The Council Meeting Looked Stacked, and Public Notification Became Less Important

An item on that meeting’s agenda dealt with approving a contract with an organization to accept stray animals picked up in Culver City. The animals picked up in Culver City can now be taken to a shelter in Hawthorne instead of the Carson shelter. It was not the item itself that concerned me but the process it went through before coming to the City Council.

Just a Little Tilted

First, it appeared to be a stacked crowd. While there probably would have been very little opposition to the item, the proponents seemed to have an inside track. During the discussions it came out that the Culver City Friends of Animals participated in the subcommittee meetings, which produced the report.

To my knowledge, this has not been the practice here in Culver City.

Not only did Culver City Friends of Animals have input to the committee report, it had an additional advantage over any opposition group. The Culver City Friends of Animals was able to inform their members, while the general public was mostly uninformed of the agenda item. This is what resulted in a stacked audience. And it appeared that Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger, champion of sufficient public notification, had no problem with the lack of notification to the general public.

Much Lengthier Than Necessary

Second, the meeting lasted about two hours longer than it needed to last. The Culver City Friends of Animals filled the audience with people backing their position. There were almost 40 speaker cards and about 80 written comments. These people spent two hours preaching to the choir.

All five Council members wanted to find a solution to the problem of taking animals to the Carson shelter, but they needed to wait until about 10:30 before they could start discussing the item. It was two hours of repeated input and no contrary input.

And last, I find it strange that the Council made the approved solution sound like they weren’t spending money because money had already been budgeted for the animal control officer. This money was budgeted before the current national financial crisis. The budget was based on projections that we will probably find now were incorrect.

It is my understanding that the city’s financial office was due to make a presentation to the City Council on the city’s financial situation, based on the current economic conditions of the country. It seems to me that the Council should not be approving any spending until they receive this report. This includes all spending, no matter how small.

Thousands for What Purpose?

An example of a small spending approval that should have waited for the report occurred several weeks earlier. It was the approval of couple of thousand dollars to conduct a survey on the desire of students to participate in a Youth Advisory Group. The Council will say it was only a couple of thousand dollars but a couple of thousand here and a couple of thousand there eventually add up.

And what are they going to ask in this survey? What kind of survey questions will give us the interest of students in a Youth Advisory Group? It seems to me that we could have had the Culver City High School make an announcement that any student interested in serving on a Youth Advisory Group should sign up in the office. And this could have been done for free. This would give the Council a good idea of the number of students interested. Also the item contained no indication on what would be an acceptable level of interest.

Another question I have about the Youth Advisory Group is, what are they going to advise on?

Does the Council expect students have an informed opinion on the height exception requested by the REthink Project? Do they think students wanted to give input on the PXP EIR? In the past when there has been a topic of interest to the young people of the city, like the skateboard park, the City Council formed a youth group to get input.

But if the city forms a Youth Advisory Group and it proves successful, I would suggest that the Council take the next logical step. They should take the action to form an Adult Advisory Group and start accepting input from the adults in the city.