Is the Culver City Car Show in trouble — for a familiar reason?
The answer will be determined tonight at 7 at the City Council meeting, which was pushed back 24 hours by Presidents Day.
The recession’s impact on Culver City is affecting City Hall’s planning for a string of events it has backed for years.
Long-presumed fiscal support of favorite promotions, in the name of one of those bulky, bland, bureaucratic phrases, “economic development,” is being re-evaluated.
One reason is the recession and the other is that Downtown has been richly developed throughout the early years of the new century.
Given the commerce explosion Downtown, especially in the last five years, the district no longer is the ignored, wandering waif that it was through most of Culver City’s history.
Sources say that the future role of City Hall in entrenched, city-backed events — Fiesta La Ballona, the Summer Concert Series, Artwalk, the Fourth of July Fireworks — no longer can be assumed.
The Car Show has been a fixture for five years on a Saturday in May. It is scheduled for May 9 — if the money materializes.
Organized and sponsored by the Exchange Club, it is a grand civic display, spread across Downtown in the forms of hundreds of old and classic cars.
However, the Car Show never has paid its way, a thorny matter that is aired every year at this time.
It is as traditional for the sponsors to stand before the City Council and plead for a heavy handout as it has been to stage the event itself.
Every year, never smoothly, the Council has said “yes.”
But when the sponsors ask once again tonight for a fee waiver request, amounting to $10,000, the outcome is unclear.
City Hall, as noted, is retooling its thinking about handing money over to each person who deems his cause worthy.
Will the Council assent to helping some groups but not others? Or will it consent to a flat, low handout for groups that meet particular requirements?
The first test is imminent.
With three of the five Council members confronting this subject for the first time, City Hall sources speculated this morning that the vote may be “no” for the first time.
