Worried oil field-adjacent residents of greater Culver City and first-year County Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas this morning consummated their 8-month-old marriage with a nifty legislative backflip that seeks to reverse the perceived harm engineered last year by his predecessor.
Employing the mastery of a seasoned legislator with bulldog determination, Mr. Ridley-Thomas drove a potentially dynamite motion through the Board of Supervisors.
The 5 to 0 vote will allow the Sups to re-open a case whose mercurial speed and outcome bitterly disappointed residents within range of the oil field.
The same Board that almost noiselessly locked arms with Ms. Brathwaite Burke 9 months ago, granting virtually her every wish, lined up, at least for now, behind their newest colleague.
“The thrust of my motion,” Mr. Ridley-Thomas told his fellow Sups, “is to take an appropriate look at amendments (to the Baldwin Hills Community Standards District ordinance) and those matters that were not adequately studied before.”
It was no time for recriminations. “I choose not to rehearse the past,” he said. “I am focusing on the future.”
Kids call repeat chances “do-overs.”
And that is what first-year Supervisor Ridley-Thomas hopes to achieve.
He Is Not Done Yet
The rookie — who did not act like one — gained approval from his four long-toothed colleagues to re-visit a controversial decision pushed through last autumn that critics contended gave PXP too free of a drilling hand while downplaying safety rules.
“We have some unfinished business to address,” said Mr. Ridley-Thomas, whom residents hope can turn the present set of regulations, hurriedly shaped by now-retired Supervisor Yvonne Brathwaite Burke, on their head.
Last October, when many claimed that the much idolized Ms. Brathwaite was pursuing legacy legislation hours before her retirement, PXP, eager to widen its drilling horizons, was given what critics regarded as carte blanche to accelerate the scope and pace of drilling new wells.
To the detriment of their health and their families’ safety, many residents charged.
Ken Kutcher, a low-key attorney who has been at the helm of the well-organized Culver Crest campaign to toughen the rules for PXP, cited the new Supervisor’s savvy as a plus for Westsiders relieved to see his four-term predecessor go to the sidelines.
“Ridley-Thomas showed a lot of leadership to bring this matter before the Board,” Mr. Kutcher said.
He added that MRT, as the Supervisor is known among friends, has been at the side of residents throughout the most difficult times, including last year during his Supervisorial campaign.
MRT on the Right (?) Side
“He was involved during deliberations last year when Supervisor Burke was advocating its adoption. Ridley-Thomas asked for more time for public input, and I am really pleased we now have the opportunity the CSD and the Environmental Impact Report, which are important to our community.”
Besides Mr. Kutcher, City Council members Gary Silbiger and Scott Malsin, along with South Los Angeles activist/journalist/leader Damien Goodmon and Gary Gless, head of a citizens coalition, were among the 19 persons who testified in support of Mr. Ridley-Thomas’s motion.
In an almost surreal setting that is expected to play out over the next 6 months, aroused, aggressive residents of Culver Crest now are poised to win a second opportunity to publicly have their say about severely tightening regulations governing drilling in the Baldwin Hills oil field.
Hundreds of thousands of Angelenos, representing the city’s famous cultural cross-section, live within range of the old oil field that has been mined for 85 years.
When amendments to the Baldwin Hills Community Standards District ordinance are considered, Westside activists are optimistic that Mr. Ridley-Thomas — in whom they have renewed faith — will be able to substitute muscular rules in place of the perceived flabby regulations concerning oil drilling, health and safety.
They are as excited about their hard-nosed new Supervisor as they were disgusted a year ago at this time with the outgoing Supervisor.
The sharp change in environment showed immediately.
A smiling Mr. Ridley-Thomas promptly went to his people after the vote.
In the boiling sun, he stood among a sea of jubilant Culver City area supporters at the noon hour outside the Hall of Administration building in downtown Los Angeles after taking the first important step toward correcting what Ms. Brathwaite Burke has wrought.
Mr. Ridley-Thomas chatted animatedly with scores of optimistic activists, and he posed for a series of pictures.
The point was, he was back home.
This is where he had yearned to be, where he is most at ease, after years of living in Sacramento while serving in both chambers of the state legislature.
The next step for Mr. Ridley-Thomas — in what is by no means a certain revision or reversal — will be to meet with the County Regional Planning Commission.
Some of the players have changed on both sides since last year, creating an air of unpredictability.
Together, Mr. Ridley-Thomas and planners will map a strategy for revising and presumably replacing some of the governing regulations that are deemed either too lax to suit residents or too generous in the direction of PXP.
See http://ridley-thomas.lacounty.gov
