Being the national rage, bailout came to Culver City early this morning.
A little before 1 a.m., when the indecisive City Council was flailing like a wounded whale over the controversial mixed-use project intended for 4043 Irving Pl., City Manager Jerry Fulwood bailed out the confused, yawning members.
He intervened with a scheme to salvage the building-to-be and the fast flagging meeting, which had descended into distinct disorder.
Instead of sending the appeal of an earlier Planning Commission approval of 4043 immediately back to the Commission for major finetuning and other unspecified shrinkage work, Mr. Fulwood suggested trying one last round of negotiations between the builders and riled-up neighbors.
The main, but hardly only, sticking point seems to be that the residents are saying “not one more condo than 24” while the builders are at about 28 or 29.
Mr. Fulwood said that, starting this morning, his staffers would arrange a series of meetings and report the results back to the Council by the meeting of Monday, Dec. 8. If accord has not been reached by that date, the matter would go directly back to the Planning Commission, which originally okayed the project last April. Exactly what the Planning Commission would do once it had a second shot at 4043 Irving was not clear.
Good Evening for Silbiger
Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger, who enjoyed an excellent outing as a pitch-perfect populist politician responding to a cheering/hostile crowd, harshly scolded the Planning Commission for the manner in which it handled 4043 last spring.
When Mr. Fulwood went into his bailout mode, Council members did not immediately recognize it as a panacea.
Mr. Fulwood was seeking to save the project. He wanted to detour the two warring parties. He sought to buy time to try and bargain a solution before the incendiary matter was forced back to an uncertain outcome in front of the Planning Commission.
Mr. Silbiger and his frequent ally Councilman Chris Armenta pushed hard to send the project straight back to the Commission, despairing of a settlement between the two sides.
Even though everyone in the still-sizable audience was drained from ponderous hours of bitter, personal and hyperbolic wrangling, the City Manager still needed an additional half hour to sell his idea to the directionless Council.
Who’s Going Home?
At 1:30, when the Council finally voted 4 to 0 to allow City Hall staffers to try mediating the nasty, accelerating fight, at least 30 resolute neighbors remained firmly in their seats.
For the second consecutive Monday, murmurs of “mob rule” were heard throughout the evening, a huge and hostile crowd promoting a single issue, volubly and as forcefully as they could manage.
Speaker after speaker looked at the four Council members. They threatened them, saying that if they didn’t do what the crowd wanted, they would take one of two actions:
Recall them in special elections or vote them out at the first opportunity.
The protestors did not seem to realize that three members just were voted into office for four-year terms last April.
A Onesided Result
It was not a good evening for persons named Sal Gonzales and George Mitsanas, the builders. They were not only outnumbered. They were virtually the only people in the packed Chambers on their side. The two developers spoke a number of times, but never without being interrupted by calls of protest or other contradictions from the audience.
Twenty-two members of the public spoke, and they voted 22 to 0 against the builders, often using colorful language as their vehicle. No one came close to hedging his position. At least two women accused the builders of lying and deceiving them.
After appellants Jim and Michelle Benke, and Mike and Judy Miller, and the developers all had their say, Clerk Alice Prasad announced what turned out to be 97 written comments. There was no suspense. Everybody in Chambers knew they were 97 votes against the project.
Outvoting Mayor Scott Malsin, Mr. Silbiger, Mr. Armenta and Councilman Mehaul O’Leary insisted each card should be read, even though the results were obvious. “A Council meeting is no time to be efficient,” Mr. Silbiger said.
During the following 45 minutes that Ms. Prasad gallantly waded into the cards, at least one-third were illegible, and perhaps half were similar or identical, making the score Residents 119, Builders 0.
Manners Take a Holiday
Decorum was regularly violated. Residents often cheered individual sentences and applauded wildly at the end of each missive, as they had done when each speaker concluded.
At no time were they in danger of facing rebuke for actions that, until recently, would have drawn strong warnings if not an enhanced police presence or eviction.
All 119 opposed the project in its present form for reasons that spanned the familiar spectrum. They variously charged that the three-story building was too tall, that 28 or 29 condos are too many, that one more than 24 is unacceptable, that two spaces for offices might be acceptable, but the setback is too shallow, the entrances are wrongly positioned, and, worst of all, not only will the expanded traffic further overwhelm an already car-choked residential neighborhood, the emissions emitted by those cars likely will harm the 600 under-12 school children and the children of the speakers.
Bizarre Events
On a 6 1/2-hour evening of episodic near-chaos, traditional Council Chambers etiquette was pointedly ignored. Order broke down, regularly and increasingly, as the meeting hour grew late.
Without any discipline in sight, distressed neighbors would shout out criticisms, denials, accusations, sometimes seemingly at will, from the audience.
Occasionally, the scene turned bizarre.
Randomly, persons would stand in the middle of someone else’s presentation and begin orating — without drawing a correction. Members of the recently formed Downtown Neighborhood Assn. turned out in large numbers to inveigh against the project as too tall, too dense and too insensitive
Feeling emboldened as the meeting progressed, residents would wander up to the speaker’s podium, almost absentmindedly. Sometimes they would begin talking, even though the microphone was not hot. Other times, they would just stand there, as if they needed a closer view.
No one appeared to have more or less stature than anyone else.
A particularly irate gentleman in the first row repeatedly spoke up, when the spirit moved him, with vehemence and without fear of retribution.
He seemed to speak — out of order and without ever identifying himself — almost as much as some Council members during the last couple of hours.
Near the end, a young woman meandered to the microphone. She announced that a letter that had been flashed on the Chambers wall screen much of the evening — signed by the two neighborhood couples appealing the Planning Commission decision — was not, in her opinion, the document it purported to be. That aroused the crowd once more. The builders promptly stood to protest the woman’s claim. Like many of the meeting’s issues, was left dangling.
Builder in Shock
Breaching what has been inviolable decorum in Council Chambers for years, numerous public speakers turned away from the microphone and directly criticized Mr. Gonzales and Mr. Mitsanas, sharpening their already pointy words. “What audacity,” one woman belched toward them.
Mr. Gonzales, who did not attract a smidgen of sympathy — until Mr. Fulwood’s game-saving move — attempted to defend himself.
“I am a bit surprised at the personal attacks,” he said. “It feels as if we were blindsided.” He said he had been “sandbagged.”
How could people who don’t know him assault him? the stunned Mr. Gonzales wondered.
“I operate a nice business,” he said. “And I donate thousands of dollars. If you don’t know me, we should leave (personal attacks) to the side.”
He appeared scarcely to have recovered his footing when it was time to walk into the late night/early morning air.
