Smiles are scarce in the midst of the freshest rumble between City Hall and West Los Angeles College.
City Hall seems to have no doubt about the identity of the villain in the new round of skirmishing over who should be responsible for campus bus service.
On June 28, service suddenly was halted. Two reasons were given, neighbors’ complaints about noise and hardships on the pavement of campus roadways. In a compromise agreement, the college said it would close the service gap by ferrying students and others from the entrance to destinations via a shuttle service.
But all of that changed again last night.
“We will be resuming bus service onto the campus of West Los Angeles College before the start of the semester at the end of this month,” Vice Mayor Mehaul O’Leary resolutely declared at last night’s City Council meeting and reiterated, forcefully, this morning.
Mr. O’Leary’s strongly aroused Irish dander stood up like a 1970s pompadour.
He accused the college and Acting President Betsy Regalado of “reneging” on a promise to deliver cross-campus shuttle service before inexplicably reversing themselves, as noted in a letter from the president pondered by the Council in the privacy of Closed Session.
(See below the lengthy letter dated July 23 where Ms. Regalado discusses the college’s attitude. Four days later, on July 27, she dispatched a four-paragraph letter to City Hall seeking the resumption of Culver City Bus service.)
“I can tell you we were very disturbed from the moment we heard the college had not lived up to their end of the agreement to shuttle people up from the road to the college,” Mr. O’Leary said. “We only stopped the service with the understanding that the college would handle the shuttling.
“It is outrageous for the college and other entities to accuse the city of neglecting a core constituency.
City’s Image Suffers
“We looked bad in this whole deal, and it was not our fault,” he said.
“We decided, in a group, that we didn’t start this in the first place. Afterward, the college came up with a solution, with input from staff, from (former WLAC President) Mark Rocha, from Lamont (Ewell, the Interim City Manager, now gone) and neighbors.
“It was an amicable solution,” Mr. O’Leary said.
Confusion may have developed last month, he acknowledged, when the City Council emphatically rejected a construction-related Settlement Agreement that included the bus service compromise.
“Because we did not agree with certain parts of the SEIR (Supplemental Environmental Impact Report),” said the Vice Mayor, “we did not think the college would renege on its bus service promise.
“We were willing to continue doing the bus service. We did it for, maybe, 20 years. The college came up with a solution, and now they are saying ‘No, we don’t want to do it.’”
What does the West L.A. College have to say?
Nothing this morning.
Calls to several campus offices zipped directly to voicemail.
West’s campus seems to have been in a tizzy for at least the last two months.
It began when never-bashful President Dr. Rocha announced, abruptly, he was jumping across town to Pasadena City College. This seemed to spark confusion among the leadership down to today. The perceived indirection of the college accelerated when Dr. Rocha was succeeded, temporarily, by Ms. Regalado, Vice President of Student Services, who preferred to remain in the shadows. Appointed as the summer-only President, West sources say it is understandable that she would be reluctant to make policy declarations — a situation that changed dramatically last night when the City Council received her letter.
Bart Reed, Executive Director of The Transit Coalition, thanked the City Council, and Faramarz Nabavi, Legislative Director of the Coalition noted the need to restore service prior to the start of the fall academic session on Monday, Aug. 30.
[img]908|left|West Los Angeles College Letter to P. Lamont Ewell||no_popup[/img]
