City
Releases Sustainable Report
Card |
By Anita Varghese
Staff Writer
September 21 -- The City
of Santa Monica released its third
annual Sustainable City Report Card
Thursday, giving itself straight A’s
for effort and a D for not meeting
its affordable housing goal.
Arriving exactly 13 years to the day after the
City Council adopted the Sustainable City Plan
on September 20, 1994, the report card measures
eight goal areas in which City officials have
tried to improve and enhance natural, social and
economic resources.
“We often ignore things we don’t
track,” said Shannon Parry, Santa Monica’s
Sustainable City coordinator. “Having a
performance based approach to sustainability,
with numerical indicators as the backbone that
we report on annually, gives us an opportunity
to reflect on our progress and ensure we are making
strategic steps toward achieving our goals.”
Grades for the eight goal areas – resource
conservation, environmental and public health,
transportation, economic development, open space
and land use, community education and civic participation,
housing and human dignity – are quantitative
measures while the effort grade is qualitative.
The Environmental Programs Division awarded staff
A’s for effort in every goal area for time
spent trying to achieve those goals, the number
of active and available programs and policies,
how City resources are allocated to solving identified
problems and the number of community initiatives
undertaken by City officials.
“We developed this Sustainable City Report
Card to answer the question that we in Environmental
Programs always get asked,” said Dean Kubani,
Santa Monica’s Environmental Programs manager.
“How sustainable are we?”
In resource conservation, the City received a
C, because solid waste exceeds the Sustainable
City Plan’s ceiling and continues to increase.
Water use also increased three percent.
Accomplishments are that the City continues its
commitment to purchase 100 percent renewable power
for municipal operations and the Santa Monica
Public Library’s Main Branch earned a Leadership
in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification.
The same grade was given for environmental and
public health. Wastewater levels are still too
high and City officials are far from reducing
Santa Monica Bay pollution and the number of beach
closures due to water pollution.
With Santa Monica voters approving a Clean Beaches
and Ocean parcel tax last year, work can begin
on a 20-year approach to improve Santa Monica
Bay’s water quality by enhancing stormwater
infrastructure and other pollution control efforts.
Sustainable efforts such as encouraging
carpooling among employees at larger
companies, fueling nearly 100 percent
of the Big Blue Bus fleet with alternative
energy, creating a bicycle valet service
and distributing a Bike Santa Monica
map helped the City get a C+ for transportation.
However, traffic and congestion remain significant
issues in Santa Monica and the current network
of bicycle lanes and paths are inadequate in meeting
Sustainable City Plan targets.
Santa Monica’s economy remains strong and
diverse with growth in the tourism, retail and
information sectors, and the City has historically
been very proactive in supporting the ability
of its residents to meet their basic needs and
live with dignity.
The City earned a B in economic development and
a B- for its human dignity goal.
“No one economic sector has more than a
25 percent share of the total economy,”
Parry said. “This is important, because
if we have a downturn in a particular sector,
we will still have enough economic resiliencies
in the other sectors to weather the depression.”
More than 40 businesses were recognized for sustainable
practices through the Green Business Certification
Program, Sustainable Works Business Greening Program
and Sustainable Quality Awards, but the rising
cost of living and an unbalanced ratio of jobs
to housing in Santa Monica make it difficult for
employees to live near their workplaces.
Since the release of last year’s report
card, the Community Development Grants Program
provided more than $6.7 million to support local
family, disability, employment and homeless services.
More than 2,700 homeless individuals received
case management and employment assistance. As
a result, 1,116 homeless persons were placed in
housing and 502 were placed in jobs.
Staff remains significantly concerned about the
many families who continue to experience crime,
violence and poverty in the Pico neighborhood,
Santa Monica’s lowest-income section.
The highest grades the City logged were A minuses
for open space and land use and community education
and civic participation.
Despite rising real estate prices and construction
costs, the City opened Airport Park and reopened
Euclid Park, adding 8.3 acres of new or renovated
open space to Santa Monica’s 8.3 square
miles of city limits.
Park accessibility continues to be outstanding
and 90 percent of Santa Monica residents live
within half a mile of a park or open space.
Santa Monicans are actively engaged in community
events and civic affairs, the report found. There
are seven neighborhood organizations and five
business improvement districts.
Almost half of all residents attend arts or cultural
events and more than 49 percent of residents contacted
a city department in 2006.
Housing continues to be the most dismal category
for City officials in each of the three years
that the Sustainable City Report Card was released,
with a D- in 2005 and D’s in 2006 and 2007.
The availability of affordable housing for low
and very-low income residents continues to decrease
from 86 percent before state-mandated vacancy
decontrol in 1999 to 40 percent currently available.
Combined with a continuous rise in real estate
prices, the availability of affordable housing
has been severely reduced and City officials struggle
to hold onto the current stock of affordable units.
“Affordable housing is not only a challenge
in Santa Monica,” Parry said. “It
is a challenge in the Southern California region
and a challenge across the nation.”
The Housing and Economic Development Department
is directing $16 million in financing towards
60 affordable housing units at three projects
currently underway, and the City Council recently
approved designs for the Civic Center Village,
which features at least 160 affordable housing
units.
The next 12 months will be a busy time for the
City Council, said Council member Kevin McKeown,
as City Hall looks to find more sustainable efforts
for staff to develop, such as banning plastic
bags and establishing a Green Depot alternative
fueling station to encourage more residents to
purchase newer environmentally friendly vehicles.
Council members have already voted to ban Styrofoam
packaging and outdoor smoking, require new parking
structures to install outlets for recharging electric
vehicles, fund the Solar Santa Monica pilot program
that helps homeowners and businesses install solar
panels on their properties and award preferential
parking rates for drivers of biodiesel and electric
vehicles.
“The City itself can only do so much, and
frankly, the City is just a small part of what
needs to be done,” McKeown said. “We
can never be a sustainable city; we must be a
sustainable community.
“The increasing involvement of other members
of the community such as Solar Santa
Monica, the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified
School District and Santa Monica College
offer us all the greatest hope of
achieving true sustainability.”
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