[img]1307|right|Meghan Sahli-Wells||no_popup[/img]Worried that residents will ignore a special meeting packing no more strength than a soaked one-ply paper towel, City Hall yesterday, for the second week in a row, fired off a four-alarm invitation to a Monday, Dec. 8, gathering at 7 o’clock in Council Chambers. (See here.)
“This will be a discussion about whether to have a discussion,” City Councilman Andy Weissman said this morning.
The headline subjects for what may, or may not, be a standard City Council meeting, are a supposed shortage of affordable housing units and “rental rates.”
“Rental rates” appears to be City Hall’s intentionally distracting way of avoiding mention of the more explosive concept known as “rent control.”
Going in, it appears that there will be less happening at the meeting than when a deaf man sits down to a meal in an empty building. This may be like attempting to lure a capacity crowd to Dodger Stadium to watch the owner’s wife try on her newest chapeau.
The meeting really does have a serious purpose, as Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells will explain. What does she expect to happen?
She said her latest concern over housing and rents that are affordable goes back to a year ago last summer when two near-Downtown tenants turned up dead weeks after their rents – in separate buildings – were escalated 100 percent.
“Since those incidents, it has been clear,” Ms. Sahli-Wells said this morning, “we need to look at what the (advisory) Landlord Tenant Mediation Board currently does. One question is whether there are additional protections the city should be providing.
“My hope is that on Dec. 8 we can agree to have a community discussion, perhaps a town hall or some sort of round table event where we can discuss whether Culver City needs to protect renters more than they currently do.”
The mayor was asked: Couldn’t you just call a town hall meeting instead of making this seemingly empty stop?
With a chuckle, Ms. Sahli-Wells said, “It seems silly, doesn’t it?”
(To be continued)
