Even though springtime is well past, advisory committees are starting to pop up in Council Chambers the way lemon-colored daisies do when April weather grows increasingly favorable.
As Tom Camarella’s fracking symposium was fading over the horizon at last evening’s City Council meeting, freshman Meghan Sahli-Wells spoke up.
With fracking being portrayed as an elusively complex concept, Ms. Sahli-Wells urged her colleagues to agendize consideration of an ad hoc advisory committee on fracking “to lighten the staff’s load and make it more manageable.”
They agreed, without specifying a date.
“Since we are in the process of drafting the oil drilling ordinance,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said, “I am sure such a committee would be a good source of information. There is so much research to do, so much information on fracking that needs to be gathered. While some technology is old, a lot of it is new.
They Won’t Grow Bored
“So many reports are coming in from different places in the world. It will take awhile to sift through it, what pertains to Culver City, what doesn’t.
“Basically, there are a lot of moving pieces. With the budget cuts, we can’t have staff working on this 24-7. We also can’t buy our way out of it by hiring consultants left and right, even though for certain subjects, consultants will be very important.
“My reason for encouraging this advisory committee is twofold,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said. “One, it is a way to get residents involved, to have meaningful, longterm resident input by those who really have taken an interest in this subject.
“Secondly, such a committee would help us with information-gathering. We have that many more eyes. The committee would be reading articles, doing research, kind of doing work that we cannot afford as thoroughly as I personally would like.”
Citizen committees could be a trend in the near term, Ms. Sahli-Wells said. “We have amazing residents. They are highly experienced, highly educated, experts in their fields. And they happen to live in Culver City. If they are willing to help, it would be a shame not to use them.
“Take the people from the Foundation in Cultural Affairs. They are so impressive. We have people from the dance world, from visual arts, from music. They are associated with some of the best institutions in Los Angeles, which means the world, because we are a world-class city. When you have these kinds of people available and they want to work for the betterment of our community, it would be shortsighted not to grab the opportunity and embrace it. This is an important tool in our toolbox.”
The Downside
Of last night’s marqueé event, whether to open Chambers to an Aug. 4 symposium on fracking, Ms. Sahli-Wells sighed, conveying a view without necessity of articulation.
“I would have liked for the symposium to have happened,” she said. “It is a disappointment, but I saw that I was outnumbered 3 to 1. I was glad, though, as kind of a consolation prize, we could seriously talk about the committee.
“You know – you lose one and hopefully you win another.”
