Since the entire community knew the City Council last evening would unanimously express sympathy for potentially developing a fracking ban or moratorium ordinance, the only thorny corner was whether to wait on the moratorium-seeking Los Angeles City Council to lead or proceed independently.
By the end, despite millions of words, hardly anything was decided, certainly nothing definitive.
After a repeatedly crisscrossing, and hugely arcane, discussion up and down the dais, it remains unclear this morning whether the Council has the votes to proceed with a halt or slowdown in that controversial form of oil drilling.
When final decision time arrives in a few months, whether the Council waits for Los Angeles or acts separately may not matter more than the weather on this day in 1856.
Although the collegial discussion among the five of them never came close to being contentious, opinions differed and veered:
- Cautious Mayor Jeff Cooper, responsible for bringing a reworked fracking regulation to the fore three years after a previous moratorium expired, preferred to follow the lead of the L.A. City Council. His grounds: By hitching their wagon to L.A.’s, Culver City’s perspective has a better chance of winning a reflective reception in Sacramento.
- Vice Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells’s darn-the-torpedoes-ahead approach held that timing was more crucial than perceived heft. As the most passionate advocate, she maintained there is sufficient momentum for the Council to proceed as soon as the legal department stitches together a resolution and proceeds by the end of the year.
- Member Mehaul O’Leary, not for the first time last night, proposed a compromise between the mayor and vice mayor. They demurred.
- While Mr. Cooper and Ms. Sahli-Wells waded further into the deepening rhetorical waters, member Andy Weissman, speaking for the dwindled audience, asked for clarification, which may yet come.
Even though Council members came and left united on the immediate need for a resolution unapologetically packing bite that will deter, or detour, the controversial oil drilling method, most of them refused to resist the temptation to wax lengthily far into the night. It mattered not that after the first speaker, Council Chambers rawly morphed into an echo chamber.
The public stood as firmly in its anti-fracking convictions as the City Council – 21 consecutive advocates weighed in, some with their compelling personal stories, others for ideological reasons.
Unquestionably, the evening’s most poignant interlude dawned when a UCLA medical professor who resides in Culver City said that he has lost two spouses to cancer in the last 20 years. Was there a link between their health and whatever negatives were and are permeating the air that drifts through the community? The implication was laid down, and there it remained.
