Ari L. Noonan

     In the most bizarre twist yet to the election season, the three City Council candidates were reduced to bit players, mere scenery, at the latest Candidates Forum on Tuesday night.

     Instead of spotlighting their messages and the distinctions in their views, they were ordered — yes, ordered — to play a game, Beat the Clock.

     Their responses to questions were strictly secondary to rush-rushing to beat an old alarm clock that must have been rented from a 99-Cent Store. The clock, which may not have had hands, was slightly less reliable than a drunken octopus getting his nails done.

     By the careful observation of a neutral party, the time was kept wildly unevenly. “Thirty seconds to go” often meant the speaker had fifteen to eighteen seconds. The thirty-second sign was displayed almost recklessly during responses, at the forty, fifty and fifty-five-second marks and in between. No one was treated more favorably than anyone else. All participants were victimized.

     The day after ramming through a month-long delay in the recreational vehicle street-parking ordinance, Mayor Albert Vera sprang one more sweet surprise on RV owners.

     As if owners were not perked up enough by the news from Monday night that they have an extra thirty days to figure out where to park their behemoths, the well-connected mayor explained his newest strategy.

     He is working with the veteran South Bay Congresswoman Jane Harman on finding vacant land where the distressed RV owners can store their vehicles.

     With Lynne Davidson of Tito’s Tacos Mexican restaurant championing his cause, City Council candidate Mehaul O’Leary has won the endorsement of the California Restaurant Assn.

     Ms. Davidson, a member of the CRA board, and Tito’s Tacos will host a fundraiser for the candidate on Monday, March 13, 5 to 8 p.m., at the  Tito’s Tacos Commissary, 8906 Lindblade Ave.

     Tony P’s Dockside Grill, Junior’s Deli and Marmalade Cafes will supply food along with Tito’s.

     The official support is special, Mr. O’Leary said, because the one-hundred-year-old CRA typically restricts its endorsements to candidates for statewide office.

     Portraying himself as a sound businessman, the owner of Joxer Daly’s Irish Pub said that “successful restaurateurs know what it is like to meet a balanced budget and  to deal with complicated regulatory issues. I plan to bring an evenhanded business-like approach to Culver City.”

     If Mayor Albert Vera is indeed dropping out of Culver City politics as of the April 11 election, he is flying out of City Hall with all of his jets spitting fires to be feared.

     Anybody who can strongarm a pet project through a wall of resistance still is a formidable force who can’t be shrugged off.

     Responding to a community outcry, as he often has in the past, Mr. Vera’s sheer strength of will enabled him to shove through the pipe yet another thirty-day moratorium for angry owners of recreational vehicles.

     The latest moratorium ranks as the mayor’s third straight successful effort to delay enforcement of a prickly ordinance that bans recreational vehicles from being parked overnight on city streets.

            By appearances, the formerly glamourous young politician Martin Ludlow is said to be our town’s newest celebrity who stepped across the foul lines of the law, as we told you last week.

What a shock. A union guy’s milk of human kindness has gone sour. Can’t be more than twelve million precedents in Los Angeles for that kind of misbehavior.

To report that the chief executive of the sprawling union umbrella organization for this town, the County Federation of Labor, has resigned because he messed up the golden years of his professional life by alleged wrongdoing sadly has less impact on society than salivating on the sidewalk.

            The news is not that one more union hack has shot himself between the eyes. It is that the most promising and articulate and dashing young black politician whom Los Angeles has produced in awhile, just blew out all four tires on his career with his own hands. At the age of forty-one, Mr. Ludlow looks more done than the hamburgers Mom used to cook most weeknights when we were growing up.

 

          From appearances, city commissioner Jeff Cooper’s well-publicized picnic on Saturday afternoon to protest the present proposed location of the new Skateboard Park was successful.

          A crowd of seventy-five persons met his expectations in size and spiritedness.

          Some of the community’s best known citizens and politicians flocked to Culver City Park to declare their support for changing the location.

          Among them: Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger, running for re-election, City Council candidate Scott Malsin, City Councilman Alan Corlin,  Gerald  Sallus of the Democratic  Club and his wife Betty, the environmental activist Jim Lamm, and the Dog Park entrepreneur Vicki Daly Redholtz.

          City Councilwoman Carol Gross sniffed on Monday when she heard that seventy-five supporters participated in Commissioner Jeff Cooper’s picnic/rally on Saturday at Culver City Park.

          As the leading zealot on the City Council for retaining the new Skateboard Park in the grassy area, near Jefferson Boulevard, she archly declared:

          “It does not matter to me how many people were there. Seventy-five people or seventy-five hundred will not change the facts.

          “My principal motivation is protecting the well-being of our children. That does not, it cannot, take second place.”

            Armed with dignity, a portfolio of concrete explanations and solutions, a promise of transparency and a peace-making attitude, Steve Rush, the vice president of a much-villified oil drilling company, will walk into a den of his harshest critics early next month when he meets with the Board of Directors of the Culver Crest Neighborhood Assn.

            “Our main job will be to educate them about our business and, hopefully, demystify what we do,” the Plains Exploration & Production Co. official told thefrontpageonline.com.

            “But before that, we will emphasize that we understand the importance of improving communications with residents. We are trying to be more sensitive than we have been.

            “We want to make sure that even though what happened was extremely rare, and not at all dangerous, we want them to know who we are, how long we have been around, what our mission is, that we are environmentally sensitive, and that we are diligently working on mitigation measures.”

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            With a do-over  vote on the disputed location of the new Skateboard Park tentatively scheduled for Monday, March 6, City Councilman Alan Corlin — tongue lodged in cheek — said last night that he was guilty as charged when Councilmember Carol Gross accused him of making the park a warm potato because Election Day looms. 
            In the six weeks since the original vote on Culver City Park , Mr. Corlin has been staging a one-man, daily, unrelenting, virtual door to door campaign to overturn the outcome and change the venue to a nearby paved area. 
            The arrows and slings that the Councilman and the Councilwoman vehemently exchange are heartfelt.