Olympics: Still Winning

The community leaders who brought the 1984 Summer Olympics to Los Angeles face another challenge in deciding how to distribute the local share of profits from the hugely successful Games--about $90 million. They got off to a good start last week when they agreed to consider funding several agencies that help youngsters on the city’s Southside and Eastside.

The Olympic money will be parceled out starting next month by the Los Angeles Organizing Committee Amateur Athletic Foundation, the successor to the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee. Among the first to submit requests for financial assistance were leaders of the United Neighborhoods Organization of East Los Angeles and the South-Central Organizing Committee. The two organizations are among the largest and most influential civic groups in the largely black and Latino neighborhoods near downtown Los Angeles. They submitted a list of 136 youth agencies to the foundation in the hope that about $6.6 million of the Olympic profits would be committed to help young people in poor inner-city neighborhoods.

The initial reaction of foundation leaders was surprise and chagrin. They pointed out that with the grants process barely under way, it was impossible to commit so much money to so many programs at one stroke. Noting that a few programs on the UNO/SCOC list do not promote youth sports, the purpose for which Olympic profits were earmarked, the foundation staff said that more time was needed to study the various funding requests.

The action taken at last week’s grants committee meeting was a good compromise. Eight agencies from the UNO/SCOC list were recommended for funding, along with several proposals submitted by other agencies, at the foundation’s quarterly meeting next Dec. 9. Other youth-sports programs on the UNO/SCOC list, approximately 90 of them, will be considered at future meetings, after foundation staff members have had a chance to study them. Leaders of the UNO and SCOC say that they are satisfied with this beginning because they have established lines of communication with Olympic foundation leaders.

Through the years of work preceding the 1984 Olympics, spokesmen for the organizing committee often promised that any profits made by the Games would be spent locally, with substantial amounts going to youngsters and to areas of the city that had not been fully served in the past. There was no reason to doubt the sincerity of that commitment, and that is why UNO and SCOC leaders were so quick to submit their requests for money. By now accepting suggestions from community leaders who are closest to the problems that many poor youngsters in this city face, Olympic leaders are using the same good sense that they showed in planning the Games.