Three of Santa Monica's seven recognized neighborhood organizations have declined city grant funding for the 2025-26 cycle, rejecting what they describe as overreaching new requirements despite a City Council attempt to clarify the program's guidelines.
The Friends of Sunset Park, North of Montana Association and Northeast Neighbors each voted against accepting the grants, citing objections to a cluster of new requirements including restrictions on mailers and newsletters, a mandate to collect demographic information from members, and conditions they say go beyond the council's stated goal of keeping public funds out of candidate endorsements.
The neighborhood grant program has supported Santa Monica's seven recognized neighborhood associations for decades. The organizations (Friends of Sunset Park, North of Montana Association, Ocean Park Association, Pico Neighborhood Association, Mid City Neighbors, Northeast Neighbors and Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition) collectively represent more than 50,000 households and operate under self designed borders.
City support for the groups evolved over decades from providing access to Xerox and fax machines at City Hall, to mailing newsletters on the groups' behalf, to eventually offering each a flat $7,000 annual grant. Under the newly reformed program, funding would be allocated based on the number of households in each territory rather than a uniform amount, with totals ranging from Northeast Neighbors, covering 1,622 households (equal to $1,585), to the Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition at 12,560 (equal to $12,339).
The controversy traces back to a council decision to overhaul the program after at least two neighborhood organizations made political candidate endorsements while receiving taxpayer funding. The council suspended the program pending review before approving a new framework. Councilmember Dan Hall, who made the original motion, said some groups had used publicly funded membership lists and brand recognition for partisan politics. "It crossed an ethical line," he said.
Facing pushback from the rejecting groups, Mayor Caroline Torosis called a special City Council meeting, to revisit and clarify the program's guidelines. Torosis said she had determined that the grant application guidance as written may not fully align with the unanimous direction the council had provided in September.
At the meeting, Torosis sought to reaffirm several points of guidance: that neighborhood organizations may conduct informational outreach related to ballot measures; that they may host candidate meetings in a neutral format; that funds may be used for mailers to inform the broader public — not just members — about meetings and events; and that demographic information requests covering board members are strictly voluntary.
City Manager Chi apologized for the confusion, saying the discrepancy between the council's intent and the language that appeared in the actual application was his responsibility.
"I didn't catch some of the wording in the actual application," Chi said. "I think that's what created some of the confusion."
Public commenters at the meeting were sharply critical. Wilmont Chair Elizabeth Vandenberg challenged the demographic data requirement, asking whether any council member would voluntarily provide their age and income to a neighborhood group. Recreation and Parks Commissioner John Cyrus Smith, a Wilmont board member, argued that the council had punished all seven organizations for the actions of one or two.
"You could have simply agreed months ago that any group endorsing candidates cannot get a grant," Smith told the council. "Then we'd be done."
Mid City Neighbors representative Andrew Hoyer questioned the framing of the program's revised mission, saying the group's purpose had always been to inform residents and provide a civic forum — not to engage in "community building" as the new guidance implied. He also objected to any restriction limiting mailers to members only, saying it would effectively hide the organizations' existence from the residents they serve.
The council voted 6-1 to affirm the clarifications and reopen the application period, allowing groups that had previously declined to reconsider. Councilwoman Lana Negrete who opposed the original motion also dissented from the recent decision.
In a letter to City Manager Chi, NOMA's board said that while it appreciated the council's effort to revisit the matter, most of the issues it had raised were still not addressed.
"It is difficult for us to understand why the City's long-standing and successful grant program ever became an issue," the board wrote. "If it was candidate endorsements by neighborhood groups, they could have simply prohibited that one activity."
The group noted that the $49,000 total program represents just .0062% of the city's $790 million annual budget and that grant expenditures have always been subject to annual accounting requirements, none of which had ever been challenged.
When Friends of Sunset Park first rejected the program, it said the new requirements were designed to restrict divergent viewpoints and called the new demands "unreasonable, unwarranted, and unwelcome." The group's board noted that the city had previously helped fund annual neighborhood mailers to all residences before shifting that responsibility to the organizations themselves.
The groups also objected to a provision that ties official city recognition to participation in the grant program, meaning organizations that decline the funding could be removed from the city website and excluded from future editions of Seascape, a city-produced community newsletter that officials plan to relaunch as part of the revised program. When Northeast Neighbors first rejected the money, it questioned the value of spending $200,000 to relaunch Seascape, pointing out that the expenditure would be four times the entire neighborhood grant budget.
NOMA's board said it remained committed to its partnership with the city regardless of its grant status.
“Despite lacking a clearly identified or logical problem with the grant program, Council created unnecessary demands including the collection of sensitive demographic information from Board members, a prohibition on taking ballot measure positions, and - most bewilderingly – an exclusion on using grant money to solicit new members within our newsletters. It's hard to see these restrictions as anything other than an attempt to diminish neighborhood groups' reach and influence,” they said. “We hope the rules around the grant will continue to evolve so that we can apply in the next cycle. Either way, we remain committed to our partnership with the City and our mutual goal to inform residents and inspire community involvement.”
Applications for the reopened cycle were received from Pico Neighborhood Association, Mid City Neighbors, Ocean Park Association and Wilmont.