City Council Approves Grant To Schools' Arts Foundation

   The Santa Monica City Council, as Council members and as Redevelopment Agency members, voted unanimously to complete the mid-year City Budget review by amending the budget, adopting resolutions changing job classifications, approving new salary rates for various positions and revising the City's FY 2000-01 Gann limit, as well as approving two promissory notes to make funds immediately available for affordable housing projects.  
   But that unanimity melted in a subsequent discussion of what to do with the City's $3 million surplus.
   The City's finance director Mike Dennis told the Council that staff advised that the surplus be invested in pending capital improvement projects, such as the Public Library expansion and seismic upgrade of City Hall, not the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified school District (SMMUSD).
   A number of residents who spoke on the question took the opposite view and asked that the City assign a major portion of the $3 million surplus to the public schools, which remain in financial distress. Some of the speakers spoke specifically of the need for the City to contribute generously to the new foundation which is attempting to establish a $10 million endowment fund to underwrite and arts programs in the schools.
   Councilman Richard Bloom initially moved that $500,000 be given to the Foundation now, with another $500,000 to be given when the Foundation had raised $5 million.
   Councilman Kevin McKeown then suggested, and Councilman Herb Katz agreed, that about $200,000 from the surplus be allocated to pay for a sound system for Barnum Hall, the landmark theater at Santa Monica High School which is currently being renovated.
   But both Council members Ken Genser and Pam O'Connor then said the Council should heed the staff recommendation and defer any grants to the schools until some sort of legal framework could be established.
   In the end, the Council voted to allocate $500,000 of the surplus to the Foundation, with the proviso that it first raise $5 million, $150,000 to the Barnum restoration, and the balance to capital improvements.