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Doug Trussler Newsletter — August 2, 2026
📋 The Game Plan with Doug Trussler
📅 August 3, 2026
Good evening, Santa Monica,
Any coach will tell you that week two is where habits form. Last Monday I introduced The Game Plan and made you a promise: real numbers and honest assessment, every week through November. This week gave us plenty of both. Council voted on the biggest overhaul of our homelessness system in three decades, the Mayor announced a structurally balanced budget, and a Pier road that was supposed to be closed for eight days reopened in one.
I am Doug Trussler, and I am running for City Council because I believe results like these should be the standard in Santa Monica, not the exception. Let's open the clipboard and go through it together.
🥅 The Pitch: Why I'm Stepping Up
🔹 I didn't decide to run for City Council because I needed another job: I'm running because Santa Monica is facing serious financial and operational challenges, and I believe my experience can help. I've spent my career managing capital, overseeing businesses, serving on audit committees, and working through complex problems where accountability and execution mattered. This is a difficult moment for our city, but difficult problems are exactly the ones I've spent my career taking on. That's why I'm stepping up, and this newsletter is a preview of how I would do the job: give credit where the city delivered, and read the fine print where it still owes us answers.
→ 💬 Measure me the way I would measure the city: Over two decades here, I have partnered with more than 45 growing businesses, helped create over 20,000 jobs, served more than eight years on the AYSO Region 20 Board, and officiated over 500 AYSO soccer games. I share those numbers because I believe a candidate should be judged the same way a city should be: by what they have actually delivered, not by what they promise in October.
🚨 Public Safety & Homelessness
🔹 Council made the call on our homelessness system, and added the checkpoint I asked for: Last Monday I told you that Tuesday's vote on the Housing Focused System of Care was the one to watch, and I laid out my test: real goals, honest reporting, and outcomes you can verify on our own streets. Here is what happened. Council approved all seven staff recommendations, authorizing the city to negotiate for the Palm Motel as city-controlled interim housing with The People Concern providing services, and to fund shelter beds at the Salvation Army's Bell Shelter for when local capacity runs short. Then it added a condition that matters: SaMoShel will not close until replacement housing is identified and a concrete transition plan is on the table.
→ 💬 My take: In my world we would call that condition a closing contingency, and it is exactly the right instinct. Local control was the correct principle to approve. Sequencing is where transitions like this succeed or fail, and requiring the replacement before the closure protects the people in those 60 beds and the neighborhoods around them at the same time. The plan now has a checkpoint. Our job as residents is to make sure it gets a scoreboard too, and I will keep publishing the numbers here as they come in. Because as I posted this weekend, the question is not whether we should help. It is whether our approach is actually helping.
👉 Read the full SMDP report on the vote
🔹 STEP Court turns two, with results worth studying: Santa Monica's Shelter, Treatment, and Empowerment Program pairs justice-involved individuals with a case manager and a 90-day care plan, and dismisses misdemeanor charges when participants complete it. Two years in, the program counts 29 graduates and 58 cases resolved, with referrals rising sharply over the past six months as the city's enforcement focus has ramped up. Santa Monica has long been a generous city, but compassion should lead to meaningful results, and this is what that looks like: policies that connect people with treatment, supportive services, and a real path toward long-term stability, while also protecting the public spaces residents rely on.
→ 📊 Why I am watching it: Programs like this are how the encouraging homelessness count I shared with you last week becomes a trend instead of a one-year headline. Treatment on one side, accountability on the other, and a measurable finish line in between. More of this, please.
🔹 A fully staffed police department for the first time in over twenty years: Per the State of the City, SMPD has reached full sworn staffing for the first time in more than two decades, and serious crime is down 12.5 percent. In every organization I have ever helped build, the lesson is the same: you cannot execute a safety plan without the people to run it. This milestone took years of recruiting work, and it deserves to be recognized.
💼 Economic Development
🔹 A road reopens days early, and it is worth understanding why: Appian Way, the main route to the Pier's primary parking lots, was scheduled to stay closed for up to eight days while crews demolished a section of the old Pier Bridge. Instead, the contractor swapped the saw-cutting method used elsewhere on the bridge for two hydraulic breakers, finished the demolition in a single day, and reopened the road on Tuesday, July 28. The full bridge replacement is slated to wrap up in late 2027.
