Hometown Hero: Allan Young Boys and Girls Club

Allan Young got his first job at the Santa Monica Boys Club. He had been named the 1963 “Youth of the Year” and a part time job went with the award. 2009 will be his last year at the Club. He has personally worked with thousands of boys and girls and their families. “I’ve loved every minute of being here. I never felt this was a job. I felt this was my family.”

His dad brought him to the Boys Club in 1955. Membership was 50 cents/year and that included everything the club had to offer. Allan went to Roosevelt Elementary and his dad felt Allan needed to play with kids from all kinds of backgrounds and that his elementary school didn’t give him that experience. “My dad was ahead of his time.”

From his “Youth of the Year” job to being Assistant Athletic Director he continued to work at the Club all the way through high school at SAMOHI and college at SMC and Northridge. In 1966 he was drafted and went to the Naval Dental School and then served, as a dental tech, in both Guam and Vietnam.

When he returned, Cyril Gale, a Santa Monica dentist and President of the Boys Club Board, said he would help him go to dental school. But Allan wanted to work at the club. By 1969 he was the Club’s Athletic Director. In 1977 he became the Executive Director.

There are now Boys and Girls Clubs at Lincoln, Samohi, JAMS, McKinley, and at several Community Corps housing projects. Membership is $10/year for all the club has to offer including: homework labs, tech labs, athletic activities and academic counseling. Allan feels it is a “mistake for the schools or the city to try to duplicate the work of the non-profits.”

The first Boys Club, started in 1860 by a small group of socially concerned women, was called the “Dash Away Club”. They wanted to create opportunities for the boys they called ‘the urchins’. For over a hundred years the clubs served boys across the US and on US military bases.

Not until 1990, and then only with argument and challenge, did the Boys Clubs of America officially become the Boys and Girls Clubs of America. When Allan came to realize that he “had to change with the times” he met individually with each of the 45 Santa Monica Board Members to get agreement because he didn’t want to go to court over the issue. Now Allen says, “one of the things I regret most was not serving girls sooner. Girls are in every sport and activity and they make the club a better place for everyone.”

This summer Allan is taking twelve, 16-18 year old, teenagers, of diverse backgrounds, to Kenya on a program run by “Free the Children”, a Canadian organization where his daughter works. “The purpose is to teach our kids that they can make a difference. But I believe this experience will change them in a good way. The kids will build a school and the adults will build a medical clinic. Real progress gets made one person and one project at a time: one more school, one more clinic, one more water purification plant.”

Retirement doesn’t mean not working for Allan. He will be at the Pacific Youth Foundation working on global problems of youth, poverty and education. “In Brazil there is an estimated population of 15 million street children. Tupperware employs about 10,000 people in Brazil. Their CEO has talked with us about starting Boys and Girls Clubs in Brazil. That is a project I intend to work on. I intend to keep working on the same issues and toward the same goal of educating children. The only way out of poverty is through education and respect – whether you live in Africa, South America or the US.”

What Say You: The Council on the Budget

‘City Staff scrambles to meet required 5% reduction in department budgets on top of previous 3% reduction.’ ‘Residents worry about safety and services during hard economic times.’ These might be headlines in articles about the City budget debate. While the State is reeling from huge shortfalls and our nation is grappling with bank and corporate failures, high housing foreclosure rates, and higher unemployment numbers, the City of Santa Monica seems to be coping comparatively well in spite of downturns in standard sources of income such as auto sales taxes, hotel occupancy taxes and property sales taxes. How can that be and what is the City going to do about the reductions it needs to make? Here’s how City Council Members answer those questions and what they say about how they’re going to decide where to make cuts. To contact Council Members with your concerns and suggestions email:>council@smgov.net

Ken Genser.

“For me, public process is a very important part of the process. But people have been surprisingly quiet on this issue and that says to me that, at least so far, there are no apparent, major problems with the proposed budget. I feel we need to look at the entire City Budget and make sure it is in the black at the same time fee increases should not be such that make it harder for people, especially young people, to participate and we need to be extremely careful.”

