SMCCA Members Endorse 2025 Board Slate and Name Change to “The Canyon Alliance”
Members of the Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association (SMCCA) voted this week to endorse the slate of 22 nominees for the organization’s 2025-2026 Board of Directors and to change the name of the 78-year-old organization to The Canyon Alliance. The vote among participating households was a unanimous 61-0 for the directors slate, with a 59-2 vote in favor of the name change. This year was the first time that an SMCCA election was conducted online.
Board members begin their terms immediately, with the ten returning directors to serve one-year terms and the twelve new directors to serve two-year terms. Sixteen members of the slate will serve as full directors, with six serving as alternates. At their first meeting, the directors will elect four officers from the board: president, vice-president, treasurer, and secretary. The full roster of directors can be seen here.
The new 2025-2026 Board of Directors of The Canyon Alliance
This year for the first time, SMCCA’s board-appointed Election Committee produced a slate of nominees with the explicit goal of achieving balanced representation from all five of the the Canyon’s neighborhoods: Upper and Lower Rustic Canyon, Upper and Lower Santa Monica Canyon, and Boca at the mouth of the Canyon. In recent years, through attrition and other factors, the board’s membership had become heavily over-representated in some neighborhoods and completely unrepresented in others. The Election Committee also sought to re-energize the organization by recruiting newer members, bringing with them fresh perspectives, energy, and ideas. More than half of the directors are not only new to the board but new to the organization as well.
The historic name change came in a year that marks a century of formal civic organization in the Canyon, from the earliest Santa Monica Canyon Improvement Association (1925), succeeded by the Santa Monica Canyon Chamber of Commerce (1938), and ultimately by the incorporation of the Santa Monica Canyon Civic Association in 1947. SMCCA has amassed a long and distinguished record of local and city-wide advocacy on behalf of the Canyon, including the transformation of the private Uplifters Ranch into a public park (Rustic Canyon Recreation Center). It has also fought repeated battles against harmful proposals such as a canyon freeway, off-shore drilling, and overscaled development. SMCCA has become a leading Canyon-wide steward for historic, cultural, and recreational spaces, and has long been the only tax-exempt charitable organization representing the interests of the Canyon as a whole and of the general public that benefits from Canyon assets.
The move to change SMCCA’s name was prompted by longstanding confusion about whether the Canyon was part of the city of Santa Monica or Los Angeles, a confusion reinforced by the Canyon’s Santa Monica name and zip code. The confusion bordered on life-threatening during the recent Palisades Fire, when some first responders and even residents were unclear which city’s fire, police and emergency personnel had jurisdiction. Finally, the use of Santa Monica Canyon in the name seemed to exclude nearly half of the Canyon residents who live in Rustic Canyon, long considered an inseparable part of the Canyon community.