There are many reasons to be politically active:
• To ensure that government policy reflects your values and beliefs,
• To stay astute and aware,
• To serve your community.
However, the most important impetus for involvement revolves around the fact that communities that do not keep a watchful eye on their politicians and bureaucrats are destined for corruption, trickery and dishonesty.
While every politician prepares a stock answer during his or her campaign for office about giving back to the community or making the city a better place for all children, too many who are attracted to politics are the same people whose moral fiber requires constant supervision.
Only when the people show up for meetings, read agendas and minutes, dissect budgets, and force local newspapers to do their job in providing real investigative journalism (rather than merely re-printing approved press releases) that we keep politicians honest and community interests protected.
The common response to the disgusting behavior of the so-called leaders in neighboring Bell has been outrage that city leaders would take advantage of that impoverished community.
Besides paying part-time City Council members almost $100,000 per year, they gave exorbitant fees for 10-minute committee meetings and provided contracts for city staff so completely out of the mainstream that leaders in Bell should be ashamed and immediately recalled.
However, the community is not an innocent bystander unaware of the corrupt politicians robbing their city’s coffers. Every decision that has put that community in financial turmoil was made at a public City Council meeting. Every agreement with the City Manager that more than doubled his salary in recent years as the country headed deeper into recession, is a public document. Every budget that approved financial practices plunging the city into debt was made while the entire community could have been watching. But they weren’t.
People often get the government that they deserve.
A Few Side Benefits
As long as we decide that watching TV or spending time with friends is more important than paying even minimal attention to the actions of our local leaders, we will pay the consequences.
Culver City is absolutely not Bell.
However, the Culver City community needs to maintain vigilant oversight of our local institutions.
Our City Council recently hired a new City Manager, John Nachbar.
He will begin next Monday with a contract approved by the Council at a public meeting on July 12. The meeting was broadcast live on channel 35 and available as a podcast online. The contract has been available on the city’s website for over weeks. How many of us have taken the time to review this central issue? How many of us are emulating the behaviors that got the Bell community in so much trouble?
While Mr. Nachbar is not getting $800,000 (his base salary is about $245,000), there are worrisome clauses, especially for a community as small as ours. Mr. Nachbar will receive up to $20,000 for moving expenses and temporary housing. Mr. Nachbar will receive $7,200 each year in car allowance, which assumes that he must drive 300 miles each and every week (amazing in a community of only 5 square miles).
Most troubling, Mr. Nachbar will receive a $17,500 “retention bonus” each and every year that he stays employed in Culver City. Has it become so difficult to retain city staff that we have to pay them extra money to not leave?
Again, Culver City is not Bell. These contractual agreements made by our City Council still equate to a contract about $500,000 less than Bell’s former employee. The bigger issue relates to what percentage of our 40,000 residents and 23,000 voters actually knew all of those details? Members of the Bell community are getting organized and demanding changes, trying to right the sinking ship.
However, the easiest way to protect against corruption is to be vigilant in stopping it before it starts.
Mr. Silbiger, a member of the School Board, may be contacted at ksilbiger@juno.com
