Council in good company
CITY HALL — For those looking to dip their hands in City Hall’s cookie jar, there are several ways to go about it, including the traditional methods of writing a letter to elected officials or making a few phone calls.
But to make sure requests for funding get the most mileage, residents and others are encouraged to use the city’s Web site (www.santa-monica.org), which contains a special page specifically designed for community members to make budget suggestions. Each request is forwarded to the City Manager and all members of the City Council.
The issue of how budget requests should be made surfaced earlier this week during a council meeting in which City Manager Lamont Ewell gave a report on the fiscal health of the city (See related story).
Councilman Kevin McKeown asked Ewell what the best method was for councilmembers to forward requests they receive from commissions, committees and community members.
Ewell suggested councilmem-bers e-mail him with the requests and he would forward them to all the other members, as well as compile them and present a list to the council periodically. Ewell said it was important that all members were informed of the requests since the council as a whole will determine how money is spent.
Councilman Bobby Shriver raised concerns with councilmembers filing individual requests with the city manager and not alerting others to those requests. He feared this would create competition amongst councilmembers to see who could get the most money for a particular group.
“We try to do things as a group,” Shriver said. “I don’t want to end up in a situation where everyone is monitoring the other’s requests and challenging each other, ‘Oh, my request is better than your request,’ and who got money for who. That could inevitably be an issue in a political campaign and affect the collegiality.”
Ewell said he is committed to making the budget process as “transparent” as possible.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on April 14, 2006. Read the original PDF.