1965 Storrs 1974

Les Storrs Santa Monica Portrait of a City Yesterday and Today, Santa Monica Bank: Santa Monica, CA, 1974, 67 pp., 1973, 1965, 1960s, 1956

     "The choice was Perry Scott (1965-1973) who served for some eight years before being ousted by the city council following the upset election of 1973. Scott, at the time of his appointment to the job, was city manager of Sunnyvale, and had served in the same capacity in Santa Barbara prior to that.

     "Scott, like Dorton, was a man gifted with special expertise in the field of city finances but, unlike Dorton, he also had a talent for putting together transactions beneficial to the general economy of Santa Monica.

     " . . . his most outstanding success , , , Santa Moniica almost alone among the cities of the nation, has a healthy but old central business district.

     " . . .

     "It is true that the Santa Monica Mall project was under way when he [Perry Scott] came to Santa Monica, it having been suggested in the general plan which the city adopted in 1956 . . . a concept which was picked up enthusiastically by the Santa Monica Chamber of Commerce, and especially by Paul Priolo, later an Assemblyman and then leader in the mercantile community.

     " . . .

     "Perry Scott saw that the great remaining need was for off-street parking, and he was almost solely responsible for the program which resulted in the construction of six parking structures, two in each block on the mall, three being entered from Second Street, three from Fourth Street.

     "The project was financed by an assessment district, as was the mall itself, but the mall assessment district includes only the property having frontage thereon, while the parking district extends from a point half way between Fourth Street and Fifth Street, and from Wilshire Boulevard to Broadway.

     " . . .

     "Like all strong administrators . . . [Perry Scott] won the enmity of a substantial bloc of city employees, notably firemen and policemen, when he opposed state legislation which would have made them eligible for retirement on 75 percent of their pay at age 55 . . .

     " . . . Scott recommended, and the City Council accepted, a proposal whereby the old and deteriorated breakwater would be replaced by an island, . . .

     "The Council first accepted, then reversed itself and rejected this proposal.

     "Then the Council decided upon the removal of the old municipal pier and the adjoining Newcomb Pier; then, in response to a public outcry largely organized by a handful of business operators on the pier, reversed itself again.

     "Conservationists opposed removal of the piers, holding that they are "historical." Structures become historical a little sooner in Santa Monica, and indeed in all of California, than in other parts of the country. The Municipal Pier, in its present format, dates to about 1920, while the Newcomb Pier, first known as the Looff pier, is about the same age, although the merry-go-round at the shoreward end of the pier is older than that."

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 Kelyn Roberts 2017