[img]1789|right|Mr. Silbiger||no_popup[/img]In a shocking development that caught 99 percent of the school community in a trusting, relaxed, unsuspecting, flatfooted posture, the much-anticipated, long-assumed bond measure campaign – supposedly irreversibly (?) bound for the November ballot – died unexpectedly at last evening’s School Board meeting, member Karlo Silbiger the dominant architect of the daze-inducing move.
Anger and disbelief were the primary competing reactions of Board President Kathy Paspalis and Laura Chardiet, as their colleagues Prof. Pat Siever and Nancy Goldberg swiftly, firmly lined up beside Mr. Silbiger.
In unmasked disappointment, Ms. Paspalis formally closed the three-hour meeting on a note of irony.
Despite the fact the consultants-generated survey last month showed two-thirds support for the bond campaign among likely voters, she said the School Board would “adjourn in memory of not having a bond campaign.”
Ms. Paspalis and Ms. Chardiet both said that next June is the earliest that the next effort for a bond campaign can be brought before Culver City voters.
Here is what rankled both of them:
“We managed to kill the bond campaign even though the community’s reaction in the survey was very favorable,” Ms. Paspalis said afterward.
The Lesser Alternative
Inarguably from a passage standpoint, qualifying the bond measure for the November ballot was a far more attractive option than next June because three members will be elected to the School Board in November, drawing enthusiastic, motivated bond measure backers. That likelihood diminishes next June without a natural draw to bolster the bond measure.
Mr. Silbiger, Ms. Siever and Ms. Goldberg, meanwhile, steadfastly concurred that the School District was trying to push a complicated financial campaign onto a vastly under-informed community at an unpalatable, mercurial rate.
“The question,” said Mr. Silbiger in his frills-free opening, “is whether we have collected the requisite information so that we can make a decision in time to get on the November ballot. I do not believe we are ready.”
Too many crucial questions remained unaddressed with an unacceptably compressed period – only the month of July – in which to satisfy them, was the kernel of his brilliantly delivered prepared, lengthy statement of reasons for rejection.
“I have just spoken with the superintendent,” Mr. Silbiger said in the funereal setting after the meeting, “and he said this was exactly what we were supposed to do tonight, to look at how ready we are as a community to go forward with this.
“Obviously there are concerns that at least three members of the Board have, and a number of members of the community have.”
How does Mr. Silbiger weigh those opinions against the lopsidedly supportive survey results?
“The survey results is whether the people are willing to pay for a bond, not whether we should. Those are two different concepts. Our job as Board members is not to say, ‘Well, the survey says it can pass. We have got to put it on the ballot.’
“Our job is to ask, ‘Is this the right road forward, knowing what we know, knowing what we don’t know, and knowing what we still need to find out?’
‘I Am Not Ready’
“I don’t have the requisite information at this time to ask the voters to support this in November. That does not mean I won’t have it two months from now, five months from now. That is why the first thing I said to the superintendent was, ‘We have got to get started right now.’”
Count Supt. Dave LaRose among the most shocked by the unwarned sudden death of the financing scheme, massively more expensive to residents than the current popular parcel tax, but also packing an infinitely greater annual payoff.
Following the unscripted fireworks at the top of the horseshoe where members gather in the District offices, Mr. LaRose extemporaneously gave a 7-minute address in which he archly defended his staff and their methodology. He argued that the proper precautions meticulously had been taken, the speed limit never exceeded.
After the five Board members, in turn, staggered each other with their firmly planted stances, a longer-than-expected recess was called.
During this time out, the fighters went to their separate corners.
The team of shocked bond consultants – who had just finished giving an upbeat, speeded-up, arcane summary of a vaguely reported, predictably sunny survey of community opinions of the putative campaign – hurriedly huddled, privately, with the equally taken aback superintendent. Their expressions were as grave as cemetery tombstones in a blinding rainstorm.
No-Nonsense
His speech was plain, on-point, sparing of adjectives, devoid of emotion. In the tradition of Dragnet, just the facts, ma’m, was his intended attitude.
Going in, except for Mr. Silbiger, Ms. Goldberg and Ms. Siever, no one in the crowded room seemed to doubt the bond campaign was unstoppable.
Like a beautiful cake ruined when a fat person sits in it, the confidently anticipated celebration descended – nay, plunged – into an instant funeral, dominated by grim-faced pallbearers who repeatedly asked the District, “What is the hurry? Why are you rushing us?”
Ms. Chardiet said one salient fact distinguished her side from the Silbiger-Siever-Goldberg coalition:
She and Ms. Paspalis both have two children in the schools – their philosophical rivals do not. Ms. Goldberg’s and Ms. Siever’s children are grown. Mr. Silbiger does not have children.
Going in, the evening’s agenda was designed as a formful, bloodless exercise in which everyone knew his role – except for the three rebels who did not.
The runaway express that could not be slowed, much less stopped – careened into a ditch.
A minimum 4-to-1 Board vote was required to allow the admittedly hurry-up bond measure proposition be placed on the November ballot by the Aug. 9 deadline.
