College Proposal Stuns City Officials; Calls for $18 Million a Year in City Funding for Education

By Jorge Casuso and Teresa Rochester

Santa Monica College is poised to drop a political bombshell on the city this week when it unveils a wide-ranging series of educational proposals that include $18 million a year in city funding for public education, The Lookout has learned.

The stunning proposal, which will be presented to the College Board of Trustees at its meeting Monday night, is divided into six major initiatives. They include creating a new interagency authority, annexing airport land for athletic use, earmarking earthquake funds for the reconstruction of college facilities and creating a job-training center.

"Santa Monica can do much more to meet the lifelong learning, recreational and cultural needs of our residents," said Don Girard, a spokesperson for the college. "The resources are there, the desires are there. We propose that the city make a long-term commitment to the education of its citizens."

Word of the proposal - which was quietly presented to a civic group on Friday and the Chamber of Commerce on Monday -- quickly raised the ire of city officials, who only had heard rumors of the proposal and who greeted it with a mixture of anger and disbelief.

"If it wasn't such a serious issue, it would be comical," said Mayor Ken Genser. "The college seems to be piggybacking on public support for the school district. They seem to be using that to get funds to promote their own growth. Nobody has alleged the college has any financial problems that require city assistance. They want city money so they can grow."

"I'm sort of staggered by the whole proposal," said Councilman Robert Holbrook. "We have to take care of the city's business, our business, and schools have to take care of their business and the college their business. We've had a collegial relationship, and it sounds like this whole thing can sink that."

"It is a fantasy scheme that appears to have been hatched in illegal secret discussions among the Board of Trustees of the college," said Councilman Paul Rosenstein. "The college seems to be under the impression that there's tens of millions of dollars available in the city treasury for their dream projects."

College officials said that if the College Board of Trustees green lights the proposal, it will be disseminated to the community in the form of an eight-page brochure. The college also will confer with city and school district officials and community leaders.

"If it makes some people uncomfortable, then some people are going to be uncomfortable," Girard said. "We are prepared to meet and go through the discomfort and find something that will not bankrupt the city but makes a commitment to public education a reality."

If city officials rebuff the proposal, the college has several options open, including the ballot box and the courts, college officials said. The proposal was drawn up in closed session by a team of prominent attorneys that included former City Attorney Robert Myers, prominent land use attorney Chris Harding and Laurie Lieberman, a former attorney for the city who is married to Harding.

Although the college cannot float a ballot measure, its attorneys have carefully worded the proposal calling for $18 million in city funds so that a citizens group can use the language for a ballot initiative. The attorneys also crafted the proposals so they can be presented as "meritorious claims," Girard said.

"The council may do as it wishes, but it doesn't make the meritorious claims go away," Girard said. "These are claims that could be litigated, that have some merit. But that's not the same as saying that we're going to sue the city. There are always multiple solutions."

The set of "Initiatives for Public Education" would:

• Ask the city to allocate $18 million a year for public education. Seventy percent, or $12.6 million, would go to the Santa Monica Malibu Unified School District; 25 percent, or $4.5 million, would go to the college and 5 percent, or $900,000, would pay for new programs that serve newborns to five-year olds.
• Establish an educational partnership between the city, the college and the school district through a joint powers authority that would wield whatever powers the member agencies give it. The board would be comprised of six members, two from each agency; one member from each agency would be an administrator.
• Annex 7½ acres of city-owned land at the northeast corner of Santa Monica Airport. The land, a dirt patch in the city of Los Angeles between Bundy Drive and Centinela Avenue, would remain under city ownership. The proposal, however, would allow the college to create educational facilities in the form of an athletic complex that would include play fields available to community groups.
• Propose a set of projects bankrolled in part through Earthquake Recovery District funds collected by the city. The projects include rebuilding the college's earthquake-damaged liberal arts building; replacing the facilities for KCRW, the college's radio station; replacing the college's Madison Site auditorium and building an underground parking structure for the college on Pico Boulevard.
• Ask the city to assist the college in acquiring land in Santa Monica's industrial corridor for a job training facility and space for other Life Long Learning programs.
• Propose a program that would allow the college to provide art, music and science programs at Santa Monica High School. The college currently teaches classes to 2,000 students at 30 schools in Los Angeles.

The proposal - especially the $18 million in funding and the use of earthquake recovery money - would put the city in a financial crunch, officials said. Already, the council has spent $53 million of the $100 million in earthquake district funds to purchase the RAND property and has said it is committed to spending more than $30 million for affordable housing. In addition, bids for the city's new Public Safety facility came in $10 million over budget last month.

"This takes away our flexibility," said Council member Pam O'Connor. "Both (RAND and affordable housing) are based on community articulated needs, community priorities articulated by the community at this time. It is downright scary that a proposal this well developed has had no public process.

"It would be easy for me to jump on the bandwagon, but boy would that tie the hands of every council after me and would be a real disservice to the people of Santa Monica," O'Connor said.

"There's no money, we have a balanced budget and the city is planning for increased expenses for five years down the road," Rosenstein said. "So that everything we can realistically expect to take in has already been budgeted.

"I don't want to make threats about closing down the police department or closing down trash collection, but somebody's going to have to show us where we cut $18 million from the budget."

Former Mayor Judy Abdo, who heard about the proposal at a Friday meeting of the Community for Excellent Public Schools, said that there needs to be a lot more discussion between the groups involved.

"I think there needs to be a lot more discussion about the money with the city and an outside financial analysis before this can be taken as anything but discussion," Abdo said.