Alliance to tackle regional problems
Santa Monica has joined three other westside municipalities to create a coalition of cities that will address regional problems and enable the towns to better compete with Los Angeles for grants and public works projects.
The city council formally committed Santa Monica Tuesday to working within the Coalition of Westside Cities, which also consists of representatives from Beverly Hills, Culver City and West Hollywood.
Officials from all four cities will meet at noon today at the Ken Edwards Center to approve the coalition’s bylaws and finalize a mission statement.
Already, each city in the coalition has put forward $50,000 to complete a regional traffic study to investigate how congestion in the region could be mitigated. The results of the study will be used to apply for transportation improvement projects with the state, Los Angeles County and the county’s Metropolitan Transportation Agency.
“This is long overdue,” said Councilwoman Pam O’Connor. “It’s taken a long time for these things to happen.”
While the coalition is starting its work on traffic problems, Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McKeown said he hopes the group will address regional social issues as well.
Specifically, McKeown wants other cities in the region to help Santa Monica cope with the homeless population, a proposition other westside cities have been hesitant to consider. But McKeown said homeless persons throughout the region are attracted to Santa Monica and other beach communities, which are then forced to carry the burden of providing services to those individuals.
“We all know anecdotally that our westside neighbors have historically relied on our compassionate city to deal with their homeless,” McKeown said.
“We all know anecdotally that our westside neighbors have historically relied on our compassionate city to deal with their homeless.” — — KEVIN MCKEOWN Santa Monica Mayor Pro Tem
“As we enter into a council of governments, I have to speak out on behalf of our residents and make sure we go into this with a clear and reasonable expectation that shared social services and solutions to homelessness are on our agenda.”
At the organization’s founding meeting on Aug. 8 in Beverly Hills, McKeown asked that the group’s mission statement contain a phrase about distributing the social services burden among the cities to address the regional homeless problem, but work on the mission statement was tabled by officials from other cities.
McKeown said if the opportunity arises today, he will again attempt to introduce sharing social services into the coalition’s mission statement. But at the same time, McKeown said, he does not want to jeopardize the coalition’s creation.
“I think this is a very appropriate addition to our mission statement,” the councilman said. “I don’t believe it isn’t something that doesn’t belong.”
“But I don’t want to prevent the creation of an organization that can help our residents,” he added.
Carol Gross, the mayor of Culver City, said she did not believe homeless social services had been an issue at the Aug. 8 meeting, but she believed it would likely be a topic the group would eventually take up.
“Certainly it’s an issue we all struggle with,” she said. “Certainly Santa Monica has greater numbers, but we have difficulties as well.”
“It wouldn’t surprise me that it would be something the group would talk about, but that hasn’t been the focus,” she added.
For nearly a decade, the cities have worked together under an informal relationship. Representatives would meet and tell elected officials at the federal, state or county level what they had reached a consensus on.
Forming a formal coalition did not seem necessary until other cities in the region became successful by banding together.
“The rest of the world recognizes a cog as a much more formal force than the informal meetings we would have,” Gross said. “We can have a stronger base from which to deal with other entities.”
Every city in the coalition has similar issues regarding traffic, state funding and clean water. And each city deals with sharing borders with Los Angeles, which is like trying to tackle an 800-pound gorilla, Gross said.
And while the cities will still compete against each other to attract business, and they will continue to put the interests of their residents first, the common problems will outweigh any differences, officials said.
“We have more in common than differences,” Gross said, “and our differences are superficial.”
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 12, 2002. Read the original PDF.