First of two parts.
Re: “The Night the City Council Gaffe’d”
Speaking this morning from a ranch in Nebraska where she is holidaying with her husband and sons, Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells said she does not want to engage former City Councilman Steve Rose in a word war even though she is positive he is wrong in his reasoning and his conclusion about Culver City’s affordable housing program.
Ultimately, she aimed an arrow of blame in Mr. Rose’s direction.
“For this City Council, deciding about affordable housing is a matter of priorities,” she said. “Our priority is to make sure people in need are not thrown out on the street.”
Ms. Sahli-Wells’s message to Mr. Rose, president/CEO of the Chamber of Commerce, is:
If only previous City Councils – including the eight on which Mr. Rose sat – had felt the same way the present Council does.
City Hall is in its current strapped predicament, Ms. Sahli-Wells said, “because past Councils refused to build affordable housing when they had millions of dollars to do so.”
Planting herself emphatically on what she believes is the morally correct side, the mayor added:
“We are going to fund affordable housing through the General Fund for people in need, for a program that works.”
The Background
In this morning’s first edition, Mr. Rose severely scolded the City Council that the mayor leads for blowing one-time revenues on affordable housing programs he judged to be failures.
Stung, Ms. Sahli-Wells, perhaps Culver City’s most compassionate, outspoken advocate for affordable housing, distinguished the principles of the present Council from earlier editions, say those on which Mr. Rose served.
“This is a question of priorities for us,” the mayor said, “and we fit our priorities into our budget.”
(To be continued)
It’s nice to “fit our priorities into our budget.” But, in this case, our budget didn’t fit the priority.
Prior to these years of massive unaffordable assistance for “needy” people, we had to live in communities that we could afford. We never dreamed of asking for assistance from the government. Sometimes you have to make plans for getting from one place to another. It takes personal responsibility and goal setting to get where you want to go in your life. I’d like to live in Belair or Brentwood, but I can’t afford that.
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