One year after Santa Monica adopted its Realignment Plan to close a projected $29.6 million deficit and restore order Downtown, the City Council will hear staff’s accounting of the results tonight. Crime is down, vacancy is down, and new revenue is running ahead of target. Private reinvestment, which staff calls the point of the whole exercise, has not arrived at the needed scale.
The Council meets at 5:30 p.m. Staff is asking it to approve nine actions alongside the report. They include a rent registry vendor contract, new fees, Downtown parking and valet pilots, a license agreement letting Zoox stage robotaxis in city garages, a $3 million Downtown Catalyst Incentive Program, and budget changes that need five votes.
What the scorecard shows
Of the Plan’s 179 activities, staff’s tracker lists 96 as complete and 79 in progress as of Sept. 30. The report says the Police Department reached full sworn staffing for the first time in more than 20 years. Retail vacancy has fallen from about 16 percent to about 11.8 percent, and office vacancy from about 35 percent to about 21 percent. The 2026 Point-in-Time Count showed unsheltered homelessness down 18.1 percent.
The Plan was adopted Oct. 28, 2025, under then-Mayor Lana Negrete. She points to a RAND Corporation study, released Oct. 1, as the strongest evidence of progress. RAND, which funded the study itself, compared Santa Monica with Beverly Hills, Culver City and West Hollywood.
“You no longer have to take City Hall’s word for any of this,” Negrete wrote in her newsletter, adding that the work is “not even close” to over.
“A year ago, Santa Monica had a choice: keep managing decline, or do the hard work of turning this city around. We chose to fix it. Serious crime is down, unsheltered homelessness is down 18 percent, our police department is fully staffed for the first time in two decades, and we closed the year $7.3 million more in revenue than projected,” wrote Mayor Caroline Torosis in a statement to Next.
“Now the work shifts from stabilizing the city to revitalizing it. That means filling empty storefronts, getting plan checks done on time so housing gets built, making streets safe to walk and bike, and making sure renters’ rights are enforced. Santa Monica’s renaissance has to include everyone who lives and works here.”
The money
Staff reports about $28.8 million a year in new recurring revenue and savings, above the $24 million target. The City ended fiscal year 2025-26 using $26.7 million in one-time reserves, compared with $34 million budgeted. Of that, $22.5 million was capital spending. The operating gap was $4.3 million. Staff says the General Fund remains on track to balance by July 1, 2027, without relying on reserves.
Some lines missed budget. Parking revenue came in 13.1 percent under, and planning and building revenue was 7 percent under. Plan check and permit submittals fell about 30 percent, and roughly 6,000 entitled housing units remain paused.
A $12 million annual payment to the school district is scheduled to end June 30, 2027, and staff’s forecast already assumes that. Measure ES, a school parcel tax on the Nov. 3 ballot, could change that. If it fails and the Council keeps paying anyway, staff says it would need to find equivalent cuts elsewhere in the General Fund.
Public safety
From January through September, violent crime and burglaries fell 11.2 percent compared with the same period last year, from 846 to 751. Part I crime fell 12.5 percent in 2025. Over the same stretch, total arrests rose 62 percent and traffic citations rose about 120 percent. Arrests involving unhoused people rose about 71 percent, to 3,025. The City Attorney’s office now files about 91 percent of legally fileable cases, up from roughly 65 to 70 percent.
City Manager Oliver Chi told employees in his weekly update that the Plan’s results “were produced by you and our team.”
