First of a series
What is the meaning of, oh, say the word “meaning”?
Since being organized in the 1980s, perhaps for honorable reasons, the ghostly Landlord Tenant Mediation Board has been Culver City’s answer to Obamacare – a mystical experience whose dense functions not only are out of view and unknown to residents but maybe to the Board’s so-called masterminds.
Did it long ago lose its way?
Long charged with being a renters’ receptacle where landlords routinely get their way, the Board has been operating for years, possibly always, without noticeable public acknowledgement of oversight or, crucially, accomplishment.
Is it worth retaining, an ambitious member wonders? Or should it be blown up and rebuilt – in the open air, available to casual inspection?
Has it been a gender diverse paradise that is a government incarnation of an Ol’ Boys Club?
Sometimes it appears that way.
Who knows what they do when the lights go out?
Arcane rules, evidently written during the Reagan administration, are frantically guarded by human shields as if they were the only iteration of the family jewels.
When an astute, feisty newcomer entered the formerly private playground of the vague and the abstract a few months ago, the sacred concept of arcanity goes on life support and probably should start shuddering.
She committed what some leaders regard as a tall gaffe: She asked probing questions.
Scene from the most recent quarterly meeting of the mysterious Landlord Tenant Mediation Board three weeks ago this evening:
A reform-minded new (alternate) member who has been pressing Housing Administrator Tevis Barnes, leader of the meetings, for changes and unprecedented transparency, posed a direct question that surely achieved one of its intended objectives.
“To your knowledge, in the history of the Board has there been one successful mediation?” the inquisitor asked.
Ms. Barnes flinched.
As a filmy cloud descended over the huge table in the audience-free Dan Patacchia Room at City Hall, Ms. Barnes responded.
“I don’t like the word ‘successful,’” she said.
You almost could read the exclamation “Aha!” writ loud and large across the newcomer’s forehead. That appeared to confirm her suspicion that renters go before this Board to die, and lose, whichever comes first.
“If you mean,” Ms. Barnes continued, “has the Board ever agreed not to raise rent, no, it has not.”
(To be continued)