Richard Bloom.

“The City wisely put 8.2 million dollars into a rainy day fund and we now plan to use that fund over a 2 year period hoping that the national economy will recover sooner than that. That will allows us to maintain essential services such as police and fire and keep any necessary cuts as far away from where residents will feel them as possible.”

“We are very lucky that the City is not in the same desperate straits as the other cities in California because our sources of income are so diversified.

Although we do have to make certain reductions and we have instituted a hiring freeze, reduced the use of consultants and limited other expenditures, that is preferable to eliminating services to residents. If the economy remains bad then the next budget cycle will be more difficult.”

Bob Hollbrook.

“This is the most difficult financial year in all my 19 years of being on the Council and we don’t know how long this recession/depression will last. Right now we can do what we need to do with hiring freezes, less frequent rotation of the 600+ vehicles in the City fleet, longer intervals between tree trimming, alley repaving and other non-essential services. My idea of the last place to cut is public safety or services like the public library. We need to get through the next couple of years by relying on the City’s rainy day reserves and by keeping things going so that we protect the people of Santa Monica.”

Kevin McKeown. “Unlike the State we are, at least, partially protected by previous prudence and are able to draw upon short term reserves. I think we need to take this as an opportunity to think through how we can provide needed resources in a sustainable way. We also shouldn’t price out valuable services through fee increases. We wouldn’t, for example want to want to raise fees that would price out the 12 step programs that save lives, increase public safety, and save the city money. We need to keep good programs viable so we don’t lose experienced and dedicated staff and so that we continue to serve the needs of the people of the City.”

Hometown Hero: Joel Reynolds

Say Joel Reynolds; think music, family and the environment.It was his family, especially his generous mother, who taught him a sense of service but it was Bobby Kennedy who most influenced his political beliefs.“He conveyed values and a sense of purpose with a charisma that reached across barriers.I admired him and planned to work for his election when I returned from our family’s sabbatical year in Copenhagen.” Landing at LAX, Joel learned of the assassination of Bobby Kennedy. It was 1968.Joel was in high school.He still knew what he believed but he no longer knew what he was going to do.

College was at UC Riverside where his father was a founding member of the Music Department. Joel majored in music and political science. It was when he interned at EPA that he decided to become a lawyer. "I wanted to be able to pursue my own ideological agenda and the practice of law would enable me to act on the issues I cared about.”

After graduation from Columbia Law School he soon focused on environmental law and his work at the Center for Law in the Public Interest and the Diablo Canyon Nuclear Power Plant case.In 1989 he joined the National Resources Defense Counsel (NRDC). www.nrdc.org He is currently Director of its Southern California program and one of eleven lawyers working at the Robert Redford NRDC Headquarters Building in Santa Monica.

He didn’t win the victory he wanted in the Diablo Canyon case but when NRDC joined the international campaign, started by the Mexican poet Homero Aridjis, to defend the breeding ground of the California Gray Whale at Laguna San Ignacio in Baja California, it was an all out win.

At NRDC he sued the US Navy to block a five-year underwater explosives program near the Channel Islands National Marine Sanctuary. Joel successfully argued that the “Navy could test and train in an environmentally responsible way that would both protect our national security and the environment.”

He also won when he sued the Los Angeles County Sanitation Department.In a case that marked the beginning of an ongoing series of legal and political battles to clean and protect Southern California coastal waters, County Sanitation was required to meet secondary treatment standards before discharging to the ocean.

The Cornfield and Taylor Yards, located between downtown and East Los Angeles, are part of US Government land grants given to Union Pacific to support the development of the railroad and were recently proposed for industrial development. The proposed development would have further divided Los Angeles and caused environmental harm. NRDC sued the City of Los Angeles and the Yards are now 72 acres of dedicated parkland.

