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# ■ No. 5: Budget woes linger
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/no-5-budget-woes-linger/
- Published: 2003-12-31T16:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-23T03:25:55.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Government & Politics, Malibu, #archive-import

*The local school district, community college and City Hall grappled with a combined $30 million shortfall in state funding.*

For the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District, $13.7 million was hanging in the balance. In order to keep the same amount of classes being offered, school supporters rolled up their sleeves and got their hands dirty.

They put a controversial parcel tax — expected to generate $6.5 million a year for the next six years — on the ballot, and two-thirds of the community voted for it. Parents and students flooded City Hall and got local politicians to hand over $2.25 million in extra funding. They also took a hard look at everything in the budget and trimmed wherever they could.

Santa Monica College felt the same pain. The board of trustees there cut about $10 million from the college’s $208 million budget for this year.

When all the dust had settled, enrollment was down from 31,000 to 25,000, classes were cut by 26 percent, five academic programs were pulled entirely, and hundreds of jobs for teachers, workers, administrators and students were gone.

The controversy surrounding the cuts, which some students and faculty said should have been dealt with differently, led to an overwhelming vote of no confidence in Dr. Piedad F. Robertson, SMC’s president, by faculty and classified workers at the college. It also led to a handful of campus protests.

For City Hall, which faced a $16.1 million deficit, this year’s shortfall in state funding meant laying off workers, trimming by 5 percent in every department — except police and fire — and putting many projects on hold indefinitely.

All told, $5.4 million was cut from the general operating budget, $1.6 million from the capital-improvements budget, $5.2 million in extra revenue was raised and an additional $3.9 million was saved through various policy changes.

All three entities — the school district, college and City Hall — are bracing for preliminary news from Sacramento early next year about how severe the shortfall in funding will be. The good news is local schools are among the best in the state and City Hall still enjoys a very strong bond rating.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on December 31, 2003.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/123103.pdf?ref=smdp.com)