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# Red Cross concern
- URL: https://www.smdp.com/red-cross-concern-editor/
- Published: 2008-08-13T15:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-24T20:42:48.000Z
- Author: Guest Author
- Tags: Opinion, Santa Monica, #archive-import

*By John M. Pacheco Red Cross, Chief Executive Officer*

The (Residents’ Initiative to Fight Traffic) admirably seeks to preserve the quality of life that Santa Monica residents desire and deserve. In his Aug. 7 letter to the editor, Jeff Segal makes note of several nonprofit organizations, such as the Boys and Girls Club, which will be excluded from this Initiative. Unfortunately, many other nonprofits are not so lucky. As the CEO of one of those organizations which will be impacted, I must express my concern.

The American Red Cross of Santa Monica has been providing services to the community for over 92 years. But the service demands have changed in nature and scope, especially since Sep. 11, 2001\. Those demands coupled with the inevitability of a major earthquake in our future have required us to invest a great deal of time, money and energy into expanding our disaster response capability to ensure that we can meet the needs in Santa Monica. Thus we have had to consider a variety of facility upgrades and renovations for our aging infrastructure. The RIFT initiative would appear to delay or prevent such improvements and potentially impair our ability to deliver essential services when they are most needed.

Other nonprofits might be similarly affected. As a disaster response professional with over 34 years of experience, I can assure your readers that the human services needs in Santa Monica would change, literally overnight, should a major earthquake or other disaster occur. The RIFT ballot proposition seems to make no provision to accommodate these or other emergent needs in the nonprofit sector.

While the Red Cross sincerely supports goals the initiative seeks to address, we oppose the arbitrary nature with which it protects some nonprofits but not others. We encourage more thoughtful consideration so that our residents might also receive security in the event of more serious problems.

*Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on August 13, 2008.* [Read the original PDF.](https://s3.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/smdp%5Fbackissues/081308.pdf?ref=smdp.com)