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Everyone within shouting distance of City Hall knows that Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger wants the city to hire an animal control officer as badly as he wants the city to certify a youth advisory commission.
The trouble is that for the term and a half that he has been an elected official, Mr. Silbiger seldom if ever has acknowledged that any program he wants — and just has to have or he will hold his breath and turn blue — must endure a process. My goodness, man, did you just float in from the moon? This is how governments operate in the post-Adam and Eve Era.
If Mr. Silbiger has patience, mazel tov. He has shrewdly kept it masked.
He lives in the “Now” time zone. It has to happen immediately, not in five minutes.
His latest gaffe smells embarrassingly spectacular.
Why does he insist on repeatedly embarrassing himself?
He is a nice man. I used to write essays saying that I feel sorry for him when I see rhetorical egg splattering all over his dumbfounded face because he is so decent.
The Dimension of Ignorance
The first two items that he has confoundingly managed to place on Monday evening’s City Council agenda are so embryonic, so goofily premature, that no thoughtful adult could take them seriously.
To return to the beginning, hiring an animal control officer is an ignorant, wildly unnecessary, dangerously expensive idea.
However, for some populist politicians, ignorance never is a barrier.
What can Mr. Silbiger be thinking? There must be at least 75 mandatory details involved in establishing an animal control program that must be steeply researched.
The undertaking is almost unbelievably complicated.
Defying rationality, Mr. Silbiger simplistically is acting as if he merely is installing a fire plug at the corner of Duquesne and Culver, or buying a candy bar at the Jackson Market.
Costs Need to be Seriously Examined
Mr. Silbiger has been warned for months in his latest attempt to sell this boondoggle that the program is likely to cost $400,000 a year while he is claiming Culver City can buy its way in on the cheap, at $129,000.
One person who has worked around City Hall for more than 10 years said today it was “stunningly irresponsible” of Mr. Silbiger and City Councilman Chris Armenta — the Council’s subcommittee on animal control — to breathlessly try and win approval of two distinct options for animal shelters “when it doesn’t look as if they have done more than one minute of research.”
I have no idea what Mr. Silbiger is trying to prove by driving a bulldozer into the side of a building, politically speaking, instead of merely veering 10 feet to the right or 10 feet to the left and driving around the building to avoid striking anything.
Why does he insist on being confrontational?
Objectively speaking, pushing his colleagues to the point of rage in order to secure an animal control officer is a serious candidate for the worst idea Mr. Silbiger has promoted, and about 85 percent of his notions have been clunkers or less.
Let the circus begin.
A flyer has been circulating for a few days inviting the most passionate partisans to pour into Council Chambers by 7 o’clock Monday evening to pressure three members of the Council into supporting, as the lady above said, a giant slab of political irresponsibility.
