Police Union Blows Off Heat from Rival Union

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

In an apparent rebuff of a sometimes-rival union, the Culver City Police Officers Assn. voted overwhelmingly this afternoon — 76 to 2 — to approve a new four-year contract with the city. “It passed,” union president Jim Raetz called out in a loud and jubilant voice, an outcome that he previously had cast as gravely uncertain. Harmony in the Police Station, however, proved to be elusive today. Insiders told thefrontpageonline.com that members of the much smaller, 20-member police management union had campaigned heavily against ratification by their lower-ranking fellow officers. “They would tell our guys that the city had a hidden agenda,” a young officer said. “They said the agreement was really a big takeaway, and we weren’t smart enough to see it. They told our people that if we rejected the deal, we could go to court and win. They said we gave up too early (at the bargaining table). They said we quit. That, as you can see, did not go down well. They also planted the idea that a hidden, unannounced pay cut was going to be made sometime in the future. ” There was one seeming motivation for the management union, which includes the highest ranking officers, to fight against the agreement. The new contract that the management union presently is negotiating with City Hall is modeled, in part, on the contract accepted by the POA, sources said. “They really tried to persuade our guys not to vote yes,” an officer told this newspaper. “I mean they made a mad dash to destroy this contract. It really was a hardline attempt to undermine what most of us believe was satisfactory, the best deal we could get.” A third officer said he felt like smiling, even laughing for the first time in days. “Seventy-six to two,” he almost giggled. “Sounds to me as if those (management) guys were not very persuasive.”

Drat, Benny Is Dead, Skelton Is Dead, and So Are Abbott and Costello

Ari L. NoonanSports

They were going to make a motion picture about the turbulent life and times of the chronically unhappy boys and girls on the School Board. Then the director remembered the obvious choices for the leading men, Mr. Abbott and Mr. Costello, both were dead. Elmer Fudd, drawing unemployment for the last 6 months, rejected a co-starring role even as his stomach was growling. If the film is shot, it will be called “Enemies: A Love Story,” with apologies to Isaac Bashevis Singer. If Rodney King knew Saundra Davis, Stew Bubar, Dr. Dana Russell, Mara Wolkowitz and Dr. Jessica Beagles-Roos, he would not even have bothered to inquire, “Can’t we all get along?” Significantly, School District insiders say the necessary business of the District does get accomplished even though the boys and girls spend many Tuesday nights holding up large mirrors to their own pretty faces. Idly, they wonder why others don’t love them as much as they adore themselves. Even while meetings are in progress, they are busily polishing their own lines for the anticipated production of the “Puerility Follies.” At last night’s meeting, somebody in the audience said the School Board members have been so slow to mature they won’t ever be eligible for membership at the Senior Center. Instead, they will be forced to enroll at the Sophomoric Center. The in-fighting on the School Board the last 5 years has been the identical scene repeated a few hundred times. Nearly every meeting, the critical fire is aimed at Ms. Davis. Periodically in these obviously incurable quibbles, a suggestion of racism makes an appearance. Ms. Davis’s Board critics, notably Mr. Bubar and Dr. Russell, say she is abrasive. She has said, if not in so many words, they are equally offputting. The 5 of them are like an old married couple who haven’t been able to stand each other for 40 years. The act, people in the community tell me, is wearing thin. “They should be discussing their personal tensions out in the parking lot, not wasting our time,” one woman said this morning.

Never a Foggy Day in This London’s Town

Ari L. NoonanA&E

Gallery Opening: S.B. London, 3740 Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake. Telephone for appointments: 323.668.0734. Reception on Saturday, 6 p.m. to 10 p.m.

From the glassed-in northeast corner of her sparkling new second-story gallery overlooking Hollywood, S.B. London, formerly of Culver City, can survey much of the civilized world that she has been conquering one career at a time. Coming from a theatrical background, she turned to industrial design, found it insufficiently stimulating, teamed with her architect husband in a design-and-build enterprise, and now is on to her premier professional love, art and craftsmanship. She has done ceramics, dance and oil painting. You probably would need to visit with Ms. London for 30 minutes to enumerate the eclectic span of interests she has doggedly pursued in her still young years. The relentless innermost churnings of her never-idle mind must feel like rush hour on the 405 all of her waking hours. Cerebral traffic constantly criss-crosses. Peace, however, is about to break out. The artistry, the power, and the simplicity of nature — first name, Mother — have brought her home, she says. Philosophically, Ms. London believes that studying the natural world allows one to understand universal truths with a pristine clarity unavailable elsewhere. On Saturday evening at 6, this most unusual young woman with a master’s degree in industrial design, will unveil her first exhibit, which is as distinctive as the artist herself. A sally into this gallery should be equally appealing to intellectuals and to aesthetes because the artist dipped her brush into her mind and her heart.

