Democracy isn’t pretty. It can also be exhausting. The Santa Monica City Council meeting last week ran until three in the morning, and that was without the Gaza protesters who were present for the previous three meetings. One of the contributing factors was a budget discussion.
Quick quiz: What best describes Santa Monica’s current fiscal status?
A) One of the ten most financially healthy cities in Southern California
B) Diminished by post-COVID disruptions, but stable with a strong reserve
C) Insolvent
Avid readers of the Santa Monica Daily Press, may be unsurprised to learn that I think C) is closest to the mark. The city isn’t bankrupt, because the solution to not having sufficient funds for necessities, such as safety and maintenance, is to reduce the money spent on those necessities. But there’s a cost to that as well, which is why the councilmembers spent over an hour painstakingly horse trading sidewalk repairs for police officers.
I’m going to venture that it was as torturous for them to negotiate as it was to witness. The Council has identified five praiseworthy budget priorities: safety, economic recovery, homelessness, racial justice, and sustainability. The hitch is there’s not enough money to adequately fund any of them.
Which is why the Santa Monica Trapeze School lost its lease on the Santa Monica Pier at the same Council meeting. Two dozen people testified for the school, describing it as more of a diverse neighborhood community than a business and praising the owner, Kenna Stevens, in ways that define civic virtue. Even Vice Mayor Negrete said the uplifting school belonged on the pier and was precisely the kind of local business the Council has vowed to support. But fidelity is a virtue the Council couldn’t afford when there was a competing bid from the owner of Pacific Park for $215,000 more per month.
In a $750 million budget, one might call it penny-pinching, but that’s what it’s come to. The city does have reserves; however, those reserves have been cut in half since 2019 to less than $150 million, which seems like a lot of money, until you consider there’s $458 million of essential infrastructure projects waiting for funding (not to mention $500 million of pension liabilities).
It would be easy to assume that the city’s financial problems are due to COVID-related losses, including diminished retail activity, office tenancy, and tourism. But here too avid readers have an advantage, because while the pandemic has in fact cost the city $170 million, the even greater blow was the $230 million spent on the sexual abuse lawsuits from more than 200 victims of a former city employee.
How many residents are aware of the fiscal jeopardy? Or the damage caused by a solitary predator? Based on informal polls I’ve done with local friends, my guess is the majority are oblivious, and we can’t blame that on politicians or the media. Democracy requires paying attention. I’m likely preaching to the converted, but if more people were paying attention, perhaps fewer children would have been abused in the first place.
It’s easy to take democracy for granted, as if it’s an amenity provided in return for our tax payments, like garbage collection, as opposed to something we actively engage in maintaining. Around the world people are sacrificing their lives for the privilege. In Myanmar, students are picking up weapons rather than books, and, according to The New York Times, they’re chanting in English for "federal democracy," because there are no equivalent words in Burmese.
Yet here in the US, a former President feels victimized because he was held accountable to the same laws as ordinary citizens, which one could argue is the bedrock of our country. To hear elected leaders rail against our democratic system is alarming, but it’s that very system that gives them the right to do so.
Like I said at the start, it’s not pretty. And sustaining it requires a lot of effort. Twelve jurors in New York gave a month of their lives listening to tedious details about bookkeeping. So what are the rest of us doing?
In Santa Monica, there are numerous commission meetings every month with minimal public attendance. Food banks, libraries, hospices and foster care organizations are actively seeking volunteers. And you might have heard there’s an election coming up. It’s easy to assume that all of this is someone else’s responsibility. But to paraphrase a Talmudic quote: If not us, then who? If not now, then when?
Devan Sipher