Responding with surprisingly resolute unanimity to an onslaught of sharply pointed protests from distressed neighbors, the energized City Council last night stiffly rejected a supposedly compromise Settlement Agreement regarding expansion of West Los Angeles College.
The main contentious disagreements with the college are the same ones that have been bruited about for years — spillover parking into residential neighborhoods, noisy construction machinery at inconvenient hours, cut-through traffic, lack of access to the college and lack of response from an empowered go-to person on campus. At least some Culver City persons — from the city and homeowner groups — say the negotiating air has been problematic throughout the tenure of the recently resigned college President.
The long-running rancor among the three parties — community, college, City Hall — sparked by the college’s sometimes-amorphous, periodically-provocative expansion/construction plans, may be bogged down again this morning in legal purgatory.
Times, and Documents, Change
Five years after the college, City Hall and nearby residents approved a binding Memorandum of Understanding, the college, according to the Council and well organized neighbors, unilaterally made disruptive changes that the Council and residents find entirely, not just marginally, unacceptable.
Going into last night, a team of City Hall negotiators, led by Interim City Manager Lamont Ewell and Public Works Director Charles Herbertson, believed it had created a middle-road agreement, a bridge among the combatants that was portrayed as “not ideal, but the best we can get.”
However, after a parade of passionate persons — including a blastingly outspoken, unorthodox presentation by Mark Salkin from Culver Crest and oldtimer advice from School Board President Steve Gourley, a former Councilman now in a statesman-in-waiting role — the Council collected momentum fast.
Leading off, member Scott Malsin was the most disgusted person on the dais. Turning toward West’s Acting President, Mr. Malsin, who has the power to make chilling observations, said, icily, “This is a pretty crummy thing to do, to change so many mitigation measures.” If that didn’t register, he tacked on this clubber, branding the document “a real exercise in bad faith.”
How Can They Do This?
Andy Weissman said he concurred largely with his colleague’s sentiments. Being an attorney, he added that it was confounding to him that one party to a Memorandum of Understanding could unilaterally abrogate an agreement. “I can’t find it in my heart or my head” to vote for the compromise.
First-year Councilman Jeff Cooper said that the departed President, Dr. Mark Rocha, had claimed there was accord between the college and Culver City “except for a few fringe members of the community looking to stir things up.”
Mehaul O’Leary was by far the toughest interrogator, repeatedly confronting one of the college’s attorneys over language and intent in the dozen major alterations to the 2005 agreement.
“I feel we are not being dealt with like true neighbors,” the Irishman said. Calling the lawyer, Adam Wasserman, by name, Mr. O’Leary said: “Mr. Wasserman’s answers have solidified my position.”
They Must Be Right?
Noting that three of the most outspoken voices from the audience — John Kuechle, Mr. Salkin and Mr. Gourley — all are lawyers, Mayor Chris Armenta, who is not a lawyer, said their vociferous objections demonstrated that problems with the compromise ran deep.
(In a quietly memorable moment at the end of the noisy, angry debate, shortly before 11 o’clock, Mr. Ewell, made a gesture seen as classy and possibly unprecedented. Facing the Council, he said softly that “if it is your belief” his negotiation team had failed to craft an acceptable middle way, “I take full responsibility for that.” He said it twice so there would be no mistaking his intent.)
And so the soured fires of a backyard war appear to be roaring. The next steps in this enlarging drama by both sides are clouded by uncertainty. But the coming 30 days promise to be adventuresome.
Filing a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Community College District, which oversees nine campuses including West, is a possibility at City Hall, but not the first option.
The Council has suggested a three-cornered meeting, any day now, with the college/District to unsnarl their numerous objections.
But the college is virtually headless at the moment, which could give it a summer-long reason for not agreeing to a peace pipe pow-wow.
When the less-than-popular President of West, Dr. Rocha, abruptly stepped down last month to take a similar position at Pasadena City College, the school named Betsy Regalado, Vice President of Student Services, as Acting President. She, however, only will serve for six weeks, until mid-August, when an Interim President will be appointed.
The Acting President plainly views her fast-food, short-term role as being purely a placeholder, not even a casual spokesperson in any manner.
Perhaps understandably, Ms. Regalado, who seemed shy if not phlegmatic in Council Chambers, firmly decided against becoming embroiled in the gathering — or returning — dispute. When an aroused Mr. Cooper narrowed his gaze, stared sternly at Ms. Regalado deep in the audience, surrounded by her party, and challenged her to make an open-faced pledge to negotiate in good faith — “yes or no?” he dared her — she hesitated, then softly demurred.
After a pregnant gap on the clock, the college’s defense counsel, standing at her seat instead of the speaker’s podium, attempted to defend Ms. Regalado. She said the president only had been on the job for a week and a half, leaving the Council to speculate on why that excused her.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Los Angeles Community College District trustees will convene at Trade Tech in downtown Los Angeles, West’s sister campus. They will meet in public session between 3:30 and 6. Written in neon on their agenda is a public hearing to air community convictions, and those of the trustees, on the present document known as the Final Environmental Impact Report of the West Los Angeles College Facilities Master Plan.
However, the trustees will not vote on the FEIR for another month, when they convene on Wednesday, Aug. 11, also at Trade Tech at 3:30.
As of this morning, there is no indication how they will respond to the Council’s emphatic rebuffing of their amended overtures to make peace, on the college’s terms.
