Pico Collaborative Collapses; Successor Already on the Rise

By Teresa Rochester

Plans to bring a variety of services and opportunities to the older youth and young adults of the Pico Neighborhood via a unique City-funded bi-racial collaborative effort have ended, The Lookout has learned.

The one-year-old Pico Collaborative - comprised of three organizations, two of them start-ups - had its plug pulled by the City in late January following a month-long evaluation of the group's progress, which had been hindered by internal problems, missed deadlines and poor planning.

"There's no collaborative if they're not working together," said Julie Rusk, head of the City's Human Services Division. "They haven't been working together as a collaborative. I think we all see that the collaborative as it was meant to be isn't happening."

The City also has decided to dissolve its $105,000 contract with Los Angeles-based Community Partners. The non-profit organization was hired to help form the collaborative by serving as its fiscal receivers and offering administrative assistance and advice on how to shape proposed programs. The contract will end on March 1.

"Given the collaborative no longer exists Community Partners and the City mutually agreed the contract will end," Rusk said.

The news of the collaborative's demise was of no surprise to it's Executive Director, Oscar de la Torre, founder of Proyecto Adelante. De la Torre was an outspoken critic of the organization's structure, which he has called "dysfunctional."

Under the collaborative, for which the City Council had approved a $350,000 planning grant, the three organizations were to combine their individual strengths under one umbrella. The strategy failed as each of the organization's leaders believed they would focus on their own group's efforts.

De la Torre is currently moving forward with the new Pico Neighborhood Youth and Family Center, a single entity that would offer the same range of programs with the blessing of City officials.

"Basically it's to salvage the programs the partners have dropped out of," de la Torre said of the new organization.

De la Torre said that a program plan and a finalized budget are in place and that the City is helping him find a non-profit organization to serve as the center's fiscal receiver and administrator until the group receives its own non-profit status.

Manuel "Manny" Lares and Edward Bell, whose groups formed the rest of the Pico Collaborative, said the City has not yet told them the program is over. The City's only communication with them was a letter stating that the contract with Community Partners was ending.

Lares said he wasn't surprised at the City's decision to end the collaborative or its support of the new Pico Neighborhood Youth and Family Center. He said his four-year-old Santa Monica Barrios Unidos will continue without City funding but that he was concerned about the fate of the job placement program he pitched as part of the collaborative.

"Now you know what the City wanted to do from the beginning," Lares said of the youth and family plan center. "We didn't come together for the grant. We don't need the City for anything."

Lares said his organization recently received a grant from the state and another grant from the Fonda Foundation. Barrios Unidos, he said, is in the process of reorganizing and expanding its board of directors. The group recently hired a new employee.

Bell, founder of the fledgling Parachute Program, seemed shocked when he heard the news of the collaborative's demise from a reporter last week. On Wednesday he said he still hadn't heard anything from the City about the group's future.

"They haven't told me nothing about the collaborative," Bell said. "I haven't heard anything. I haven't received anything."

The Pico Neighborhood Youth and Family Center is currently looking for a location. The space that housed the collaborative's youth center at the Santa Monica Christian Center on Pico Boulevard was closed after it was found in violation of the American Disabilities Act.

De la Torre said he hopes the new group, which has a multiracial board of directors, will not fall off the City's radar.

"I hope they continue to talk of serving this neighborhood through an older youth organization that's multiracial and diverse," he said. "Basically we have the United Nations represented. We're going to be a top-down, diverse, integrated organization."