Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger’s years-long dream of a training-grounds Youth Advisory Commission remains the stuff you only can see after you go to sleep.
Perhaps he was not rebuffed as gruffly by the new three-person majority on the City Council last year as he was in ’04, ’05 and ’06 by his former colleagues on the Council.
But the engine of his unformed idea is choking and sputtering to a stall one more time.
In the absence of evidence that anything has changed from the last four years, the Council voted 4 to 1 to send the stillborn idea back to the Parks and Recreation Commission for further study.
Their Thoughts Are Elsewhere
With the freedom of summer vacation beckoning for students, everyone but Mr. Silbiger and his ally Chris Armenta agreed that this was the wrong time to try to recruit and organize teenagers.
The Council attached a caveat to its direction-order, saying that a fleshed-out survey/proposal should be ready to present to Culver City students in September when school resumes.
Councilman Andy Weissman probably was speaking for the majority on the dais when he said, “I don’t think there is a crying, unmet need out there for a youth commission.”
In Search of a Reason
If there is, Mr. Weissman said, he expects the Parks and Recreation Commission to discover the change this summer. Sending the revived proposal back to the Parks Commission for updating is proper, he said, “because making recommendations is their job.
“I am not satisfied that there is a need. But maybe there is. There has been no new analysis since ’06. I don’t think we ought to make a decision without updated analysis.”
With nary a sign of interest from Culver City teenagers — just as before — and no structural suggestions from the Vice Mayor except that he thinks it is a good idea — just as before — Mr. Weissman said, “This is truly deja vu all over.”
Periodically throughout his six years on the City Council, like bread crumbs dropped on along a trail through a thick forest, Mr. Silbiger has revived his so far unpopular notion of a youth commission.
Council Asks, Vice Mayor Obliges
He introduced his presentation dramatically last night by saying that a Youth Advisory Commission “may be one of the most important steps we take, as a Council, this year. Youth are the future of our country.”
Why now? his former and present Council colleagues have asked Mr. Silbiger.
“There is no better way to build leadership among youth,” Mr. Silbiger said last night. “This idea is only positive. There is no downside.”
One of the bugaboos that has haunted Mr. Silbiger and, equally, reinforced the resistance of his rivals is that teenagers themselves have displayed little appetite for such an organization.
If It Worked Once
Mr. Silbiger countered that when the Council most recently rejected his plan two years ago, he stitched together his own teen council. When he put out a call, he said, 25 teens responded, and they met monthly for a year. There is no reason that 25 or more students wouldn’t respond, he argued, when the power of City Hall is behind a recruiting call.
But Mayor Scott Malsin, Councilman Mehaul O’Leary and Mr. Weissman were skeptical.
Especially since only two teenagers showed up at the meeting to testify. Both former members of Mr. Silbiger’s private, now-extinct group, and only one of them is expected to be in town after the new school term starts.
Mr. Weissman and Mr. O’Leary were critical of the lack of structure and the absence of meaningful detail in the Vice Mayor’s idea.
Mr. O’Leary said that initially he was in favor of a youth commission — until he delved into the history of the project. “Shocked” by incomplete survey findings and failures to follow-through by earlier research parties, Mr. O’Leary scolded the Vice Mayor. “You have to take some responsibility” for the unfinished research, he said.
Community Benefits
The Silbiger Gallery also played a prominent role when the City Council resumed its volatile debate over what physical bonuses developers of the Washington-National light rail project area will provide for residents.
With builders and their representatives pressing for approval of plans formulated at a recent community meeting so they can get on with the project, Mr. Silbiger and his ally Chris Armenta convinced colleagues the community sampling was too small.
And therein lies a tale. But first:
Hewing to a suggestion made earlier in the evening by East Side activist Marta Zaragoza that a decision be delayed until after her neighborhood group meets on Friday, June 27, at Syd Kronenthal Park, the Council put off a final vote until July 14.
Are Three Sufficient?
The argument that followed barely acknowledged whether developers would provide a so-called pocket park or streetscape improvements in exchange for building concessions.
Instead, with Mr. Armenta and Mr. Silbiger driving the debate, Council members punched and jabbed, as they frequently have lately, over whether City Hall fulfilled its duty by notifying a sufficient number of neighbors to attend the May 21 community meeting.
2,000 Equals 3
Sol Blumenfeld, the Community Development Director, said that a mailing was made to more than 2,000 households, an advertisement was run in the Culver City Observer, and still only three people showed up.
Mr. Silbiger and Mr. Armenta maintain that something is wrong about the mailings — whether it is the content, the timing or the destinations. “We know so much depends on the content of the notices,” Mr. Silbiger said.
The other side has shrugged and concluded that you can’t force people to leave their homes and travel to City Hall for a meeting.
“I can’t accept that three people are representative,” said Mr. Armenta. “This is a huge project with tremendous implications.”
He suggested that the June 27 meeting of the East Side Neighborhood Alliance by converted into a workshop on what community benefits residents would like when the project goes up. Mr. O’Leary, who was critical of the content of the mailing, seconded the motion, and it passed.
Mr. Armenta suggested including a light rail discussion at the meeting because the subject is kind of sexy and might spike the crowd. Mr. Weissman opposed the special attraction idea on the grounds it would detract from the main theme. It was left clouded.
At the end, Mr. Weissman sounded skeptical. “I will be interested to see if, after this, thr community turnout dramatically improves.”