The Sentinel Takes a Strange Story Down a Confusing Path

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

The Los Angeles Sentinel, the professionally shaky weekly publication for the black community, may merit a salute this morning. Or it may not. Often criticized by this newspaper for shoddy reporting and lousy news judgment, the editors of the Sentinel made a possibly commendable decision to print an unusual story on page 1 of the current edition. In a climate of sexual hysteria, the Sentinel’s judgment to print the story of a partial cleanup of sexual misconduct charges is rare among American newspapers. Lurid accusations of sexual misconduct and the accompanying ruination of the accused parties is routine fodder for headline news. Unfortunately, important newspapers lose their courage when the accused men are exonerated or have the charges greatly reduced. On the self-serving grounds such stories would be self-embarrassing, newspapers commonly hide or ignore findings of innocence. What happened in the case at hand is slightly messier, thanks to the Sentinel. When the Rev. Sylvester Laudermill of the Ward AME Church, 1177 W. 25th St., was accused of “sexual misconduct” earlier this year, he was assessed two penalties. He was removed from the church and he had his license to preach suspended.

Silbiger Has a Peculiar Notion of Who Is Upstaging Whom on the City Council

Ari L. NoonanSports

Last April, a sense of fair play drove me to write the only public defense ever made of Mayor Gary Silbiger by a non-ally during his four-plus years on the City Council. Like some of the women I have married, he can be frustrating. But the steady hammering and the criticism of Mr. Silbiger issued almost every Monday night by exasperated Council colleagues had begun to feel to me like piling on. Eye-rolling by Council members has become as embedded a part of the weekly Council agenda as the Pledge of Allegiance. I expect eye-rolling to be listed as item A-1 for next Monday. Playwrights who watch the City Council meetings on channel 35 have rich material offered to them from the dais, at no extra charge, each week. Everyone has his role in the drill memorized. As if on cue, Mr. Silbiger comments on an arcanity buried in the bowels of what is most commonly a drop-dead item that all four of his colleagues are clear on. The issue was so clean that when the other City Council members opened their information packet four days before the meeting, they knew how they were going to vote. Not the Mayor. He will find the single particle of unswept dust in his grandmother’s attic full of antiques. Increasingly, he will ask a rudimentary question to which all of his colleagues knew the answer days or weeks or months ago. That would be frustrating enough.

Bass Likely to Dodge Dodge — Dodge Says, ‘I Am Fighting the Good Cause’

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED


Second of Two Parts

[Editor’s Note: Part 1, Sept. 13, “Bass’s Opponent Beats the Heat by Thinking Ahead.” Jeffers Dodge, a Republican first-time candidate for the state Assembly, running against the powerful incumbent, Assemblyperson Karen Bass (D-Culver City), explained in Part 1 the odds in the November election are so overwhelmingly against a GOP contender that he already is thinking ahead to his second campaign.]

A Partial Victory Feels Good to Relieved Members of a City Union

Ari L. NoonanSports

Just to show how much the negotiating climate has changed for labor unions, the rank and file of the Culver City Employees Assn. recently voted overwhelmingly to approve a contract with a clause that amounts to a split decision with City Hall. Buoyed by the prospects of a 4 percent annual raise through 2011,the life of the contract, members voted 229 to 48 to approve a new 5-year agreement. This cheery news obviously outweighed a split call on an issue the union had identified as the most crucial component of all. Early in the summer, City Hall told members of the Employees Assn., one of the lower-paying unions, that because of the city’s unsteady financial predicament, all members, active and retired, would need to pony up 5 percent of their own healthcare benefits. The Employees Assn. answered in an unusual, unprecedented manner. Dsays later, wearing black tee-shirts that marked them as union members, more than 100 persons silently, respectfully, marched into Council Chambers before a City Council meeting to underscore their protest. When called upon, union leaders strolled to a podium, gently, almost prosaically, made carefully measured statements and returned to their seats. The Employees Assn. argued that it was unfair to saddle retirees of a modest-paying union with an additional fiscal obligation when the largest portion of them were just getting by. It is not knowable whether the union’s noiseless, unobtrusive demonstration was pivotal in gaining a partial victory. In the compromise settlement, City Hall withdrew part of its demand. City negotiator Jack Hoffman agreed to shield all present retirees from the 5 percent pay obligation. Everyone else, however, will be liable — present active members, employees hired as of Jan. 1 or later, and all who retire from now on.

