A response to a community activist:
An inherent danger in becoming a passionate advocate for a single cause is that all of one’s allied interests, like stuffing sausage, are channeled through a single, fairly narrow, prism.
This may be the plight of reader Cary Anderson, who surely has performed an exceptional service for City Hall by assembling a mountain of data on perceived residential parking infractions.
Through his exhaustive documentation, Mr. Anderson may have saved City Hall researchers three or four months’ work.
In the process, however, Mr. Anderson’s admirable enthusiasm for his project has become suffused with an ever-shrinking viewpoint.
Our original thesis stands:
If you move in next door to an airport, you have no legitimate grounds to complain about noise.
As for Mr. Anderson, living within a couple blocks of perhaps the most densely traveled intersections in Culver City, you are not entitled to be treated as if you were living on a mountaintop adjacent to a monastery for blind monks.
For as long as all of us have been alive, there has been a natural and vacillating tension between residents and business interests for control of the community steering wheel.
Residents are not going to win this one.
Striking a balance of power is a normal communal objective. But for bean-counters, the revenue and related advantages that businesses generate will give commerce the nod every time.
Mr. Anderson presents us with a precise, demonstrable count of Culver City’s sins.
But he does not categorize or prioritize the alleged sins. Further, objectivity is not an option. The skewered examples all are characterized within the context of parking in what he calls the Downtown Neighborhood. Every scenario is fire engine red. All of the cited sins are rated G for Grievous.
How to Please Everybody?
Many, hopefully most, residents understand that governing a community is nearly as imprecise of an art as conducting a war. Numerous factors are beyond the control of City Hall. Satisfaction definitely is not guaranteed.
Running the city is tantamount to feeding a dozen hungry and angry 10-year-olds simultaneously. The last three raucous kids to be fed will stir enough noise to be heard a block away.
Similarly, certain neighborhoods always will be convinced they are being discriminated against.
Principle No. 2 in running a city is:
The customer is not always right.
This is true mainly because the customer is territorial, or selfish, concerned with the little picture, his property, block or neighborhood.
How to be Way Wrong
The incivil screaming match that has erupted — and seemingly devolved into a traveling shell game — over the developer Sal Gonzales’ intentions for 4043 Irving Pl. is the most recent example of the insensitive customer being wrong.
Nothing is wrong with neighbors organizing and objecting.
But the conduct I have seen displayed by some residents has been embarrassing. Their loud, raw-edged, nearly out-of-control treatment of Mr. Gonzales has bordered on shameful. No wonder they have been unable to strike an agreement.
In summation, to activists in all neighborhoods:
Make your strongest argument. Then step back and let the elected decision-makers determine the outcome.
Activists tend to confuse their authority and influence with the power of the City Council and other designated bodies.
Neighbors are entitled to be upset with the result of a ruling. But restrict your displeasure to a stage whisper. Nearly 40,000 others also would like to be heard. Many of them feel as cementedly righteous as you.
