By CORTNEY FIELDING Special to the Daily Press
CITY HALL — Elected leaders indicated late Tuesday a large chunk of Santa Monica taxpayers’ money should go toward stemming gang violence and homelessness in the upcoming year.
The City Council began navigating its way through the annual budget process by discussing programs and initiatives they would like to see included as expenses for the ’05-’06 fiscal year.
Council members had a litany of requests, from reviving city-wide arts programs to improving the city dump. However, homelessness and violence in the Pico neighborhood were consistently mentioned as top concerns.
City Councilman Bob Hol-brook suggested City Hall should focus on those issues alone before addressing lower priority issues. When there is improvement in those two areas, then City Hall can look into expanding other programs, he said.
“We shouldn’t take our eye off the ball,” Holbrook said “And for me, that’s where the ball is.”
City Councilmen Bobby Shriver and Richard Bloom agreed with the concept of selecting dual priorities for the city. Shriver called Holbrook brave for publicly singling out the two issues.
Politicians rarely do that, he said, because “when you rank one and two, three, four and five say, ‘what about me?’”
Bloom cautioned the council that there is a limit to how much City Hall can accomplish by itself.
“Interestingly enough, two of the most significant problems in many ways are not within our control,” he said, adding homelessness and gang activity in Los Angeles affect what goes on in Santa Monica.
“Homelessness is a regional problem,” he said, adding gang violence happens both inside and outside of the city.
City staff identified seven core areas to improve homeless services, which included extending programs for people who have been on the street for more than five years, lobbying for changes in both federal and state regulations and creating a sobering center for public inebriates.
Shriver said he didn’t want residents to misinterpret the council’s focus on the homeless.
“Before people say ‘Wait a minute, we are spending even more money on the homeless,’” they should realize the money is meant to benefit residents, Shriver said. “We are spending more money to get the man out of your carport... We are spending money to save the city money down the road.”
While city staffers have created a basic blueprint for dealing with the homeless problem, City Hall is less clear on how to increase public safely and reduce gang violence.
Santa Monica is in the process of developing a new plan for gang violence, Bloom said. Once that plan is decided on, specific actions will be defined.
While nothing has been decided, Bloom said the Santa Monica Police Department would be involved in creating initiatives to decrease violence in the city, specifically in the Pico neighborhood.
City Hall could end up putting more money into existing programs, or adding new ones, he said. City Hall also could divert staff and funds from one project to another.
Council members said they would focus on many other priorities as well.
Councilman Kevin McKeown said residents who participated in last month’s city satisfaction survey said they wanted the city to support more artistic projects.
As a fan of the arts, “I was surprised to see so many other people felt the same way,” he said.
Council members were given a list of priorities collected from the public at the meeting. Elected leaders must now deliberate in a public forum to decide which priorities will make it into the new budget. Though a meeting date has not been decided, the council typically holds budget hearings in May and adopts a formal budget in June. City Hall is expected in April to release a draft budget for the public to review.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on February 10, 2005. Read the original PDF.