Continuing the land conservation strategy, NRDC and other environmental groups negotiated the largest conservation agreement in California with the Tejon Ranch Partnership. Its importance comes not only from its scale but from the fact that four major ecosystems, the southern Sierras, the Coastal Range, San Joaquin Valley and the Mojave Desert, come together in Tejon Ranch.

“Having a child often opens up your creativity,” is how Joel introduces the songs he wrote for his children, Sam, Ellie and Amelia.He and his five siblings and all eleven of the cousins get together often and making music is a continuing family tradition.

But he fears for the future. “Scientists disagree about how much time remains to prevent an irreversible shift in our global climate. We have no time to lose and we know where to begin. “From the mundane to the grand, act as if the environment matters.From choosing a job, to raising your children, to joining an environmental group, to buying a fuel efficient car, to voting for candidates who take the environment seriously, act as if the environment matters.”

What Say You? City Budget Uncertainty

“We’re responding every day to new information,” said Santa Monica City Manager, Lamont Ewell, about the economic uncertainty that surrounds this year’s budget. “We’re building wings as we jump off the cliff.” The budget will be a clear expression of our values. It goes without saying that there will be difficult decisions. There could also be potential opportunities and benefits.

Hard facts. Fewer tourists are staying in hotels. The transit occupancy tax was minus18 percent in December and minus 28 percent in January. Fewer people are eating in restaurants. Receipts from auto sales and leases, which account for over 20 percent of our sales tax revenues, are down. Business incomes are down and so business fees are down. Only 40 percent of homes on the market have sold, many at reduced prices, and so the property transfer tax is down. Unemployment rates in Santa Monica were at 4.3 percent one year ago and are now at 7.2 percent. Budget problems at the State Government level mean reduced funds for Santa Monica.

City response. The City Manager required departments to reduce budgets by 3 percent in 08-09 and by an additional 5 percent in 09-10. 70 percent of the city budget goes to salaries and benefits. Cuts will come in hiring freezes, except for sworn personnel (fire, police) with exceptions made on a case-by-case basis and the same holds for hiring consultants. City employees aren’t traveling to conferences. Building inspectors are on contract and, if there is less building, there will be a reduction in building inspection staff. Cuts will also come from deferring maintenance and deferring projects that are funded through City funds.

New income. The City is working with Senator Feinstein, Senator Boxer and Congressman Waxman to aggressively pursue Federal Economic Stimulus Package funds. Eligible Santa Monica projects include the California Incline and the Palisades Park bluff stabilization. These projects would bring jobs and income to Santa Monica.

Opportunities. We have talented staff supervising the work of consultants. Now is their opportunity to show their skills and expertise. We have places in City Hall where there is too much bureaucracy. Cleaning up the process of applications and decision-making could result in a financial savings and in making life easier for a lot of people – both in and out of City Hall.

Benefits. An unexplored, at least publicly, set of possibilities might exist in opening up City Staff benefits to the community as long as it doesn’t add an expense line to the City budget. One thought is to open the City fiber optic system, where possible, to residents. This was done in Vermont, which provides free access in many areas. Another possibility is to allow residents to buy into the health care the City offers employees, such as the City contract with Saint Johns. And more.

Opportunities. The Community could take care of their own street trees and parkways, with advice from the City Forester. Neighborhood Watch Groups could find out what to do to be helpful to the Police and Fire Departments. Volunteer more in the schools and at the library and hospitals and the animal shelter. And more

Benefit. We’ve had a tension between City Hall and City residents that a lot of folks would like to see mended. Finding ways to help each other and working together to keep the City whole and healthy during difficult times might just be a good start.

Hometown Hero: Karen Blanchard M.D.

The office of Karen Blanchard M.D. and Associates opened in Santa Monica on July 13, 1977. The decision to start her own practice came after no one in Santa Monica would even interview her. Her medical degree from Johns Hopkins and being Chief Resident at UCLA weren’t enough in 1977. She was told, “women wouldn’t go to a woman doctor.” The President of Santa Monica Bank, Joe Walling, must have believed she would be a success. With only her signature as collateral he gave her a loan. But even docs who thought she was a good doc told her, “be prepared to sit on your hands for up to 2 years because there are so many well known docs with medical prestige in Santa Monica that no patient will want an unknown woman doctor.”

