It may seem as if it were years ago when a whole baseball team’s worth of candidates for the City Council promised to restore civility and collegiality to the dais, which sometimes resembled the old Olympic Auditorium at 18th and Grand.
Last Monday night, a scant 12 months after three of them were voted in, their promises fluttered over City Hall and dovetailed into a synchronized symphony of mellifluous melodies.
Tranquility knocked on the door of Council Chambers.
The City Council seized on a project that often-isolated Gary Silbiger has been trumpeting for hundreds of meetings without ever affecting the room temperature.
Something Had to Change
Everybody but Mr. Silbiger pinched his nostrils when the subject of a Youth Advisory Commission was raised. Fumigation arrangements were made,
And then something wonderful and a little inexplicable happened at the most recent meeting — the Council piled onto Mr. Silbiger’s lonely bandwagon.
But first the Council did a little cosmetic surgery that is not shallow — it carries a lifetime guarantee.
They dusted off Mr. Silbiger’s stiff, creaky creation, and they vowed a limited makeover. They put a snappy new dress over the torso of the project. They shined its shoes. They drastically altered its hairdo, and the reupholstered Youth Advisory Commission looked like a new plan with a familiar name.
What made the Council’s sudden embrace of a long-snubbed concept so striking was that the Silbiger idea merely underwent a tweaking, not an overhaul.
The peacemaker, the Dr. Jekyll, was Andy Weissman, the new Mayor.
Since Mr. Silbiger had steadfastly refused to alter his script, Mr. Weissman did it for him.
A Fix Was Mandatory
This thing has been floating around the ceiling of City Hall for what feels like a generation, and many people were sick of hearing about it.
Most recently, the Parks and Recreation Commission has been studying the concept, and in about 5 minutes, members concluded the notion of a stand-alone youth commission would be too expensive in this meltdown atmosphere.
Well, said Mr. Weissman, there already is an array of teen clubs around town, including the city-sponsored Teen Center.
If a couple people from the Teen Center and a couple from the Parks Commission studied this almost-lifeless body, perhaps they could design a way for a youth commission to function under the broad banner of the Teen Center, obviating the need for new expenses.
Maybe it would not have the appearance of unremitting independence that Mr. Silbiger has fought for, but at least it would have a chance to breathe and go through a tryout — without costing strapped City Hall.
Little else was different on Monday night. There were barely enough teens in Council Chambers to stock a park bench. The only reason that some of them were there was that Mr. Silbiger had made a special trip to Culver City High School shortly before the meeting in hopes of shooing some of them over to City Hall.
Everybody on the dais was impressed with the teens’ commitment, but that song has been played before.
Vice Mayor Christopher Armenta called the unanimous vote “a good starting point” for an idea that he likes. “Now it has the chance to grow into something more substantial,” he said.
Mr. Armenta, often but not always, is sympathetic to Mr. Silbiger’s garden of innovative ideas. Significantly, he is steadily winning new layers of respect weekly from his colleagues as a fair and independent arbiter of issues, especially the explosive ones.
He called Mr. Weissman’s edited version of a Youth Advisory Commission “a very good compromise. This gives the idea a chance to see if it will grow.”
The father of a college student at Santa Clara University — Alexander Armenta — the Vice Mayor believes the birthing of a youth commission is a workable concept for a practical reason.
“This commission is just what high school students are looking for,” Mr. Armenta said.
“Many find themselves in the same position that I went through with my son. They are scrambling to become involved in civic service so they can attach it to their resumes for college. Any way that they can gain an edge in gaining admission.”
What tipped the balance for him, said Councilman Scott Malsin, was Mr. Weissman’s surgical version of the Silbiger plan.
He is more skeptical about the plan taking off than the Vice Mayor.
“Whether it is going to work,” said Mr. Malsin, “is something we will have to see about in the future. The key was that Andy’s suggestion made perfectly good sense to me.
“Now if it had required new funding, then I could not have supported it.
“I really don’t believe there is strong interest in this idea among young people in Culver City. The response to the survey to determine the level of interest was very, very weak. But we will see.”
