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You have heard it said that the most physically dangerous ground in America is the space between New York Sen. Chuck Schumer and an approaching television camera or microphone.
Don’t laugh. We have the same poisonous problem at City Hall.
With a microphone before them and a crowd in Council Chambers, certain members of the City Council have found it irresistible to stretch back in their easy chairs, close one eye and begin to unspool decades of stale, smelly, previously unsuspected personal wisdom that is guaranteed to improve the quality of life across Culver City.
I used to clock the previous Council. I probably should have traded in my watch for a calendar. The present Vice Mayor, Gary Silbiger, and the former Mayor, Carol Gross, routinely were good for 15-minute soliloquies on any arcane topic you could think up.
They sounded like they were recording the 12 latest volumes of “The Best of…,” unsolicited versions of dust dry wit and reflection that stretched for miles out into nowhere. Their orations went on, even if Chambers were afire and people frantically were fleeing. I think one time I drove home, had dinner, came back, missed every signal light, and one of them still was speechifying.
If any of these Culver City politicians ever ambled downtown and wandered into a session of the Regional County Planning Commission or the County Board of Supervisors, they would have telephoned in their resignations, effective last year.
Listen to These Poster Boys
Those 10 persons are the antithesis of gasbags, or Culver City officials. From Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke down to the least known member of the County Planning Commission, each one, without exception, conducts himself or herself as a mature grownup, not an insecure politician desperate for even a squeak of attention.
The comments of the downtown politicians that I have listened to recently have been as spare as a toothpick. They spoke as if they were being charged by the word. In Culver City, it is the reverse. If they have more than a smidgen of discipline, it is hiding under Ted Cooke’s desk. Ladies and gentlemen on the dais — several, not all — practice marathon gabbing as if they were earning $5 a word and needed to pay for a castle before midnight.
The unrequited need to declaim until the whole room walks out in disgust can be a sign of lack of preparation or terminal, cultivated indiscipline.
The question is, Are you for or against? No frills, pal.
No need to review in exquisite detail how much gas your Aunt Elvira suffered from the last 40 years before she expired.
Bringing It Home
I never have met Planning Commissioner Linda Smith Frost. But she said something at last night’s meeting that jerked my slumbering self to cold-water attention.
Vice Chair John Kuechle ran a snappy meeting, businesslike and rhetorically economical. Tony Pleskow, too, was not tempted to tack on a single unnecessary syllable.
As for Ms. Smith Frost: Both her questions and comments, with one notable exception, were focused and impressively contoured. My first reaction was that she was smart.
But all of the positives blew up a few minutes later.
With the clock racing toward midnight — a five-hour meeting is at least three hours too long — it was time for each commissioner to declare whether he or should favored or opposed the subject.
Mr. Kuechle called on Ms. Smith Frost to lead off.
Time to Throw Spaghetti at the Wall
Out late three nights running, I wanted to be anywhere but Council Chambers. Thirty-seven members of the public had spoken on the same subject, nearly all of them astutely, but 37, pal, is time-consuming and wildly repetitious not to mention boring. That is the context.
It is late. I am tired. I am kvetchy.
Ms. Smith Frost begins. She sounded uncertain about whether she was going to vote yea or nay. According to my notes, she next said, approximately, “But let me begin and let’s see where it leads.”
And, by George, that is what she did. The more she wandered, the more upset I grew. “I am for,” “I am against,” “I am comfortable with.” That was all we needed, not a flowery entry in an oratorical contest.
Since so few politicians in Culver City are disciplined, perhaps all of them should sent downtown five weeks in a row to the County Planning Commission and the Board of Sups for what I would call sensitivity training.
