CORRECTIONS
Corrections
Every correction we issue appears here and stays here. Corrections are also appended permanently to the article they concern. Nothing is deleted and nothing is quietly edited into the text.
A correction fixes an error. An update adds new information to a story that is still moving. They are separate things and this site keeps them separate: updates are timestamped and appended to their article, and they are not listed here.
If you have found an error, write to oursantamonica@gmail.com. Point to the passage and, where you can, to the record that contradicts it. We will correct in public and say what changed.
No article-level corrections have been issued.
This page is live from the start rather than added later, because a corrections mechanism built after the first mistake is a corrections mechanism built under pressure. The reference history's own ledger is below.
Corrections ledger — the reference history
The institutional history is a revised edition. This is its own record of what changed: facts resolved against primary sources, competing figures reconciled, and claims its earlier drafts got wrong. Nothing verified was removed — material was corrected, extended and reconciled.
No corrections have been issued. This history is newly published; the ledger below begins empty and will record every correction made to it from this point on.
A correction fixes an error. It is appended here permanently, with the date, what was wrong, what is now stated, and the source that settled it. It is never quietly edited into the text, and no entry is ever removed. An update, which adds new information without correcting anything, is kept separate and is not recorded here.
If you find an error, please write to us. Show us the document.
Where this history differs from other published figures
This is not a corrections ledger. It is a sourcing note, and it belongs in the open.
On several points the figures below differ from numbers that circulate elsewhere in print, in advocacy material, or in earlier accounts of the same events. In each case the reason is that the figure here was read from the underlying record rather than from a summary. Anyone comparing this history against another source will hit these discrepancies, so each one is stated with the document that resolves it.
Michael Soloff’s Measure GS contribution: $335,000. A figure of $337,500 circulates. The Lookout’s itemization of the ballot-measure money gives $335,000, and that is the figure used here (Santa Monica Lookout, Oct. 2022).
Santa Monica Forward was co-founded by Judy Abdo, in spring 2015, with Terry O’Day and Richard Bloom. Denny Zane is conspicuously absent from the founding roster — a point contemporaneous reporting made explicitly, and one that matters because the group is often described loosely as a Zane project (SMDP).
Community Corporation of Santa Monica executive director compensation: $233,550 plus $4,800 other, for FY2024, per the Form 990. A lower figure of $189,984 appears elsewhere; it could not be corroborated for that year and appears to be from an earlier one (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, CCSM EIN 95-3795161).
The Virginia Avenue rehabilitation figures are a sequence, not a contradiction. Three numbers circulate as though they compete. They do not. $34.8 million is the itemized 2025 cost ($15,183,670 in 2020 plus $19,616,330 in 2025, or $802,875 per unit); $35.7 million is an authorized not-to-exceed ceiling; $37.5 million, or $937,500 per unit, is a later figure reflecting a roughly $3 million overrun reported in May 2026 (Lookout, Aug. 2025; Lookout, Dec. 2025).
SMRR’s Annual Meeting quorum is not a fixed number. It is sometimes cited as a specific count. The 2005 bylaws (Art. V, Sec. 1) define it as a majority of those voting members who sign into a meeting before the vote — a floating figure by design (SMRR Bylaws, 2005).
The Huntley and Richardson Patel matters are two separate FPPC cases and are frequently merged into one. Huntley Hotel: Case No. 15/246, $310,000 in penalties, 62 counts under Gov. Code § 84301, covering $97,350 in laundered contributions ($86,650 in 2012 and $10,700 across 2013–15). Richardson Patel / Pure Pilates: Case No. 17/00182, $10,000, under § 84302. The FPPC did not find that candidates knew of the laundering (FPPC, Huntley Hotel; city staff report).
On the Cloverfield Commons initiative, SMRR and UNITE HERE Local 11 were on the same side — both in favor — and were opposed by the Santa Monica Great Park Coalition. The measure failed to qualify for the November 2026 ballot and its proponents now target November 2028. Santa Monica Forward’s position is not confirmed (Great Park Coalition; LAist, June 2026).
The two Gleam Davis Miramar dates are commonly reversed. Her recusal was reported contemporaneously in September 2020; the FPPC’s finding of a financial conflict was issued on October 16, 2020 and reported in February 2021 (SM Mirror, Sept. 2020; Lookout, Feb. 2021).
Campaign-finance totals differ by scope, not by arithmetic. Broad SMRR-side totals include independent expenditures by Santa Monica Forward and UNITE HERE; narrower totals cover candidate committees only. Both are correct. Any comparison between them has to state which is being used, and this history does.
The mid-1990s council majority is genuinely contested and is treated as a COMPETING EXPLANATION rather than settled. See the Full Chronological Timeline for both accounts and the primary sources behind each.