Santa Monica Mayor Caroline Torosis has called a special City Council meeting to revisit the city's Neighborhood Organization Grant Program after at least three neighborhood groups rejected the funding, citing restrictions they say infringe on their independence and constitutional rights.
Torosis said she acted after determining that current grant application guidance may not fully align with the unanimous direction the council provided in September of last year..
"Because this program is intended to support neighborhood organizations and strengthen civic participation, it is critical that the rules are clear, consistent, and aligned with Council's intent," Torosis wrote in a letter to neighborhood group leaders on Monday.
The special meeting will take place alongside a regular council meeting, with Torosis bringing forward a motion co-sponsored by Councilmembers Ellis Raskin and Dan Hall to direct staff to review and clarify the program's guidelines.
The motion asks staff to confirm that neighborhood organizations may conduct informational education and outreach related to ballot measures, host candidate meetings in a neutral format, and use funds for member communications such as mailers about meetings and events. It also asks staff to clarify that budget pre-approval is not required for individual expenditures, and that demographic information requests are strictly voluntary.
The motion further directs staff to confirm that neighborhood organizations may form or operate separate affiliated entities to conduct political activities — but that any such entity cannot receive grant funds or be listed as an official city program participant. Following updated guidance, the application period for the 2025-26 program would be reopened.
The move comes as the City’s seven neighborhood groups have been increasingly hostile to the City’s approach with three neighborhood groups already voting to decline the grants.
The Friends of Sunset Park, North of Montana Association and Northeast Neighbors each cited the same cluster of objections: a prohibition on using funds for newsletters and mailers, a new requirement to collect demographic information from members, and restrictions they say go far beyond the council's stated goal of keeping public money out of candidate endorsements.
Friends of Sunset Park said in its rejection letter that the council "seems to be trying to use the new grant requirements to restrict divergent viewpoints." The group's board called the new demands "unreasonable, unwarranted, and unwelcome," noting that the city had previously helped fund annual neighborhood mailers to all residences before shifting that responsibility to the groups themselves.
"Not only do these strings attach to the grant program, but the city has removed our ability to be a 'city-recognized neighborhood organization' by requiring us to take the money with strings to even be listed on the city website," the board wrote.
The North of Montana Association took particular issue with the demographic collection requirement, which it called a fabrication of a problem that doesn't exist. "Council's new demographic rules show a distrust of our commitment to inclusion among our residents, and imply that Council will judge the value of our groups based on who we are rather than what we say," NOMA's board wrote.
Northeast Neighbors also questioned the city's plan to spend $200,000 reviving Seascape, a city-produced newsletter, as a replacement for the neighborhood-written publications the grant previously funded. "In these times of dire city financial challenges, we question why the city is proposing to spend four times the entire current citywide neighborhood group grant budget of $49,000," the group's board wrote.
The controversy traces back to a council vote that overhauled the grant program after at least two neighborhood organizations made political endorsements while receiving taxpayer funding. The council suspended the $49,000 annual program pending review before approving the new framework.
Councilmember Dan Hall, who made the original motion, argued that some groups had used publicly funded membership lists and brand recognition for partisan politics. "It crossed an ethical line," Hall said at the time.
Under the reformed program, the seven recognized neighborhood associations — Friends of Sunset Park, North of Montana Association, Ocean Park Association, Pico Neighborhood Association, Mid City Neighbors, Northeast Neighbors, and Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition — would receive funding through an equity-based model calculated by the number of households in each area, rather than the previous flat $7,000 per group.
The organizations collectively represent more than 50,000 households, ranging from Northeast Neighbors with 1,622 households to the Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition with 12,560 households.
At the original September meeting, then-Mayor Lana Negrete warned that the restrictions risked silencing community voices. "These neighborhood groups are supposed to push back on city hall," Negrete said. "That is democracy at its finest."
Torosis said she chose the special meeting route rather than waiting for the next regular council session because the matter was too time-sensitive to delay several weeks.
Council is scheduled to meet on Tuesday night at City Hall, 1685 Main Street, starting at 5:30 p.m.