Interim City Manager Lane Dilg Santa Monica State of the City 2021 Remarks

February 25, 2021 1:00 PM
by Lane Dilg

At the 2021 State of the City, Santa Monica Interim City Manager Lane Dilg spoke about how Santa Monica has faced historic challenges, but also shared a message of hope for Santa Monica's bright future. Below are her remarks from the event. For Mayor Sue Himmelrich's remarks, click here. 

---

Good evening, Santa Monica.  Thank you for joining us tonight.   

It is a privilege to have the chance to address you.   

And it is wonderful to be joining you from your new downtown Fire Station 1.  This state-of-the-art, sustainable facility was designed before the pandemic but completed during it and will ensure continuation of vital emergency services no matter what major disaster may come.   

This is, of course, a working station of the SMFD, so if our team receives calls or deploys in the next 20 minutes, you’re along for the ride. 

Santa Monica, each year, we come together for this SOTC event to talk about where we have been as a community, and where we are going.    

Last year, we gathered in person – amidst a thriving economic, civic, and social life.   A happy people in a happy place.  

Exactly one month later, we began closing City facilities, canceling events, and providing guidance about the COVID-19 public health emergency. 

Together, we were forced to shutter our shared civic life and begin a new one -- largely at home. 

Since that time, this virus has tested us in every possible way.   

We have remained a fortunate people in a fortunate place. 

But we have been forced to confront historic challenges as a nation and as a local community.  

Tonight, I want to send our immeasurable gratitude to our local health and mental health care providers for your work over the last, long 11 months.  Your courage gave others the gift of life, and we are forever grateful. I also want to thank the members of our Emergency Operations Center and local community leaders who have worked together: 

• To keep our community informed about public health matters,   
• To secure and distribute personal protective equipment, and 
• To ensure compliance with ever-changing State and County public health orders. 

In Santa Monica, we are fortunate to have had among the very lowest COVID-19 rates in all of Los Angeles County.   

But tonight, we mourn the 135 members of our community whom we have lost.   

To all of you who have lost family members or beloved friends to this virus, we hold you with us in your grief and we long for the moment when we can comfort and embrace you in person. 

In the midst of this toll, our country also experienced an economic downturn more crippling than any since the Great Depression.    

While we in Santa Monica remain blessed in our ability to care for one another: 

• More than 7,000 of our residents have been unemployed; 
• 72% of our businesses report struggling to cover expenses; and 

 We have opened our new Virginia Avenue Park Food Pantry to support some 200 households in Santa Monica newly facing food insecurity.    

As our economy faces the prospect of a recovery in which the fortunate recover more rapidly than the vulnerable, addressing homelessness, unemployment, and food insecurity remain urgent priorities for us all.   

In Santa Monica, while our strategies in addressing homelessness have shown positive results in the past, we must join with regional and national partners to search urgently for ways to do more: 

• To house the unsheltered,  
• To provide behavioral and mental health care to those in need, and 
• To ensure that our public spaces are safe, clean, and healthy for all in our community to enjoy.   

Homelessness has been starkly exposed in the pandemic like never before as a State-wide crisis that will impact every aspect of our local recovery. 

In Santa Monica, we have continued to lead the way in keeping the approximately 70% of our community members who are renters in their homes: 

• We were one of the first cities in the nation to implement emergency measures to stop evictions based on COVID-19 income loss,  
• We have provided more than 600 families with direct rental assistance and 145 senior households with cash-based assistance through our Preserving Our Diversity program, and  
• 95 new affordable apartments have opened in Santa Monica since we last gathered.   

But while we maintain the ingenuity and dedication that allows us to craft new policies and programs, the economic impacts of COVID-19 have badly battered our City budget.   

Our place on the Pacific has long allowed us to welcome visitors, supporting and enhancing a residential life characterized by first-class City services and unparalleled natural beauty. 

But in the pandemic, the shuttering of travel and economic life more generally threatened to leave gaping holes in a City budget that has benefitted from tourism, sales tax, and parking-based revenues and relied less on property taxes due to California’s tax structure. 

And despite Congressman Lieu’s tireless personal efforts, federal aid in 2020 effectively left out cities with small populations like ours, offering no meaningful aid to cover revenue gaps.

Today, I am pleased to say that our budget is balanced, our fiscal health is intact, and we retain our rare AAA bond rating.   

But this financial security and stability came at a painful cost. The City government was forced to reduce expenditures by nearly 25% for this fiscal year and to reduce the City staff by almost 300 full-time positions. 