By the time she’d been in practice for 6 months she was delivering 20 -25 babies a month. All the predictions about the failure of her office had proven false. But Karen was having so many problems with the hospitals that other people worried she would leave. Instead, she, with the support of the nurses, worked to change the hospital culture. “There are three things I tell the Residents I’m training. One is that they must care. Two is that they must listen. Three is that, if they don’t care and can’t listen, then they need to do something other than be doctors. I wanted to follow my own rules.”

“I had planned to go into academic medicine. I was a Fellow in Maternal-Fetal Medicine. I had trained Residents. But I wanted to change the way hospitals cared for pregnant women. I went into private practice wanting to find out if my ideas had merit. I wanted to center medical care on what my patients really wanted and really needed.

“Time has passed and now having fathers present at the birth of their child, having fathers cut the umbilical cord, having comfortable rooms with beds for family members to sleep over, letting siblings come to see their new baby are all taken as a matter of course. To me they were part of the proper practice of medicine, but they were hard fought ideas when we first began to put them into practice. I am very grateful that I happened to be in the right place, at the right time, to help make the difference in how babies are delivered.”

Soon, Karen had privileges at St. Johns and Santa Monica/UCLA and served on and chaired the Bio-ethics Committees at both hospitals. “Almost every issue we faced came up against the question of what treatment could we give and what treatment should we give. We often choose to stave off the natural progression of death at great emotional, personal and physical cost to our patients and to their families. These are not decisions based on economics, nor should they be. These decisions are part of the ethical practice of medicine and providing the best care possible for the patient.”

Karen will now leave her practice in the able hands of her partners and move to New York with her life-partner, Anne. She hopes to be a hospice doctor in New York. “I see Hospice Care as the last frontier of medical ethics. To be by the side of the dying patient, to care about them and their families is a gift I, as a physician, can bring to this vulnerable group of patients.

What Say You: Trees of Santa Monica

Cities, like families, continue discussions over generations in ways that are unique to each generation and time. One major such discussion in Santa Monica today is about our City trees. Trees help create the iconic image of our city. Trees provide shade and beauty. Trees protect our environment.

We’re talking about them again, in a formal way, because the downtown Ficus trees, now more than 40 years old, were tagged for removal and replacement as part of a 2007 plan. The 2nd and 4th St. Ficus trees were planted in the 1960’s under the advocacy of Jacqueline Girion, Head of the City Beautification Committee, and Clo Hoover, a respected Mayor and a highly successful businesswoman.

Continuing the tradition of protecting our City trees, a group of Santa Monica residents got together and started TreeSavers, an ad hoc committee originally formed to oppose the demolition of the 2nd and 4th St. Ficus trees. In fact, Jerry Rubin, one of the co-founders of TreeSavers, chained himself to a Ficus to prevent it being taken down. That was part of a demonstration that mobilized public opinion.

Eventually TreeSavers petitioned the Council to form a City Tree Commission. This being Santa Monica, the Council took the challenge to heart and at the April 7, 2009 City Council meeting they voted that the first City Urban Forest Task Force be formed to provide oversight and public participation in decision making about Santa Monica’s Urban Forest.

The Staff recommended “that City Council establish an urban forest master plan task force to advise staff on the development of a long-range urban forest master plan, review specific urban forest issues related to the master plan, and serve in an advisory capacity to City Council.” Councilmember Bloom moved the staff report recommendation. There was a brief discussion about membership criteria, followed by a unanimous aye vote of the Council Members present. TreeSavers supports the Task Force idea. They see it as ‘a good start’ on the way to a formal Tree Commission.

