On May 19, the Coronado City Council will continue what has become an annual ritual: the doling out of over $1 million in community grants. Unfortunately, this author has been unable to obtain the applications for this year’s grants that would detail which community groups have requested funds from the City. Initially, I was advised that the applications would be included in the staff report to the council that would not be available until May 14, five days before the City Council meeting. After making an additional inquiry about the the availability of the applications, I was informed that, “After further consideration, we are going to consider your request a public records request. As such, we will respond within the required time period of 10 days.” I received this response on May 4. While these response may be perfectly justified in the opinion of the city staff and consistent with the letter of the law, they are not in keeping with the desires of the City Council to make sure that the city’s residents and taxpayers are given the opportunity to become fully knowledgeable about proposed actions by the Council. This should be particularly the case when expenditures of more than $ 1million are involved.
In the last four fiscal years, the City has approved almost $4.7 million in grants to essentially the same local organizations. According to the City of Coronado Budget Snapshot: Fiscal Year 2014-2015, in the current fiscal year, the $1,288,000 in grants constitutes over five percent of the city’s general fund expenditures of $42,753,000. Since fiscal year 2011-2012, the annual amount provided for community grants has increased by almost 25 percent from $1,033,975 to $1,287,855.
The recipient of the largest grants has been the Coronado Historical Association/Visitor Center, which has received $381,350 in each of the last three years, for a total of $1,144,050. The Coronado Healthy Children’s Initiative has received $330,590 in each of the last two years. Other recipients of large grants include the Chamber of Commerce, which received $336,600 in the last three years; Coronado MainStreet, who pocketed $311,295 in the same three years; Coronado SAFE, taking home $390,000 in three years; and the Lamb’s Players Theatre, who benefited from $284,955 in the last three years.
Arguments frequently made in support of these grants include that the City can afford them and the City receives benefits commensurate with the value of the grants. Both of these arguments can be challenged. The City does not have limitless resources. Funding the grants comes at the expense of expenditures for other services, goods and projects. There are any number of projects that may be more worthwhile expenditures than some of the grants, including the planting of additional trees, replacing deteriorated sidewalks, and increasing the funding for scholarships for the children of residents to participate in programs at the Recreation Center. These are only examples. Other residents could easily expand this list of potentially worthy expenditures that may warrant funding in place of some of the community grants.
Another point is that if the city is wealthy enough to afford these grants, its citizens are as well. Coronado’s residents are among the wealthiest in San Diego. Census data indicates that the median household income in Coronado is in excess of $90,000 per year, which is almost 50 percent higher than the median income in the City of San Diego. Perhaps the residents of Coronado should vote with their personal pocketbooks.For example, if locally-owned businesses find that the activities of the Chamber of Commerce represent a good investment for the business community, then they should be prepared to support it financially.
Whether the City receives benefits commensurate with the amounts of the grants should be assessed by the City’s taxpayers in addition the City Council. This argues for the applications to be published well in advance of the Council’s action on the requests. City staff has made use of surveys to gather citizen input on pending actions, most recently the plan to stripe the streets in conjunction with their planned resealing. In my mind there is no comparison between the expenditure of a few thousand dollars to stripe some of the city’s streets to enhance the safety of cyclists and the granting of tens of thousands of dollars in grants to a handful of organizations.
The grant application itself warrants review and potential enhancements. Applications from last year that I have reviewed have asked the applicants to provide measurements to evaluate performance including input and output measurements, numbers served, and overall results. The applications varied greatly in in the adequacy of their responses to this requirement. In addition the application asked applicants to describe in detail how the requested funds would be used to service the community. Again, the applications varied greatly in the completeness of their responses. Finally, the application requires a detailed explanation of how previous grant funding was used. Other useful information would include a description of an applicant’s efforts to fund its operations from sources other than the city and the salaries of its staff.
To get a sense of how Coronado’s community grant expenditures compare to those of other Southern California communities, I am in the process of gathering information on the budgets and practices of Del Mar, Chula Vista, El Cajon, Carlsbad and Encinitas. This information will be shared once with eCoronado.com readers once it is received, hopefully in advance the City Council meeting on May 19. However, I do have feedback from Imperial Beach. Although Imperial Beach has a larger population than Coronado, its budget is less than half of Coronado’s. The only community grants it provides are not funded by the city but rather by the refuse collection firm EDCO. Every other year EDCO provides Imperial Beach with $10,000, which it uses to make grants.
This article has certainly not done justice to the topic, and it will be followed by additional articles on the specific grants and how the funds have been used. Nevertheless, it will hopefully increase interest in the topic, encourage residents to review the staff report and applications, attend the City Council meeting on May 19, and inspire the City Council to enact reforms that increase the opportunity for residents to participate in the process.
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John Tato
Staff Writer
