandfather, the treasurer of a large Canadian furniture company, and the one he repeated most still holds: the announcement is not the deal. The terms are the deal. An exclusive negotiation agreement is a first date, not a marriage, so here is what I will be watching as talks unfold: who funds the renovation, how revenue is shared, and what guaranteed community access looks like. The same agenda carries a $24 million expansion of the battery-electric bus contract for Big Blue Bus and an $80 million bond authorization for a 122-unit affordable project at 1318 4th Street. Numbers that big deserve public eyes, and yours are welcome.
👉 Read the SMDP council preview
🔹 Cottage courts, or workforce housing that might actually pencil: This past Tuesday, Council directed staff to fold the Planning Commission's Missing Middle Housing Realignment Plan into the city's next housing plan. The signature idea is the cottage court: six or seven small homes of about 850 square feet arranged around a shared courtyard, aimed at households earning roughly 120 to 200 percent of area median income. These are the teachers, nurses, and firefighters who, as the commission put it, earn "too much for subsidized housing but too little to buy here." About 90 percent of the people who work in Santa Monica commute in, and the plan could yield roughly 300 cottages, with at least one home in every court permanently price-restricted.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: I have spent 25 years figuring out which plans survive contact with a spreadsheet, and this one has the right instincts: let the modest building form hold prices down instead of subsidizing every unit. The honest caveat is construction cost, which is why the state bill under study, AB 1070, matters; it could trim hard costs by about 10 percent. If we want our workforce to live here, we should make the math work, not just the slogans.
👉 Read the cottage court report
🔹 A new bet on Main Street: Mindy and Vinny Kinne just brought Met Her at a Bar to Main Street, their sixth restaurant and their first in Santa Monica, an all-day café built to be a neighborhood gathering place. When experienced operators pick Santa Monica for their next chapter, that is a market signal worth celebrating. They are supplying the coffee and the optimism; we get to supply the regulars.
👉 Meet the new Main Street café
🚨 Public Safety & Homelessness
🔹 The homelessness overhaul published its fine print, so let's read it together: Last week I walked you through the Council's vote and its checkpoint. This week the city released the official blueprint, and the details matter more than the headline. Placements at the 34-room Palm Motel at 2020 14th Street will be limited to people meeting the new Santa Monica Program Participant standard: someone who became homeless here, has been homeless here for three or more years, or is a verified frequent user of city services. Everyone else encountered on the street gets a referral option through 35 newly funded beds at the Salvation Army's Bell Shelter, and staff will pursue scattered, non-congregate sites to replace SaMoShel's 60 beds. Every site is supposed to operate with outcome goals, on-site services, and on-site security.
→ 💬 My take: That participant definition is the linchpin of the entire system. Applied rigorously, it directs our resources to people with genuine ties to Santa Monica. Applied loosely, it becomes a magnet, and the fine print becomes fiction. As I said on Instagram this week, I applaud the progress in this year's homeless count, but progress on paper is not the same as progress on our streets, and we are still competing with neighboring cities for tourists, businesses, and residents. The solutions exist. What we need is the courage, and the urgency, to act on them together, and a public scoreboard so you can verify the results yourself.
🔹 National Night Out delivered: Tuesday evening, neighbors filled the City Hall lawn for SMPD's "Lights. Camera. Community." celebration, complete with K9 demonstrations, live music, and free Habit burgers for the first 1,000 arrivals. Trust between residents and officers is built at tables like those long before it is needed on a hard night, and every family who showed up made this city a little safer. Thank you, SMPD.
🔹 A heartbreaking loss north of Montana: Early Sunday morning, a couple in their early 90s died in a house fire in the 500 block of Lincoln Boulevard. My heart goes out to their family and neighbors, and my gratitude goes to the SMFD crews who ran toward those flames before 3 AM. This was the second fatal residential fire here in recent months, so please take ten minutes this week to test your smoke alarms and check on an older neighbor. It is a small act that can change everything.
👉 Review home fire safety resources
🌳 Environment & Open Space
🔹 The coral trees came down before the meeting about them: Crews removed the 13 largest coral trees on San Vicente Boulevard on August 4 and 5, days before Thursday's community meeting on their fate. The City Manager's memo to Council lays out the scoreboard: the corridor historically held 166 trees, 32 have been lost in recent months, and of the 121 living trees remaining, half are in poor condition, stressed by two invasive pests and irrigation systems that were allowed to fail. Today only 80 percent of the tree irrigation is working, with full restoration promised within weeks, while a contractor hand-waters and crews prune monthly.
→ 💬 My take: Last week I asked for every removal to be paired with a funded replanting plan, and I am not letting go of that. This week I will add a word about sequencing: holding the community meeting before the chainsaws costs nothing and buys trust, and no one has yet explained why irrigation on one of our most iconic boulevards went unmaintained in the first place. I want the recovery tracked like any capital project: irrigation percentages, trees treated, replanting timeline, published for all of us. What gets measured gets watered.
👉 Read the Lookout's coral tree report
📅 Mark Your Calendar
🔹 Tonight, Monday, August 10, 4:30 PM: The Silas White Street unveiling ceremony at 1846 Main Street, free and open to the public. It follows the July 28 seating of the city's first Restorative Justice Commission, and it is a rare chance to watch a city correct its own record in person.
🔹 Tomorrow, Tuesday, August 11, 5:30 PM: City Council meets at City Hall, 1685 Main Street, with the Civic Auditorium negotiations, human services grant guidelines, and the affordable housing bond hearing all on deck. New this month under state law SB 707: meetings now offer two-way remote participation and Spanish-language instructions, so you can weigh in without leaving your couch.
👉 Learn how to participate in a council meeting
🔹 Saturdays through September 12, 7 PM: Tongva Twilight: Sounds & Cinema, the city's new free music and movie series at Tongva Park, opened this weekend with ska jazz from Western Standard Time. Next up: New Orleans funk from The Rumble on August 15, then salsa night with Son Mayor, free dance lesson included, on August 22. Pack a picnic, bring a low-back chair, and enjoy summer the Santa Monica way.
👉 See the Tongva Twilight lineup
🔹 Tuesday, November 3: Election Day, now less than three months away.
🤝 Join the Campaign
🔹 A thank-you, with the numbers attached: The first campaign finance filings of the season are public, covering the period through June 30, and this campaign leads all council candidates in total fundraising at $75,420, including $50,420 in donations from supporters plus a personal loan I made because I am invested in this city, literally. I read financial disclosures for a living, so let me be straight with you: the race is wide open, and money is not the scoreboard that matters. Conversations are. If you want a City Hall that cares about you and cares about the details, join this team: knock on doors, host a gathering, plant a lawn sign, or chip in what you can.
⚽ The Final Whistle
A street sign goes up tonight because a family refused to let a story be forgotten, and because a city finally chose accountability over comfort. That is follow-through, and it is the standard I want applied to everything I mentioned in this newsletter: to shelter beds, to coral trees, to concert halls, to budgets. Santa Monica does not lack for good announcements. What we need to prove, week after week, is that the fine print matches the headline. If you do one civic thing this week, make it Tuesday's council meeting, in person or, for the first time, from home. Then hit reply and tell me which deal, dollar, or dashboard you want me to dig into next Monday. I read every message, and it shapes the next issue.