During the pandemic, our City team has faced significant hardships – COVID exposure, pay cuts, lost colleagues, reduced staffing, lack of childcare, and personal sickness and loss.  It was a hard year. 

But this City is blessed by a team with personal and professional resilience and pride in public service that I will remain humbled and changed by forever.   

As just a few examples: 

• Your Farmer’s Market has been one of the few to operate for farmers, restaurants, and residents at every stage of the pandemic.   
• Your Library staff has offered levity and learning to nearly 13,000 patrons through ever-expanding curbside service at three locations.   
• Your Community Services Department has offered outdoor recreation and child care at almost every stage that it was permitted. 
• Your Big Blue Bus team provided 287 days of fare-free public transit – transporting a general ridership of 67% essential workers each day in the pandemic.   
• Your maintenance team adapted to rapidly changing patterns of people utilizing our beach and public spaces to safely escape the confines of home.    
• Your building inspectors conducted 15,000 in-person and virtual inspections to support businesses, housing production, and ultimately our recovery. 
• Your Water Resources Division replaced over 17,000 feet of pipelines and delivered nearly 3.5 billion gallons of high-quality drinking water, and  
• Your Fire Department – in addition to providing continuous fire and EMT services at home -- deployed personnel to fight 17 wildfires during the worst fire-season in California’s history.  

Your City government strives each day to live up to the highest standards of community health, safety, and wellbeing.  In Santa Monica, we also experienced this year one of the hardest days in our local history.   

On May 31st, a day when our community longed to raise voices decrying racism and calling for justice for George Floyd and far too many others, lawlessness took hold. Our local businesses suffered tremendous property loss, and many of you were in your homes or businesses fearful and awaiting police response.  

The challenges were immense and not only in Santa Monica.  But we should have been better prepared, and we should have communicated with you better that day and in the days that followed. 

Since May 31st, we have gone to great lengths to identify and respond to any and all areas needing improvement.  This has included: 

• Shoring up Police Department leadership;  
• Enhancing intelligence, mobile field force, and incident command operations;   
• Engaging in hard conversations with regional partners and mutual aid networks; and  
• Significantly enhancing City-wide civil unrest emergency response planning and implementation.     

As a City government, we must learn everything there is to learn from the events of May 31st in order to prevent anything like that from happening again. For that reason, we look forward to the OIR Group delivering a comprehensive, independent accounting of the event to the community in April as directed by the City Council.    

Despite the blow of May 31st, Part 1 crimes in Santa Monica decreased by 5.5% in 2020.  This 5.5% decrease builds on a 16% decrease the prior year and represents crime levels nearing lows in 2015.   

The decrease reflects the public health shutdowns but also the spike in non-residential burglaries on May 31st and a 272% increase in thefts of catalytic converters -- a national crime trend that the Santa Monica Police Department has engaged patrols to address locally.   

To our police officers and firefighters, motor coach operators, water and Resource, Recycling, and Recovery workers, child care providers, and so many others, we have learned this year what it means to be essential.   

A community can live together and thrive only with the services you provide.  We are fortunate, and we are grateful. 

But even as we have responded to the pandemic and stabilized our community and economy, we have also always looked ahead to crafting together our recovery and bright future.    

We have created new opportunities to enjoy Santa Monica’s outdoor space by: 

• Redesigning Main Street, 
• Creating the new Ocean Avenue Boardwalk,  
• Expanding outdoor dining on the Third Street Promenade, and 
• Partnering with more than 300 local businesses across the city to create safe outdoor spaces not only for dining but also for personal care, personal health, and fitness everywhere from parking lots to the Pier. 
• True to our history, art will play a key role in our recovery. Our New Deal inspired Art of Recovery program provides financial support to local artists as they support community connectedness and restorative justice by using our physical space as a canvas to beautify our City.  

These efforts to invite residents and visitors alike to enjoy our beloved outdoor space merely begin our broader recovery for all going forward:  

• Our new small business grant program – a partnership with the Chamber of Commerce – supplements federal, state, and county efforts to bring our beloved smallest, most local businesses through this crisis. 
• Our Zero-Emissions Delivery Zone pilot is turning one square mile of our Downtown and Main Street into a test bed for how to deliver parcels and food with no carbon impact.  
• In September, the City Council approved the redevelopment of the historic Miramar Hotel following a decade-long community engagement process and in time for the redesigned hotel at the foot of the Third Street Promenade to play a key role in the City’s overall economic recovery. 
• This Winter we teamed up with Downtown Santa Monica as they initiated a community project to ensure the vitality of our community’s premiere downtown outdoor space.   
• And we hope you will join in efforts to ensure that as our recovery continues, it comes from and speaks of and to us – that our commercial districts and public spaces reflect, draw in, and bring out the talent, compassion, and dedication so unique in Santa Monica’s neighborhoods and those who reside within them. 