The Task Force will formulate its goals. Optimally they will include: giving the public a voice; protecting and enhancing our existing urban forest; helping to craft a master plan that creates beautiful urban design; designing each street for environmental sustainability; and making sure that, while we’re on our way to a new urban forest master plan, we make good decisions today, decisions that reflect our values.

For the Task Force to do the job well it will need, among its members and on its staff, people who have an appreciation of trees, a knowledge of water and air quality and the role of trees in protecting and cleaning the environment, and a knowledge of a sustainable plant palette. If that weren’t enough, our City Urban Forest is a major contributor to the quality of urban design in the City. Oh, and trees provide shade and are beautiful.

Hometown Hero: Louise Jaffe

“Every parent is willing to throw themselves in front of a truck for their child. So what do we do to make every family able to translate their love for their child into action that allows and supports the potential of achievement for their child.”
Louise Jaffe, Chair of the Santa Monica College Board of Trustees.

The way Louise tells it, she was born in the middle of the 1950’s and in the middle of mainstream USA. She mostly grew up in Salisbury, Maryland, a rural community on the Eastern Shore. Her dad was an optometrist and her mom a homemaker, raising Louise and her brother, and helping out with the optometry office.

But mainstream USA was changing and Louise, a good student, instead of senior year in high school went to the local college. She wrote a paper that she thought was original and received her first ‘C’. She wrote her next paper in a traditional style and got an ‘A.’ She went long enough to learn that the idea of being in a classroom for four years and being graded on her work was not for her and transferred to Antioch College. Louise describes Antioch “as a whole new way to be in the world.” “Amazing” professors who didn’t try to “manage” people, just to “welcome” them.

She turned away from a human-centric course of study, wanting to focus on things outside herself. Her degree in Biology took her to the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography in Savannah, GA. Louise discovered she was ‘good enough at science but not good enough to have sparks of insight’ and she wanted that feeling about her work.

Not knowing what should come next, she accepted an opportunity from her uncle, the film director Herbert Ross, who was working on “The 7% Solution.” She describes herself as ‘lucky enough’ to work on films until her last film job, “Howard the Duck.” It was 1985 and she married her husband, Richard Casey, (called Casey) just 2 days after the film wrapped.

By 1986 they were living in Santa Monica and their daughter, Maggie, was born. “Everything changed in a moment. Casey and I were walking Maggie in a stroller and crossing Lincoln Blvd. Without thinking, I stepped out into the street to create a protective zone around the baby. From then on, I couldn’t look at any person without thinking ‘that’s someone’s baby.’”

Luck again intervened and Louise got the chance to work, part time, on the Simpson’s as script supervisor and she’s been working on the Simpson’s continually since 1986. She and Casey had a second daughter, Nora, who was born in 1989.

Louise turned her focus to their education. Louise credits Mary Hartzell, Director of First Presbyterian Nursery School and Julie DiChiro, the principal at Will Rogers, as her teachers. “Julia was a person who didn’t say no. She made each idea better. It was a big lesson to me.”

Louise followed her children from Will Rogers to John Adams and to SAMOHI. She was the PTA president at Will Rogers and at SAMOHI; a founding member of the Community of Excellent Public Schools; and a past PTA Council president. “It has all been a remarkable learning experience and I learned as much as I gave.”

Louise describes the teachers and the principal at Will Rogers as ‘inspired.’ Yet she could see that, in the same school environment, one group of children was doing much better than the other. “I began to realize that learning had to begin at birth and to be a responsibility of the family and the community.”

Right about that time she read the City Open Space Plan and learned about the concept of ‘City As Park.” Louise applied the same framework to education and developed the concept of Santa Monica as a Lifelong Learning City. http:www.smllc.org

“Education is essential. Everyone needs access. All children flourish.”

“My daughters are in college now. I will be at UCLA this coming fall studying for a doctorate in Educational Leadership. I work hard. I try to be a nice person. But I recognize that I’ve been lucky in my marriage, my children, my work, and my city. I’m thrilled and I’m grateful.”