[img]1305|right|Andy Weissman||no_popup[/img]Bursting through a weblike jungle of crisscrossing financial wires, comprehending City Hall’s long stalled redevelopment predicament is like pouring honey from a jar while leaving the lid fastened securely.
Defining it in fewer than 500 sentences requires a degree of difficulty similar to explaining why a circle is round or a banana is the color of a lemon.
In the spring it will be seven years since the thundering recession effectively derailed the previously beaver-busy Redevelopment Agency. Feb. 1 will mark the third anniversary of Gov. Brown’s assassination of the state’s 400 Redevelopment Agencies so he would have more money to play with.
This would discourage the sunniest optimist.
After the governor ruled that he was more or less supreme and City Halls everywhere owed financial allegiance to him, Culver City, among 399 other communities, has been walking around with handcuffs on.
Finally, there has been a breakthrough – not victory yet, but the key unlocking the handcuffs has been placed almost within reach by two favorable decisions within the past fortnight by the occasionally fogged in state Dept. of Finance, which suddenly has become more powerful than Sly Stallone, Bob DeNiro and Mrs. Banks combined.
As Andy Weissman, a principal player in this increasingly encouraging unscrambling and the face of the City Council, patiently has remarked several hundred times lately, the first two complicated rulings had to be executed before the remaining complicated ruling could be addressed.
The next step is the climactic one, a ruling on City Hall’s Long Range Management Asset plan.
When this is rendered – possibly as early as January, but when is a crapshoot – the city will begin to approach the witching hour when the trigger can be pulled on the first of eight redevelopment projects that have been lying about for a minimum of 84 months.
(To be continued)
