City Makes the Grade for Sustainable Effort

By Olin Ericksen
Staff Writer

September 27 -- The twelfth annual report card on Santa Monica’s environmental, economic and social sustainability shows the City is working harder, but has a long way to go to improve on several fronts, especially housing.

The City gave itself marks in eight categories, including Resource Conservation, Environmental and Public Health, Transportation, Economic Development,
Open Space and Land Use, Housing, Community Education and Civic Participation. For the first time, the City also added a new category labeled Human Dignity, which grades efforts to help the homeless and tame gang violence.

While local officials awarded Santa Monica higher marks than last year for effort in all categories, the City’s grade for tackling Environmental and Public Health dropped from a “B” to a “B minus” because of dirty water in the bay and polluted beaches. Housing – which remains in critical shortage – received the lowest grade, a “D minus.”

“The Report Card shows that we are making progress toward becoming a sustainable city,” said Craig Perkins, director of the City’s Department of Environmental and Public Works Management. “However, if we are to achieve our goals, all members of the community need to become more involved in the process.”

The City also received scores of “B” or “B minus” in Economic Development and Human Dignity, while scoring an “A minus” in both Open Space and Land Use and Community Education and Participation, according to the report.

The reopening of an expanded Virginia Avenue Park and a slight increase in the number of “green buildings,” – buildings that are more environmentally friendly -- led to the grade of “A minus” in Open Space and Land Use, City officials noted in the report.

The outreach associated with developing the City’s Civic Center, which is still in the planning phases, resulted in an “A minus” for Community Education and Participation, according to the report.

The lowest marks, however, were for Housing. Rising real-estate prices and the loss of “almost half” the rent controlled housing units to vacancy decontrol (which allows landlords to raise the rents of vacated units to market rate) have “reduced the availability of affordable housing,” according to the report.

Still, the grade for housing improved to a “D” from a “D minus” last year, because the City’s Housing and Redevelopment Division financed $19 million for the production of more than 80 units of affordable housing in the past year and plans an additional 160 affordable units at the new Civic Center, officials said.

The next lowest scores were in Resource Conservation and Transportation, which received a “C plus” and “C,” respectively.

“Traffic and congestion remain significant issues in the community and the current network of bicycle lanes and paths are inadequate to meet the city’s targets,” the report states.

Furthermore, “converting greater numbers of people to more sustainable modes of transit has had limited success in offsetting the impacts of increased tourism, commuter traffic and construction of parking,” according the report’s authors.

Despite such shortfalls, the use of alternative fuels and a plan to bring more public transportation to Santa Monica, including light rail, increased Transportation scores from a “C minus” to a “C” from last year, the report said.

Resource Conservation and Transportation improved its score from a “C” to a “C plus,” because of the “collective effort toward green design and construction practices and maintaining stable water and energy use,” the report said.

However, work remains to be done.

“If the city as a whole is to meet its aggressive Sustainable City Plan targets, residents and businesses will have to prioritize resource use reduction,” the report said. “Current water use is higher than our aggressive target levels and solid waste generation is beyond the Sustainable City Plan ceiling.”

The grade in only one category -- Environmental and Public Health -- dropped this year, from a “B” to a “B minus.”

Despite laws enacted this year banning plastic and Styrofoam use at local businesses, a new watershed plan and other initiatives, the report found that “the grade for this area has dropped because wastewater generation has increased and the city is far from reaching its targets for reducing beach pollution.”

The new category, Human Dignity, which grades social service efforts, such as outreach on homelessness and preventing gang violence, received a score of “B minus.”

On the plus side, the City is spending grants totaling $9 million annually for social services, and Santa Monica’s role in being a proactive regional leader on homelessness appears to be increasing.

However, safety in the Pico Neighborhood – the poorest and most diverse community in Santa Monica – “remains a major concern,” according to the report.

“Much work remains to be done as the City and the community better define the additional initiatives and investments that will positively impact human dignity,” the report said.

To examine the data used in the report visit www.smepd.org/scpr.

For questions, contact the city’s Environmental Programs Division at 310 458 2213 or email at environment@smgov.net.