To be a city-recognized neighborhood organization, a group must be located in and represent a specific geographic area, as well as meet membership size requirements.
It must have an elected board of directors, a set of by-laws or constitution, open board of directors meetings and at least one annual public membership meeting. In addition, it must file for or obtain state and/or federal non-profit corporation status.
“Official” associations can then apply for city funding, have fees waived when it uses city facilities and is listed and linked to the city’s Web site.
Two directors from each of the neighborhood groups sit on the board of directors of Community Corp. of Santa Monica, the city-affiliated developer of most of our affordable housing.
The city strongly recommends all developers get feedback on their proposed projects from neighbors. Developments are often presented at neighborhood association board meetings for review, usually by a handful of directors who live nowhere near the development.
Residents adjacent to the proposed development aren’t always notified about presentations and are often surprised and upset to find out that their neighborhood group said “OK” after construction starts.
Critics say most of the neighborhood associations are “SMRR’d up” — a reference to being controlled by Santa Monicans for Renters Rights, the community’s dominant political organization.
SMRR sycophants control and use the associations to promulgate the SMRR agenda. It’s why so many neighborhood groups ardently support affordable “rental” housing projects, homeless services and traffic calming while ignoring neighborhood nuisances, chronic civil and criminal code violators and other more mundane problems.
It’s also why some neighborhood groups are cheerleaders for pet SMRR causes. Those associations who don’t “tow the party line” often find their complaints are ignored and their problems are not addressed by the City Council majority.
When a neighborhood organization takes positions on issues neighbors disagree with, breakaway groups sometimes form to challenge the established association’s position. For example, when the Ocean Park Community Organization favored an affordable housing project at Main Street and Pacific Avenue, neighbors created Friends of Ocean Park to fight the project.
When residents formed a new neighborhood organization within an area already covered by one of the “big eight,” the city won’t recognize them, so their power and influence is limited.
“Neighbors For A Safer Santa Monica” is typical of a new breakaway group.
NFSSM chair, Chuck Allord, said the Pico Neighborhood Association has done little to help his neighbors in the Broadway/Olympic corridor east of Lincoln Boulevard deal with the area’s large homeless population and a dance club that is a chronic noise violator. NFSSM also opposes PNA’s endorsement of traffic calming measures such as those now being installed on Broadway.
Said former PNA chair, Peter Tigler,:“PNA’s priorities are home ownership, true community policing and improving the neighborhood’s look and feel.”
However, the Pico Terrace Neighbors, 9th Street Neighbors and NFSSM were created because some neighbors felt the PNA didn’t “do enough” about their specific problems.
Ninth Street Neighbors had a preferential parking issue and “East” Pico residents were concerned about the increased traffic that new Olympic corridor commercial developments were bringing to their quiet residential streets.
“It’s not about PNA ego. There’s no reason why neighbors can’t work on their own issues under our umbrella or not,” Tigler said.
As robust as the PNA is, it still suffers from the same malaise as many other neighborhood organizations. That is, getting enough residents motivated with lasting “fire” to work on the area’s many problems and issues.
A lack of leadership or compelling issues can even lead to an organization’s inactivity and eventual demise. At least one of the “big eight” and formerly powerful neighborhood groups now seems to be inactive. The board of Mid-Cities Neighbors hasn’t met for almost a year.
Why does the city support eight favored neighborhood associations with grants and perks? In these difficult economic times, should we be spending tens of thousands of dollars of taxpayer money to prop up organizations that seem to be increasingly irrelevant, political and, more often than not, out of sync with the residents they claim to represent?
If a neighborhood organization is viable and truly representative of its area, it should survive and do well on its own. If not, it will dry up and go away as it should. (Bill Bauer is a longtime Santa Monica resident and a freelance writer.)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 14, 2003. Read the original PDF.