By Jorge Casuso

February 10, 2026 -- Northeast Neighbors informed City officials Monday that the group will not participate in a new grant program it claims is overly restrictive, invasive and muzzles free speech.

In a letter to the City Council, the group's Board said it had voted to forgo the City Neighborhood Grant "in order to be free to continue to act as an independent voice and forum for the residents of Santa Monica."

Northeast Neighbors -- which makes endorsements in City Council races and takes positions on ballot measures -- said it refuses to give up activities allowed under its tax status but are prohibited under the City's "onerous" new regulations.

Approved by the Council last September, the regulations prohibit neighborhood groups that receive City funding from engaging in political activity ("Council Approves New Program for Neighborhood Groups," October 3, 2025).

The new guidelines also require groups to collect demographic information from their members and replace funding for their newsletters with space in a printed newsletter the City controls.

"Our organization is not willing to be muzzled by the new grant prohibitions, which ask us to give up our protected free speech," the Board wrote in the letter.

"We feel strongly that the City is overreaching, resulting in restricting political perspectives from divergent viewpoints," the letter said.

The new guidelines base funding for the city's seven neighborhood groups on the number of households each represents -- instead of the current $7,000 given to each group. It also waives City fees for neighborhood events and activities.

Under the new program, neighborhood groups receiving City funding that endorse or oppose political candidates are "ineligible for participation for at least five years and will not be listed on the City's website."

In its letter to the Council, the Board noted that Northeast Neighbors is a 501c4 non-profit that has used a separate bank account for its allowed political activity that does not use City money.

"We agree that city grants should not be utilized for political endorsements, but applying this to all the activities of the organization undermines our freedom and independence," the Board said.

Under the City's new guidelines, groups that violate the endorsement policy would not be given space in the City's resurrected "Seascape" newsletter, which will be mailed to every Santa Monica household at least once a year at a cost of some $200,000.

The Board objected to the cost to the cash-strapped City and noted that the "Seascape content about the neighborhood associations will be written by City staff, not by the residents in each neighborhood group."

"Northeast Neighbors has, for years, produced its own newsletter independently to provide local information and recruit members, supported by the City grant," the Board wrote.

The group also objected to a provision in the guidelines that requires the City to "collect demographic information on membership and board representation of each officially recognized group."

The information includes age, income and housing tenure that will be published annually "and compared against the demographics of the neighborhoods they represent."

The provision, the Northeast Neighbors Board said, would be "intrusive and an invasion of privacy."

"Potential members would be justified in questioning how this information would be used," the Board said. "Since this is a voluntary request, those who answer are unlikely to be a representative sample of neighborhood demographics."

As a result, "this data could be used to undermine the credibility of the organization as not representative of the people it serves."

The new guidelines were adopted after the Council voted to suspend the program after at least two of the seven neighborhood groups endorsed candidates in last November's Council race, although they did not use City funding.