Malsin Doesn’t Act Like a Freshman

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

Proving once again this week that independence is going to be his trademark and shyness is a foreign concept, City Councilman Scott Malsin boldly filed the kind of neon notice not normally associated with first-year members. Stepping into a breach that was widening between City Hall and its designated land developer for a light rail station, Mr. Malsin seized the initiative. To hear him tell it, the initiative was just sitting there, waiting, hoping, to be seized. Unstintingly, he has unveiled what will be his style for the next 4 years — he sees an opening, he dashes through it. For someone who has been in office less than 6 months, this is the equivalent of a newborn walking home from the hospital. On his own, Mr. Malsin designed and nailed a snazzy deal with the developer Urban Partners. He says the chutzpah-driven arrangement will eliminate the need for an unpopular temporary station and virtually assure the elevated station on Exposition Boulevard will be the only one built. Around City Hall, the Amen Chorus is not yet ready to bow down in a florid show of deathless fealty to their new colleague. “Maybe it will work, maybe it won’t,” is the consensus of a modest sampling.

At P. Parenthood, They Can’t Tell the Difference Between ‘Girl’ and ‘Woman’

Ari L. NoonanSports

About 35 years ago, abortion replaced religion as the principal creed for all fierce feminists and their liberal male or female lovers. Since the early 1970s, at each two-year interval that coincides with an election cycle, the girl and boy apostles of abortion have run out into the streets screaming. Having achieved the unenviable pinnacle of un-embarrassibility, the apostles of abortion cry that evil Americans are conspiring to kill their God-given right to abort. The acidity of the protest rhetoric is ratcheted so high in each election season that you are certain it can’t get worse. Proving the creativity of man is bottomless, it does. On next month’s ballot, the eminently sensible Prop. 85 forbids an underage girl from having an abortion until 48 hours after her parents have been notified. The wonderful, morality-free minds over at politically pluperfect Planned Parenthood have take their opposition to Prop. 85 through the basement floor. Surely no one will ever improve on this crooked path of “reasoning” by the balmiest man-hating mamas this side of a mental hospital. “Prop. 85 discriminates against women,” P. Parenthood says in one of its advertisements. “If passed, 85 would put into the California Constitution the only law which regulates the actions of one gender. It is discriminatory. No one would dare pass a law that would restrict the health care of men — or suggest benefit packages based on gender. Labor has fought long and hard to guarantee gender equity in pay and benefits. This law says nothing about boys reporting to their parents. Labor must resist any attempt to discriminate, ever, on the basis of gender.” Please consider this 86-word message closely. Even, dear reader, if you are militantly opposed to Prop. 85, I trust you are offended by P. Parenthood’s choice of certain politically correct terms, by the absence of sober reasoning and by the transparency of their ultimate message, which we shall discuss below.

Light Rail Obituary for the Westly Station? Malsin Thinks So

Ari L. NoonanOP-ED

Condensed into its most cryptic form, this is the monumental breakthrough that City Councilman Scott Malsin believes he achieved at last Monday’s meeting: The ragingly unpopular “temporary” light rail station planned for east Culver City is dead. Long live the permanent elevated light rail station on Exposition Boulevard. Much as he would like to, Mr. Malsin won’t say flatly the controversial ground-level Westly station is dead. He almost but can’t quite guarantee that the permanent aerial station is the only terminal that will be built. Just as with the human gestation period, Mr. Malsin will have to wait 9 months to find out whether he is going to deliver a baby or a bomb. He has been roaring with excitement all week over the private deal he struck with the city’s chosen developer. He is convinced the agreement that was endorsed last Monday by his Council colleagues destroys the main doubts and clears up the exasperating complexities that have plagued Culver City’s portion of the promised light rail project. Employing the freshness and the confidence of a first-year City Councilman, Mr. Malsin met for 60 minutes at 8 o’clock on one recent Saturday morning with a key executive from the land developer Urban Partners. The subject was their expired contract that had fizzled and ended on an unsatisfactory, disinterested note for both parties. The contract was up for renewal at last Monday’s City Council meeting. For almost a year and a half, a potential renewal had laid around collecting dust. There was so little activity during the original contract, the Councilman said, that City Hall had scant incentive to sign up again with Urban Partners. City Hall and U. Partners drifted apart the way some long married couples do when they grow bored with each other.