Less than 24 hours after both parties indicated accord was beckoning, the supposedly sketched-out arrangement between entrepreneur Gary Mandell and City Hall to keep the Summer Music Festival alive looked this morning like a plate of cold, stale scrambled eggs.
After a dog walked through it.
Judging by the meandering tones of the four somber surviving members of the City Council at last night’s meeting and Mr. Mandell’s glum responses, the almost-cooked deal has devolved into tatters.
Two weeks ago the seemingly flailing Council postponed a semi-binding decision until last night. In the absence of a take-charge voice, once again last night, though, they further delayed making a call for two more weeks. At least.
In the meantime, private talks are scheduled to resume between Mr. Mandell and — he thinks — City Manager John Nachbar. But city staffers are likely to be at the table.
How is this different from what has transpired the last two weeks off-stage? Perhaps not at all.
Those weren’t verbal love notes being exchanged last nght between the laconic Mr. Mandell and the You-Go- First/No-You-Go-First City Council, which, suddenly, has found decisiveness beyond its ken.
Members of the audience were moving their lips in synch with the players because this identical movie is looped and replayed every winter at this time.
What Is in a Name?
There even was repartee between Councilman Jeff Cooper and Mr. Mandell over the renaming of the presumed two- or four-week reupholstered series in the City Hall Courtyard.
Mr. Mandell has been referring to it as the “Boulevard Music Festival,” after his Sepulveda Boulevard business.
Mr. Cooper wanted “Culver City” included in the name.
Mr. Mandell’s attitude was that if he was in charge, he would do the naming.
But this smallish corner of debate, like the rest of the scrambled eggs, is languishing in limbo.
The two sides participated in one more remarkably stubborn impasse:
The four Councilman demanded to know how many free concerts Mr. Mandell could stage in the Courtyard of City Hall before they would allot monies (which they have not done).
Countering, the laconic Mr. Mandell exasperatedly explained several times that there are so many unsettled backstage expenses — including setting up, tearing down, sound system — that a definitive answer is unknowable until it is determined whether the previously paid jobs will be performed by volunteers.
When Council members pressed him for hard information on sponsorship money, Mr. Mandell said sponsors would not commit until the layout of the concert schedule was known.
Going around in ever tightening circles almost became dizzying.
The 17-year-old Summer Music Festival is breathing, but with a pronounced, heaving wheeze.
With the Festival’s funding source, the dying Redevelopment Agency, going out of business a week from tomorrow, the issue is:
Who is going to cover the bill for the Summer Music Festival, which used to cost $75,000 but evidently could be staged for as little as $10,000, underpinned by an army of muscular volunteers — if vols can be recruited.
Meanwhile, two members of the chesty Cultural Affairs Commission, never a cheerleader for Mr. Mandell, took an uninvited whack at inserting themselves into the droning-on debate. Offended by being ignored, the ladies questioned the still unfinalized retention of Mr. Mandell, as is their annual habit.
