City Hall, school district may partner with SMC to prop up $175M bond
DOWNTOWN — If the shortage of open space in Santa Monica is to be resolved anytime soon, local leaders will have to swallow their pride and learn to work together.
That’s the message officials from Santa Monica College delivered in a Wednesday evening meeting with top brass from the local school district and City Hall. SMC officials plan to put a $175 million bond to fund education and recreation projects on the November ballot, and hope to build as broad a consensus in the community as possible.
“It is very clear that we are not all going to be able to do things on our own,” said Dr. Piedad F. Robertson, president of SMC. “We are going to have to help each other, support each other.”
Cooperation hasn’t come easy. Officials from City Hall expressed skepticism about the proposed partnership, questioning the rushed time frame of the bond and wondering aloud if SMC, a state entity free from local controls, could be trusted to observe community values. District leaders voiced frustration at their limited involvement — in both bond discussions and proceeds.
SMC leaders responded by pledging to meet frequently with school and city officials, and to remain flexible, for now, as to the possible projects funded by the bond. To qualify for the November ballot, SMC officials said they need to work out the details by the end of July.
“I think we can have joint power agreements. I think we can work together. And I think we can have a leap of faith,” said SMC trustee Herb Roney. “We learn by working together.”
“I think we can have joint power agreements. I think we can work together. And I think we can have a leap of faith. We learn by working together.” — – HERB RONEY SMC trustee
If approved, $75 million of the proposed bond would be used solely for SMC projects. Another $25 million would be spent on joint projects with the City of Malibu, while $75 million would be used in partnership projects with City Hall. The bond, which would be administered by SMC, is attractive to the cities because it requires only 55 percent approval among voters. It would cost the average homeowner $77 a year and the average renter a little more than $13 a year, officials estimate.
Already the City of Malibu has started drafting paperwork that would set the parameters of their partnership with SMC. Staffers at City Hall were doing the same, while elected leaders awaited results from a poll of residents on the issue being conducted this week by SMC.
Local school district leaders said they were worried the bond could cause voter fatigue before 2006, when they plan to place another bond on the ballot. They also said they were disappointed with the lack of clarity from SMC over details of the partnership, and hoped to be able to give more input. Schools superintendent John Deasy before the meeting joked he had read the proposed bond materials cover to cover, but hadn’t yet gotten to the section concerning the school district.
The $75 million in partnerships with City Hall could be used for a variety of projects, including funding for the Marion Davies Estate at 415 Pacific Coast Highway, the Discovery Center aquarium on the Santa Monica Pier, planned botanical gardens in the Civic Center downtown, new childcare facilities, and for purchasing new playing fields or upgrading and retrofitting the current ones.
SMC, which has been criticized for waiting to unveil the proposal until a month ago, has used the severe lack of local open space as a selling point for the proposed bond. Santa Monica has a density greater than 99.4 percent of all other cities, towns and places in America — and needs 75 more acres of parks to reach the average amount residents enjoy in Los Angeles and Orange counties, the college claims in documents supporting the proposed bond.
Those arguments haven’t overshadowed concerns of some local leaders who feel the college has left details fuzzy and may abuse its power if the bond is approved.
“There’s something about this one that makes me very skeptical,” said City Councilman Ken Genser, pointing out that earlier partnerships between City Hall and SMC have been difficult in the making. “In this one, the college raises the money and decides, really unilaterally, how to spend it.
“It’s partnership, really, by gift.” Perhaps even more concerning for some is the compressed time frame of the proposal, which SMC officials waited to present until after City Hall worked out an agreement for ongoing funding to the school district. Had they unveiled it sooner, the measure may have overwhelmed voters in Novembers, SMC officials maintain. Still, some said the proposal needs community input.
“I can’t imagine going forward with this in this budget cycle,” Mayor Richard Bloom said Wednesday afternoon. Bloom is not a member of the school liaison committee and didn’t attend its Wednesday’s meeting at the Ken Edwards Center in downtown Santa Monica.
“I think the entire process right now reads as a back room process, in which only one entity was really involved,” Bloom added. “For any of us to get involved in that is going to lower the public’s confidence in all of our public entities. We pride ourselves on open and public processes, and the larger the issue, the more important the process is. This is a $175 million that purports to be part of partnership and there is no partnership right now... This is much more of an example of the lack of coop-eration that have characterized the two agencies over the years. This is an example of the college deciding they have a good idea, and it may involve us at some point.”
Other council members view the bond more optimistically. City Councilmen Bob Holbrook and Herb Katz both have said it’s time to put aside the sordid history between the college and City Hall, and begin to work together. Katz echoed that sentiment at the Wednesday meeting.
“If we sit here and figure a way that it can’t work, I guarantee it won’t work — and that, to me, has been the history of it,” said Katz, who encouraged fellow leaders to focus now on the big picture, assuring them the devil would be in the details in the years ahead.
In the end, SMC officials said they likely would push forward with the bond even without support from the school district or City Hall, but reiterated their desire to partner on the bond.
SMC officials planned to meet with members of the Pico Neighborhood Association later Wednesday evening, and on Thursday, members of Friends of Sunset Park — another neighborhood group.
“Nothing is perfect,” Robertson told members of the liaison committee. “I wish it were, because then I could say I am — and I’m definitely not. But we work at these things.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on July 1, 2004. Read the original PDF.