Part IV: The Pico Collaborative Unravels; Conflicts, Missed Deadlines Led to Demise of Biracial Effort

By Teresa Rochester

Last September, City employees arrived at a Baptist church on Pico Boulevard, which had housed the Pico Collaborative's Youth Center, and packed up the group's equipment for storage.

Seven months earlier, the Santa Monica Christian Center -- with its spacious downstairs room and its smaller upstairs spaces -- seemed the ideal place to harbor older neighborhood youth trying to escape the pressure of gangs.

"We thought it was a great space. It was the thing to use," said Ed Bell, the head of the church's board of directors and the leader of Parachute Program, one of the three groups that make up the beleaguered collaborative.

"My stand point, looking at the space, is it overlooks the college," said Bell. "This could encourage them to go to school. The space seemed so perfect. Half of them [youth] hung out there."

But by summer's end -- amidst potential conflicts of interest, tensions among leaders of the three groups involved in the partnership and missed deadlines -- not only was the City-funded collaborative out of money, it had lost its Youth Center as well.

Nobody involved in the collaborative -- comprised of Parachute Program, Proyecto Adelente and Barrios Unidos -- thought that launching the unique biracial effort would be easy, especially in a neighborhood where racial tensions had sometimes erupted in violence.

On a personal level, there were issues of trust that needed to be ironed out. On another level there was the reality that the young men chosen to receive the City's planning grant -- Bell, Oscar de la Torre and Manuel "Manny" Lares -- had a dearth of experience dealing with the mundane, yet crucial, details of running organizations.

But none of these problems were yet apparent in January 2000, when Bell and de la Torre signed a three-year lease agreement for 3,500-square-feet of space with the church's pastor Rev. Donald Miller for $1,500 a month.

While no rent was ever paid, nearly $40,000 of the $98,500 set aside for one-time equipment purchase and site improvements was spent in rehabilitating the space for the program.

It didn't take long for the problems to surface. In July, church officials notified the group that they would need the downstairs space for church functions. The decision not only significantly reduced the amount of square footage agreed to in the lease agreement, it rendered the upstairs space unusable, since the collaborative's facilities now failed to comply with the American Disabilities Act because they were not wheelchair accessible.

"It was the City's understanding that the ground floor would be used for program access and was discussed with the three men of the collaborative," said Julie Rusk, director of the City's Human Services Division. "That was the working understanding."

In response, the City directed the collaborative to secure and submit a new lease agreement by July 19, 2000. De la Torre said his letters and calls to Miller went unanswered. A new lease was never secured, and, despite efforts to solve the problems, the collaborative had been without a space since July.

According to City officials and de la Torre, Bell, serving as a representative of the church, told three City employees and his collaborative partners during a meeting in May that the facilities would include the downstairs space in order to comply with ADA regulations.

Bell, however, denied that he made such a statement. "That space was only used temporarily," he said. "What happened prior [to the collaborative] is they used to have Bible Study back there and Sunday school."

In addition to the leasing problem, questions surrounding Bell's roll with the church began to loom larger and new problems with the church site came to light.

In a letter addressed to de la Torre and dated Oct. 27, 2000, Tracy Scruggs and Betty Macias of the City's Human Services Division wrote that the City had recently discovered that the Santa Monica Christian Center was not incorporated. The legal owner of the property, they informed him, was the Mount Herman Baptist Corporation.

Macias and Scruggs also said that the City's Rent Control Division had notified them that the Santa Monica Christian Center had never filed for the necessary permits. With an elderly couple living on the premises, the church was considered mixed-use rental property, which required an exemption.

"Furthermore," they wrote, "Ed Bell, the 'tenant' on the lease is also corporate chair of the Mt. Herman Baptist Corporation and is therefore apparently functioning in the roles of both tenant and owner. This suggests a clear conflict of interest in violation of the program's Contract Agreement with the City of Santa Monica."

Bell offered to recuse himself from negotiations between the church and the collaborative. However in a December letter to Bell, City Attorney Marsha Moutrie wrote "that there are other kinds of conflict situations, particularly those involving direct financial benefit, in which the transaction itself is barred by the fact that the individual has roles on both sides."

Whether or not the transaction would be barred would likely depend on whether Bell had received any sort of fiscal benefit or compensation from the church. Bell said he did not.

"City staff has had concerns about the program leasing the space in the church," said Moutrie. "While it's a good choice from a practical standpoint, there may be legal [issues] from the standpoint that Ed Bell is involved in the church."