→ 💬 My take: I grew up in the mountains of Lesotho watching my father, a mechanical engineer, help build roads, water systems, and housing for communities that had none. As I wrote on my campaign page, my earliest memories are of a community being built from the ground up by people who believed infrastructure and education were the foundations of a decent life. I still believe it. When a crew finds a faster, safer way to deliver and keeps Pier businesses open while doing it, that is execution, and I want Santa Monica to expect it on every project. For years Santa Monica had the advantage in coastal tourism, but today the competition is growing. Our history may bring visitors here. Our vision for the future will keep us competitive.
👉 Follow the Pier Bridge project updates
🔹 A balanced budget, and the footnotes I want you to see: In her July 23 State of the City address on Main Street, Mayor Torosis announced that the General Fund is structurally balanced for the coming fiscal year, ahead of schedule, supporting nearly $110 million of investment in parks, streets, libraries, and public safety. The service numbers behind it are real too: more than nine out of ten first-round plan checks now finish on time, a forty-point improvement in four months, which for a small business can be the difference between opening and giving up.
→ 📊 Read the fine print with me: Budgets aren't just spreadsheets. They affect every service our city provides, which is why I posted a short video on my Instagram this week explaining what Santa Monica's $35 million deficit actually means for residents. I have spent my career reviewing financial statements, and the footnotes are where the truth lives. Part of this structural balance depends on a parcel tax measure that voters will decide in November, and on revenue projections that still have to come true. None of that erases the achievement, and the people who did this work deserve real credit. It does mean fiscal discipline has to become a habit rather than a headline. One balanced year is a milestone. Ten of them is a turnaround, and the turnaround is the job I am applying for.
👉 Read the full State of the City address
🌳 Environment & Open Space
🔹 A court win for a good night's sleep on Broadway: On July 27, the Los Angeles County Superior Court granted the city's request for a preliminary injunction, barring overnight operations between 11 PM and 6 AM at the autonomous vehicle charging lots at 1222 and 1310 Broadway while the public nuisance case heads to trial. Neighbors had reported more than a year of persistent noise, lights, and traffic, and the court set a status conference for October 23 to review fixes at the sites.
→ 💬 My take: At Bison Capital I have spent 25 years backing growing companies, including in renewable energy, so I am genuinely rooting for this technology to succeed here. But being innovative and being a good neighbor are not competing goals, and residents' sleep was never a fair price for either. The October check-in will show whether the fixes hold up. Count on me to track it here.
👉 Read the city's announcement of the ruling
📅 Mark Your Calendar
🔹 Tonight, Monday, August 3, 6 to 9 PM: Measure GS Resident Oversight Committee special meeting at the SMi Training Room, 330 Olympic Drive, on the second floor of the Civic Center Parking Structure. This committee tracks how our homelessness prevention and affordable housing dollars are spent. Given everything above, resident oversight has never been more relevant.
👉 View the committee page and agenda
🔹 Tuesday, August 4, 5 to 8 PM: National Night Out at City Hall, 1685 Main Street. SMPD's free community evening returns with a "Lights. Camera. Community." theme, and parking is free in the Civic structure. Come meet the officers behind the staffing milestone above.
👉 Get the National Night Out details
🔹 This Thursday, August 6, at 7 PM: the coral trees community meeting. The city's Urban Forestry and Public Landscape teams host this one on Zoom to discuss the San Vicente removals.
🔹 Tuesday, November 3: Election Day, exactly three months from today.
🤝 Join the Campaign
Three months is a short season, and this grassroots campaign runs entirely on neighbors: the families I have coached alongside, the business owners I trade notes with on the Promenade, and readers like you who want a City Hall that keeps score in public. If that is the leadership you want, pick your position on this team: knock on doors, plant a lawn sign in your yard, open your living room for a meet and greet, or make a contribution of any size. Every conversation counts, and so does every dollar.
⚽ The Final Whistle
Every good team reviews the film of their performance, and that is what this week amounted to: Santa Monica watching its own tape and finding real progress on it. A road delivered early, a budget in balance, a homelessness overhaul with a built-in checkpoint. It all comes back to a question I asked on a recent walk through the city: what if?
What if Santa Monica reached its full potential? What if our parks, beaches, neighborhoods, and local businesses thrived together?
Santa Monica is already beautiful. Imagine what it could become with the right vision and leadership. The future isn't written yet, and that's something worth believing in. So hit reply and tell me which number in this newsletter you want me to dig into next week, especially if it is a budget question.
See you out there, Santa Monica. Let's get to work.
