Board of Education member Oscar de la Torre is facing a loss of funding for a Santa Monica youth center he runs, less than a month after half of its board members resigned over differences with de la Torre.
Santa Monica City Staff is recommending City Council cut off funding to the Pico Youth & Family Center (PYFC) after board members’ recent departures as well as an unflattering report by an outside consultant raised red flags.
City staff felt the PYFC was falling apart, said Julie Rusk, assistant director of the Community & Cultural Services Department.
“That was a major signal that the organizational structure had collapsed,” Rusk said. “We fund organizations, so we look for organizational stability and strength.”
De la Torre, the center’s executive director and co-founder who took the brunt of the ex-board members’ criticism in their letters of resignation, blames the chaos on internal squabbles and a poorly handled attempt to transition him out of his leadership role.
Ignored in the equation is the work the center has done to address at-risk youth and gang violence, he said.
“The sum of our good is 100 times better than the sum of our faults,” de la Torre said.
The recommendation comes as the youth center reaches the end of a six-month “Last Chance Agreement” the City Council approved in May 2012.
Officials in the Human Services Grant Program, which put $7.4 million into local nonprofits in 2011-12, raised concerns about PYFC’s organization and leadership, pointing to duplicate paychecks, excess payments into retirement accounts and an over-reliance on city funds rather than the center’s own fundraising.
The Social and Environmental Entrepreneurs organization, SEE, was brought on to act as a receiver for city funds directed to PYFC and to provide organizational support.
There was a sense of optimism through early October, bolstered by a $1.6 million gift from the estate of philanthropist Peggy Bergmann, the biggest in PYFC’s history, according to its leadership.
The board also felt it had an agreement with de la Torre to take a consultant position and give up the executive director spot, said Amanda Seward, who served as board chair for three years until she resigned in December.
Board members had hoped de la Torre would use the consultant position to facilitate a community process to determine the future of PYFC and at the same time go out for grants and other forms of funding, Seward said.
It would have solved what Seward saw as a chief problem in the organization, that de la Torre as both co-founder and executive director misconstrued his role in the nonprofit and his relationship with his board of directors.
“He thinks he’s the board. He didn’t understand we are his bosses, and we didn’t understand that. We gave him chance after chance and the facts are it isn’t being run right,” Seward said Thursday.
Although de la Torre confirmed that he wanted to leave the executive director position, he said he had no desire to take the consultant job, which cut him out of the organization’s leadership and disagreed with what he perceived to be changes to the organization’s mission.
That offer fell apart at a closed meeting on Nov. 20 when de la Torre and a group of supporters protested outside. Eventually, a Change.org petition directed to Seward surfaced, ostensibly to support de la Torre as executive director and ensure that the PYFC mission statement included advocacy, peace, unity and justice.
Within three weeks of that meeting, the six board members resigned, leaving the organization with no board officers.
“I do believe that peace, unity and social justice applies to everyone, and I will not participate or support any person or organization which does not actively demonstrate this belief,” wrote Jan Book, former PYFC board treasurer in her letter of resignation.
In December, it came to light that the center had been closed for two days in late November, although de la Torre had been paid a full day’s work.
De la Torre has also served on the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District Board of Education since 2002. He won reelection in 2006 and 2010 and is up for reelection in 2014.
The City Council was set to vote on Tuesday as The Malibu Times went to press whether to cut the more than $300,000 it gives to PYFC each year. Should it do so, there are concerns the center will not have the cash to operate its space at 715 Pico Blvd.
If that turns out to be the case, Rusk said, officials are prepared to step in to assume the lease and keep the doors of the center open to the youth who use it.
A previous version of this story originally ran in the Santa Monica Daily Press. The Santa Monica City Council met as The Malibu Times went to press. Check malibutimes.com for a story on the meeting’s outcome.