Another conflict of interest question arose concerning Bell's role in the collaborative. This one centered on whether, as a City employee, Bell had received, along with Lares and de la Torre, payments made during the collaborative's planning process that were made with City grant money. City officials and Bell said that this was not a conflict of interest.

Because the contract between the collaborative and the City was not yet in place there was no conflict, Rusk said. Moutrie said that because Community Partners, acting as the grant's fiscal receivers, distributed the payments, no conflict had occurred.

"In this situation it is accurate that the City would always be concerned about making a grant of public money to one of its employees," Moutrie said. "This was not the case. The grant was made to Community partners for oversight on how the funds were spent. Legally there was no impropriety."

Bell said that being paid "wasn't a problem because that (the money he received) was only for the planning grant. I was only employed for the planning stages. Then after the program is up and running, I won't be employed for the program."

In addition to the potential legal and ethical issues, other problems beset the Pico Collaborative.

De la Torre, Lares and Bell acknowledge that they were confused over the direction their organizations would take. They said that they didn't realize the collaborative would have to answer to a board of directors that would oversee the operations of the three groups.

While a staff report states that the three organizations would form one collaborative that would tap each organization's strengths, each man said they believed they would focus on their own groups independently of one another.

"The City has forged all three of our projects into one under the auspices of one organization," Lares said. "They didn't want to invest in organizations. They wanted (us to) work on projects. To have another board hiring and firing my own staff is a hard way to manage organizations that we're running. That's a recurring argument."

"It was really a push in a different direction," Bell said about the City's structural vision. "I'm not saying it was a bad thing. It was confusing."

"They [the City] threw inexperienced people together with no organizational structure," said de la Torre. "Everybody was going along thinking they were doing their own organization."

Rusk acknowledges that City officials "realized we weren't as specific" when it came to spelling out the conditions.

What the City wanted from the three men by June 15, 2000 was a board of directors for the collaborative, solid program plans, personnel policies, job descriptions, salaries, budgets that balanced and a list of the best ways to provide services.

But the organization leaders missed the deadline, and the program plans and budgets sent to the City were flawed and sent back for revision.

To help the organizations craft their plans and budgets, the City contracted with Community Partners, whose employees worked individually and in groups with collaborative leaders, helping them with their programs, and with the technical knowledge needed to form an organization and formulate budgets.

Bell and Lares expressed frustration with Community Partners, which was paid $107,000. They said its employees discouraged them, saying the workload was too much for the collaborative to handle.

Kerns, a program director for the Los-Angeles-based organization, said she doesn't see the group's problems as unusual. "I don't think it's really a setback," she said. "The work that's being proposed is important."

Despite the missed deadline, City officials extended the planning period from July 1 to August 31 to allow the organizations more time to craft their proposals and create a board of directors. Once again the collaborative's leaders missed the deadline.

On Sept. 1 the City cut off funding. De la Torre, who was named the collaborative's executive director on July 1, said he did not receive his salary for two months.

City officials said that they have only recently received the program plans. As of early January, Parachute Program's proposal was still outstanding. Bell said he had submitted the plan three or four times only to have it come back for more work.

The fate of the Parachute Program/Proyecto Adelante Alliance and Barrios Unidos may likely be decided this month when City officials return with recommendations on how to move forward. The three leaders of the unprecedented collaborative have their own ideas.

De la Torre has called for a divorce and is moving ahead with a new project called the Pico Neighborhood Youth and Family Center, a single organization that would offer services through various partnerships and contracts for both blacks and Latinos.

He has met several times with City officials to discuss his plan, and earlier this month more than 20 young people, a few accompanied by their parents, turned out to lobby the City Council for funding for the project.

"The so-called collaborative is a flawed City experiment. What I'm restructuring is a grass roots community effort," de la Torre said. "You can't build community through a competitive bidding process. That's cooperation. There's a difference between cooperation and collaboration."

Lares, whose Santa Monica Barrios Unidos was already three years old and offering services at the high schools when the RFP process began, said his project is stalled and his future up in the air.

"My project is stuck in limbo," Lares said. "My project can't move forward until this is resolved. The City needs to take some responsibility for some of the things they've done. I've been hustling side jobs, working in other peoples' communities instead of my own."

Despite the problems that internally roiled the Pico Collaborative, Bell insists the young people the group served never got wind of the battles being waged beneath the surface and that despite the difficulties, the collaborative achieved some of its goals and should continue its work.

"It gave the parents hope and that's not something you see on the surface," he said. "For the young people it gave them a place to congregate without being harassed. It taught them unity, leadership skills and it taught them how to coexist."