I instructed and flew charter out of SMO too. I used to sit in the pilots lounge and listen to Claire Walters giving her check ride orals back in the '90s! (How many pounds of rocks can we load on the airplane and bring back from Kxxx?) She gave me some good advice about instructing too.
I flew a couple of "organ flights" out of SMO in the "noisy jets" too, one of them after the "no takeoffs allowed" hours too. (THAT was a pleasure.) Almost all of the pilots at our little bottom feeder charter company did pretty well at keeping the noise down to below the 95.0 SENEL limit. Yet still they bitched...
Most of the houses surrounding SMO have been among the higher market value per square foot in the immediate area for the last 15 - 20 years. The City council and their paid minions have been trying to turn the airport into a real estate project development for at least the last 30+ years. They've tried every legal avenue they can think of and even lined up developers to fund the effort. So far they've been thwarted each time, but they'll eventually win unless each of their new plans are exposed and vigorously opposed in every instance.
They've harassed and harangued the airport users and businesses every chance they've gotten and lost several court cases in the process, wasting untold sums of city taxpayer money. They've taken away airport use land and replaced it with a soccer field, dog pooper park and on the cheap artsy-fartsy studio rentals where aircraft parking and hangars used to be. It's really nothing more than a piecemeal land grab and the airport complainers are just puppets of the profit minded developers and their paid minions in the city council. Hey there's no shortage of crackpot activists in the "people's republic" available to tilt at windmills and cause trouble at the behest of the council. And yes it's true that pilots and others with an aviation interest at the airport may not serve on the so-called "airport commission". Anti-airport types only in that august body of buffoons! Yet even with the deck seemingly stacked in their favor, these jerks have met with only limited success in their quest to date. I wonder how long that can continue? In a war of attrition, the diminishing force usually loses the most. As general aviation shrinks, the various levels of government and their masters only grow more powerful...
Anyway, that's just my observations. I get the idea that very few "original, pre-jet" homeowners are left these days, and those that are don't seem much interested in being very active in the anti-airport nonsense. This group is made up primarily of crackpot activists with some personal need to somehow feel important. It's probably less than 50 individuals, with only about 3 or 4 doing most of the talking. The city pretends to act in "the people's" interest, but it really is just a sham. It's about the land and who gets to profit from it. Watch that plan for a "park" morph into condos and retail stores once the deal is done! I used to read the airport commission and city council meeting minutes every month for years, but gave it up recently. Too many lies!
If I were president I'd be very tempted to deploy a Marine CH-53 unit to SMO until the residents learned to love bizjets. And it's correct that most people in the neighborhoods around the airport don't even notice the "little planes". I've talked to quite a few people visiting the airport for the first time who lived close by for years but never even knew there was an airport there. Lots of memories there for me and I'll be sad when it goes...