We also look forward to inviting the community into new spaces and places completed during the pandemic.  These include: 

• The expanded North Beach Trail -- a widening of our beloved beach trail and Ocean Front Walk pedestrian path. 
• 18 miles of protected bike lanes, including a new two-way cycle track on Ocean Avenue.  
• The new Fire Station 1 -- a state-of-the-art, sustainable facility that will ensure the continuation of vital services no matter what major disaster may come.   
• The still-in-progress Sustainable Water Infrastructure Project, a finishing element of the Clean Beaches Initiative that will generate more than 1,500 acre-feet of new water each year, as Santa Monica moves away from imported water and toward a sustainable and resilient water system.  
• City Hall East – a water self-sufficient, carbon-neutral, zero waste, and energy independent “living building” that eliminates all City leases and exemplifies the key role that building and construction play in combating climate change.   
• The new Early Childhood Lab School, a unique partnership with Santa Monica College that will provide first-class early education to working families while allowing new teachers to train under the guidance of Santa Monica’s exceptional early childhood education professionals. 
• And Historic Belmar Park, Santa Monica’s newest 3.5 acre open park space, which completes years of civic engagement by our parks community and commemorates a site that was home to a thriving African American community until the 1950s.  We hope you will join us at 3 pm this Sunday for the virtual opening of this new space for Santa Monica.  

These large projects reflect our thriving economy of the past and generate hope to propel us forward to our future. 

But now we must also go back-to-basics to make cost-effective improvements to the way you connect, communicate, and build trust with your City government.     

• We look forward to launching a new 311 system at the end of March to make sure that you have easy access and a friendly partner when you need information or help navigating your local government;  
• Our enhanced and improved website – santamonica.gov – offers an easier and more intuitive interface for you to find information about the services on which you rely;  
• A Council review beginning in April of the Boards and Commissions structure will examine how we can best draw on our residents to craft our government together; and  
• Our new We Are Santa Monica Fund has raised more than $1 million for community efforts as neighbors have reached out to help one another.   

Santa Monica, your recovery will be led by the most diverse City Council in the City’s history.   

I hope you will continue to energetically embrace the call to advance racial equity and inclusion in our community.  This work is hard.  It requires introspection, painful reflection, and unflinching determination.   

I want to thank all those who participated in the Public Safety Reform Advisory Committee for their tireless work contributing to the City Council’s creation of Santa Monica’s first citizen body dedicated to regular engagement with and oversight of the Police Department. 

I want to thank members of the Black Agenda Group whose new Santa Monica Black Lives Association will promote the wellbeing of Black Santa Monicans and help to build a more equitable and just community.   

I want to thank the Recreation and Parks Commission and Art Selection Committee members whose advocacy led to the Historic Belmar Park and its trademark Belmar History + Art community engagement project.  

And I want to thank the City staff members who are now serving as Equity and Inclusion Officers in every single City department to move us forward to our more equitable future. 

As many of you know, my family will be leaving Santa Monica in the coming months for public service elsewhere.  

I want to take this moment to send my deep thanks to my husband and son for supporting me in supporting the City.    

In my family, public service is a shared vocation.  

My partner and I have separate jobs, but we choose how we spend our time together.  And we are proud over the time that we have lived in Santa Monica to have supported the best public university in the world, the now Vice President of the United States, the LA2028 Olympic and Paralympic Games, and the bright future of the City of Santa Monica.  

Santa Monica, we are a fortunate people in a fortunate place. In a community, it is always our people – we, ourselves -- who chart and determine our collective destiny.    

Our neighborhoods overflow with unrivaled passion and talent -- 

• From community advocacy to  
• early education to  
• local youth services to 
• health and mental health care to  
• world-class culinary innovation in small scale local restaurants to 
• arts and architecture, surfing and skating, gardening, sustainability, and, technological innovation.   

This thriving community lives and breathes beside the expansive surf of the Pacific and nightly displays of some of the most spectacular sunsets in the world. 

Our recovery is certain. But it must be crafted and invested in together.   

To each and every one of you who wakes up thinking about how we can create Santa Monica’s bright future together, it has been my immense privilege to serve this community with you.    

Authored By

Lane Dilg
Interim City Manager