and backgrounds — including university professors, lawyers, building and land-use consultants, and members of the local chamber of commerce (see sidebar). Task force members have committed to serving for five years.
What exact form the task force’s involvement will take is unclear. The group will meet in coming weeks to decide when, where and how often to meet. Their stated goal is to adopt a plan for implementing the sustainable city plan by March of 2005.
A group of 15-20 City Hall staffers have met a handful of times to discuss the same issue, said Craig Perkins, director of the environmental and public works department. Perkins said it’s a critical time for the city’s sustainable city plan because there are so many unanswered questions and different issues for the task force to focus on.
“At the staff level, we have some ideas about how this plan is implemented — so that it does happen, so that it’s not just some document that sits on a shelf,” Perkins said.
Fulfilling the sustainable city plan likely will require ongoing efforts to reach out to and educate business and resident groups, among others, while changing some of administrative procedures in City Hall and even drafting some new ordinances, Perkins said. The bottom line, he added, is it’s about preserving, protecting and sustaining Santa Monica.
“It’s a very broad, comprehensive attempt to chart this course for the future. There are a lot of blanks that need to be filled in, and that’s why this board is going to be called upon to help,” Perkins said.
For the plan to succeed, Perkins added, “everybody — every resident, every business, every city employee — needs to be a participant, in the trenches, on the front line.”
Adopted in 1994, City Hall’s original sustainable city plan covered only four categories — resource conservation, environmental and public health, transportation, and community and economic development. In February of 2003, the City Council updated that plan, adding housing, economic development, open space and land use, human dignity, and community education and civic participation to the existing categories.
It’s unclear how much money City Hall has invested in its sustainable city plan. The environmental and public works management department has 365 workers and a budget of $56 million. Within that, the environmental programs division has 12 workers and a budget of $3.4 million. But Perkins said it’s difficult to quantify how much time or money has gone into the plan because workers from outside his department also have worked on it.
Plus, it’s a misnomer to call it an expense, he added.
“Basically, the cost of doing it is what city staff should be doing anyway — and it actually makes our operations more effective,” Perkins said.
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on March 26, 2004. Read the original PDF.