Convening this drenched afternoon at Valley College in the east San Fernando Valley, the trustees of the Los Angeles Community College District are expected to formally affirm a landmark agreement reached last month with longtime Culver City critics of West Los Angeles College.
One week after the City Council, unanimously and vigorously, endorsed the document clearing the last of once prickly hurdles for West to begin a wide-ranging construction program, a historic feud is expected to quietly curl up and die.
The rapidity of the turnaround in the negotiating environment was unanticipated. Less than a month ago, City Hall filed suit against the college, hoping to interrupt West L.A.’s expansion plans until more than a dozen disagreements — not all environmentally related — were mutually satisfied.
Public Works Director Charles Herbertson, soft-spoken and easygoing, is Culver City’s lead negotiator.
Before departing for this afternoon’s meeting of the trustees, he said the reversal of mood at the table was not mysterious at all.
According to Mr. Herbertson, the thorniest problem during the summer, when both sides were roaring at each other, electronically and face to face, may have been a tension-sparking mis-matchup of personalities.
Homeowners groups and City Hall —both had unique and common beefs with the college — were negotiating separately with the college, evidently a recipe for friction because the college never has been content about dealing with the residents as a separate entity
At this very time, West’s administration was in spinning turmoil. They were going through presidents at a mercurial pace, and the influx of new faces brought with it a severe worsening of dynamics.
Mr. Herbertson’s jackpot move was to put City Hall and the homeowner groups at the table at the same time because, as he explained, “they had overlapping issues.”
Although the path from the lineup change to resolution was not straight, it did lead, almost magically, to an agreement on a whopping 16 different points.
