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Volume 8 Issue 314
Santa Monica Daily Press SMARTER THAN HUMANS? SEE PAGE 4
We have you covered
THE THANK GOODNESS FOR THE WEEKEND ISSUE
Neighborhood budget meetings begin Monday BY MELODY HANATANI Daily Press Staff Writer
CITY HALL A popular series of neighbor-
wanted to include sources of shade to provide relief for students who play on the west side of campus where the kindergarten classes are located and the temperature level can at times be too warm. “It’s like being at the beach where there’s nowhere to hide from the sun,” Friedenberg said. The school had set aside roughly $6,000 to pay for shade structures for the playground, shocked when they received a quote of $18,000 to $21,000 to complete the project. “In my world, $18,000 to $21,000 is a deal breaker,” Friedenberg said.
hood-centric budget meetings with City Manager Lamont Ewell will return for a fourth round on Monday when issues of parking, traffic and development are sure to make their way into discussions yet again. The annual “Can We Talk” meetings began when Ewell was hired in 2006 to determine the community’s priorities when developing City Hall’s roughly half-billion dollar budget, whether it’s improving tree maintenance, widening sidewalks or adding traffic control measures. The Ocean Park Association will cosponsor the first meeting Monday at the SMASH/John Muir School auditorium, followed by another meeting a week later at the Ken Edwards Center, co-sponsored by the Wilshire-Montana Neighborhood Coalition. After a two week break the meetings will resume on Dec. 1 at the Montana Library, which will be co-sponsored by the North of Montana Association. The Pico Neighborhood Association will host the final meeting at Virginia Avenue Park on Dec. 2. All meetings will begin at 7 p.m. The meetings can draw as many as 50 people, depending on the neighborhood. “Some are not as full but we hold the position that whether it’s one or a thousand, we’ll be there,” Ewell, who will retire at the end of this year, said. The meetings will cover the current state of the city’s finances followed by an update on the progress of the 2010-11 budget. Ewell will also discuss the status of community priorities identified at meetings the previous year. All department heads are also expected to attend the meetings. Despite a conservative projection for revenues in the current budget, the actual figures are currently down by 2 percent, which equate to about $4-$5 million. “The economy continues to cycle downward,” Ewell said. He is planning on meeting with department heads starting next week to address the
SEE TREES PAGE 10
SEE BUDGET PAGE 11
Brandon Wise brandonw@smdp.com
GREEN THUMBS: Teacher Olga Cueva's kindergarten class watches as fellow students Brandon Harron, Hagan Stahl and Riley Rosenthal (left to right) shovel dirt around the newly planted fern pine at Grant Elementary School on Pearl Street Friday morning.
New trees and shade for Grant kindergartners BY MELODY HANATANI Daily Press Staff Writer
PEARL STREET Katie Furlong was ready to get her hands dirty. Holding a kid-sized shovel, the kindergartner cautiously scooped some dirt and threw it around the root of a semi-mature Australian willow that was being transplanted from a box to its new home — the playground at Grant Elementary School where the tree has already been given a new name by the students — Goldie. “I like digging,” the bashful young girl said. The willow was one of five trees that
were planted by parents, students and nonprofit organization Tree People on Friday, capping a more than year-long project to renovate the school’s kindergarten playground, which was once nothing more than just a giant sandbox, leaving children little room to run around. It was in the summer of 2008 when Morley Builders, who is a Grant Elementary School sponsor, volunteered the labor and donated materials to remove the sandbox and replace it with a concrete playground, a process valued at an estimated $10,000, Principal Alan Friedenberg said. As part of the project, school officials
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