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In less than one shaky hour last night, the newly seated City Council turned into the Jeremiah Wright and Michelle Obama of City Councils.
A train-wreck. A nightmare. Embarrassing.
Pity Scott Malsin. The very talented newly elected Mayor of Culver City figures to lose a lot of sleep in the next year trying to keep these directionless varmints vaguely in line.
They are more disorganized than an acting troupe in the act of disbanding.
Not one serious person in Culver City who values Mr. Malsin’s health or frame of mind envies him his present daunting task.
With only one reliable adult ally, Mr. Malsin’s side is likely to be outnumbered in early crucial situations. The Good Guys are in trouble.
We Hardly Knew Ye
Where are the term-limited Carol Gross, Steve Rose and Alan Corlin now that we need, and belatedly appreciate, your grip on reality?
You left too soon, by at least 2 years.
Didn’t anybody read a rulebook before last night?
Does anyone own a rulebook?
Does anyone believe in rules?
Or is the (so far) badly reconstituted City Council merely five aimless guys named Murgatroyd who may happen to accidentally congregate on a Culver City street corner at 7 o’clock on Monday nights for a couple of brewskis and chips?
There Goes Harry
Founding Dad Harry Culver did not turn over in his grave last night. He stood up and walked away, to Simi Valley, to Ventura, even to Portland if necessary, to escape the odor of this City Council.
Not that the sinning was limited to newcomers.
If holdover Councilman Gary Silbiger keeps interjecting instant miniature filibusters on all the subjects that have been frustrating him for 6 years — now that his tormentors are gone — we will have to start covering City Council meetings in shifts.
This gang can be the first City Council to suffocate of inanities. We will now take a time-out while several look up the definition.
The End of Independence?
Could this City Council be so slow to develop that Culver City will have to be decertified by the state and forced to agree to a merger with the city of Los Angeles?
The encouraging news is that some of them may get lost on their way to City Hall next Monday. This would buy us time, granting us a badly needed respite from their green — and I don’t mean environmental green — rhetoric.
If the next budget gets passed, it probably will be by their wives, who showed somebody in the family possesses astuteness by wisely fleeing Council Chambers before the Bowery Boys began the most puerile round of bickering you will see outside of a kindergarten.
Is There a Democrat in the House?
The cheapness of the rhetoric and conduct felt like City Hall’s tribute to 99-Cent stores.
Were I the new Mayor, I would demand a recount — of my election last night and of the April 8 city-wide election.
Can we put the April 8 results on hold for five years while City Manager Jerry Fulwood seasons the freshman class?
Which reminds me: Almost unanimously this spring on the campaign trail, the City Council candidates crowed about how they would go after Mr. Fulwood’s job. First of all, has anyone memorized what floor Mr. Fulwood’s office is on? You have to find him before you can sack him. But maybe not with this Council.
A Little Slow to Mature
My guess is the Entrada Office Tower will be hailed as an international architectural icon, and it will win the Westchester View of the Year Award before the newly seated Council renders one meaningful decision or outgrows its need for an interpreter to explain to the public what the heck they are doing.
I have sent away for the ’10 edition of Sears & Roebuck’s spring catalogue so I can learn new adjectives to describe this disparate dose of desperate desperados.
This is like teaching Ray Charles to drive at the Indy 500.
Mr. Malsin’s task will be worse than herding cats.
Even with a whip, a chair, an armful of heaven-sent prayers and a bottomless supply of Advil, he still won’t have enough weapons to tame these natives.
