Santa Monica’s neighborhood organizations serve as residents’ pipelines to and from City Hall. Their boards of directors inform their members and the neighborhoods as a whole of the City’s latest moves, weighing proposed new policies and programs, supporting those they believe are beneficial to the neighborhood and the town as a whole and, with equal vigor, opposing those they see as detrimental to their area or the entire city.

Organization members meet regularly as the Neighborhood Council to exchange information and sometimes to discuss residents’ support of or opposition to new City initiatives. The Transparency Project, which charts developers’ campaign contributions to City Council candidates and makes them public, emerged from the Neighborhood Council.

Generally, the organizations do what they’re designed to do, rising and waning with the City’s agenda, serving
residents, and simultaneously informing them and giving them a voice in the increasingly noisy and fractious
public arena. Given the City’s mounting list of major and controversial projects, and the fact that five of the
seven Council members have taken campaign contributions from developers, the independence of the organizations
and their dedication to the well-being of their neighborhoods is more important than ever. Thus, the recent
behavior of the Wilshire Montana Neighborhood Coalition board is as bizarre as it is unsettling.

Wilmont represents the most densely populated region of the city. It is bounded by Montana on the north, Wilshire on the south, 21st Street on the east and Ocean Avenue on the west, and has gone through several cycles. Once a neighborhood of small cottages and duplexes, it was gradually overtaken by apartment buildings – two story and three story buildings, punctuated here and there by gaudier buildings that resembled nothing so much as New Jersey nightclubs. Today, many of its apartment buildings have been replaced by oversized “luxury condos.” Parking, or the shortage of it, was, for a while. its residents’ principal concern. Downtown shoppers and employees regularly park in Wilmont for the day, many of the older buildings lack garages, so when Wilmont president Valerie Griffin spoke to
the Council, parking problems were always mentioned.

But, for some time, Wilmont has been wracked by what one member called “dissent and anger…many see the current Board as being completely unresponsive to the wishes of the membership, and corruption allegations are flying around.”

As disagreements grew, some residents, including board members, abandoned Wilmont, but when the board announced the organization’s support for the controversial Miramar Hotel expansion though it had not put the question to the members for discussion and a vote, many members were furious. One of them addressed the Council and alleged that not only had their leaders not held a proper discussion and vote on the Miramar question, but had violated the organization’s bylaws.

The irony was unavoidable. The Miramar expansion, which included doubling its size to 556,000 square feet, increasing its height by several stories and adding 6400 square feet of new “retail,” was located in Wilmont, and it was the only neighborhood organization to favor it. To date, none of the other organizations have taken a position.

It was subsequently alleged that at least one of the Wilmont board members was also serving on the Board of the Miramar-funded organization, “Friends of the Miramar.” Though it is a clear conflict of interest, the board member has not recused himself from Wilmont board decisions. In addition, members’ requests to obtain copies of meeting records have been denied, and phone calls and e-mails demanding information and explanations have been ignored.

The annual Wilmont meeting and board election takes place this morning in the Martin Luther King Auditorium at the Santa Monica Main Library. A full slate of candidates has submitted valid petitions, signed by more than 10 members, as required by the bylaws, to run against the sitting members.

In response, according to one of the candidates, the sitting board created arbitrary new “rules” and criteria for new Board candidates that have not been ratified by the membership and are not in the Wilmont bylaws. The current directors and candidates’ debate over the rules and the date and time of the election ended abruptly yesterday when the
elderly woman who has charge of Wilmont’s rules and bylaws fell, broke her hip and is now in the hospital, further confusing things.

The arrogance of the current directors and their drive to hold onto their power will be on view at today’s meeting, but the big question –- the basis for their apparent willingness to betray their onetime friends and neighbors and violate the organization’s rules – will surely be asked, but may or may not be answered.