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c. Santa Monica Sustainable City Program - Santa Monica, California Santa Monica City appointed an environmental task force made up of seven experts in different environmental fields to make recommendations to the City Council on ways to deal effectively with environmental issues. The task force recommended creating a sustainability program to help the different environmental actions in the city become more focused. The city staff drafted a Sustainable City Program, which recommended specific indicators for assessing Santa Monica's sustainability. Next the city surveyed local citizens about which concerns citizens wanted the indicators to reflect. Following a facilitated public meeting, the city produced a second draft of its indicator document. After two more meetings and two more drafts, a final draft was brought to the city council for approval. In addition to their indicators, the city council adopted and approved a list of policy targets. Some were based on state law, like switching 75% of city vehicles to low emission vehicles by the year 2000, and some were devised specifically for the city. According to Dean Kubani of the Environmental Programs Division, the task force and city staff developed most of the indicators, which were ìrubber stampedî by the public. He indicated that the public did come up with some indicators that were incorporated into the document, but the city rejected many of these suggestions because they were not feasible to measure. This made the indicator project a more "top-down" process than the city would have liked. 6 While more "top-down" than other projects, this is an effective indicator project because the city government is serious about using its indicators to influence its policies, planning, and general maintenance programs. The city of Santa Monica is translating the indicators into policies to be implemented by all city departments and offices. Theyíve developed a "Sustainability Checklist" for purchasing decisions, a pilot alternative cleaning product program, and community education and promotional materials. The city has also created interdepartmental working groups; these meet regularly to integrate projects to achieve the program's objectives. Lastly, the city plans to write an annual "State of the City" document to evaluate the programís effectiveness, set new targets, and encourage community participation. While Santa Monica's program is off to an excellent start, it is worth emphasizing that the long term health of indicator and sustainability projects depends upon an effective mix of "top-down" and "bottom-up" approaches. If denied active involvement, citizens may become apathetic. If projects lack government involvement, however, they will have less success in influencing government policies.