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Don’t forget to strap on your seatbelt at tonight’s City Council meeting when two formerly feuding parties stand before the dais at 7 o’clock to testify that — what?
What ensues probably will be as close as we ever come to watching an old Wild West rodeo being staged in this civilized neighborhood
I do not know, and I am not sure that the developer of 4043 Irving Pl. and the two couples formally protesting his plans have their speeches finalized.
But I am intrigued at how, at sensitive times, the City Council has been cut out of the process that it was elected to supervise.
All in the name of anointing ordinary citizens as co-equals at the table with the professionals, the real players — builders who have millions invested and Council members who are quite qualified to make judgments.
Through possibly good intentions, the potential construction of a four-story, 28-condo mixed-use building less than a block south of Downtown is on the ledge of becoming a laughing stock.
Have You Been Negotiating, Too?
It almost seems as if everyone in Culver City has been negotiating a compromised configuration of 4043— except the most important people in the joint, the members of the City Council.
The four gentlemen who will vote on the project this evening have been reduced to standing in the corner, sucking their thumbs and hanging their heads, as if they were naughty boys being punished.
Except they aren’t.
And they never have been throughout the nearly one year that this never, never-ending debate has droned on.
Two weeks from tonight will mark the 10-month anniversary of the Planning Commission’s approval of developer Sal Gonzales’ plans for converting a parking lot into a profitable enterprise.
That, however, is not when the wheels first came off the rickety wagon that this once smart project has sagged into.
The Birth of an Idea
The City Council started down the sad path to political egalitarianism, handcuffing itself at crucial times when Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger convinced enough people in City Hall that traditional planning methodology was old-fashioned and populist planning should be the modern way.
It was an evolutionary process that seemed like a good idea when activists were standing around the birthing table.
Two years ago, Mr. Silbiger’s long-held plan — to not only involve/inform residents at the start of each new development, but to make them virtual co-equals at the table — began to gather steam.
Opening up meetings to ordinary citizens from the start of a development may have been sane enough. But there is a finite amount of decision-making room. As the public’s role swelled, the Council’s say-so contracted.
Soon enough, perhaps before Council members realized they had created a monster, Mr. Silbiger’s concept started galloping way, way beyond the Council’s grasp.
Before Council members seemed to realize they had been reduced from The Decision-makers to Part-Time Players, a raging feud broke out that pitted the developer, Mr. Gonzales, against the appellants, Judy and Michael Miller, Michelle and Jim Behnke, and dozens of their closest, noisiest and rather ill-behaved neighbors.
Council’s Passive Role
Judging from the large crowd’s borderline conduct at a meeting in Council Chambers last November, many acted as if they never had been to a community meeting where the most rudimentary rules of etiquette were violated.
Regardless of whether the neighbors’ points of view were valid, the rawness of their conduct was offensive.
As if they had a choice at a followup meeting in December, Council members passively said “Sure” when the neighbors and the developer asked for a further grace period to negotiate their disagreements.
With the newspaper’s disclosure last Friday that the developer is seeking an additional refund from City Hall regarding his $3.1 million purchase price for the property from the city before he will consent to an agreement, the picture remains muddled.
While it is not clear whether Mr. Gonzales will win his point tonight, the City Council, which also acts as the Redevelopment Agency, is certain to be tanned and rested. That is the historic fate of part-time players.
More than mildly unhappy with the members’ sideline role, Mayor Scott Malsin said this morning: “The Redevelopment Agency has been placed in a truly absurd spot, caught in the middle between two other parties.”
Will a surge of common sense by the four voting members of the Council allow them to unpile the players and reach a decision?
