[img]9|left||remove link|no_popup[/img]As I prepare to walk out the door at mid-day to the Exchange Club’s community forum for School Board candidates, I am nagged by an old problem.
Communal apathy.
This probably should be filed under the rubric, What If They Gave a War and Nobody Came?
Where Are Parents Who Care?
What if they held a Culver City election and nobody cast a ballot?
Pardon my nearly invisible cynicism, but where are the popoffs who claim nearly every day of the year that by George, by golly, by thunder, the thousands of dedicated, involved, informed parents of the school community are upset with the way the School District is run.
Financial inefficiency. Putrid communications. Insufferable crowding.
I Have Heard It Before
Bluster, bluster. Through this month, I have had to don my Sherlock Holmes cap in order to smoke out the supposedly endemic unrest that is said to be poisoning the school community. The passion seems confined to about three people.
Four community forums this month — at various times of day, in various locations, on various days of the week — have been held to accommodate the most finicky voter.
This supposedly proud parent community ignored every forum.
The most optimistic view is that a total of 200 voters attended the four forums, and that doesn’t count repeat participants.
By the Numbers
From deep inside the innermost sanctum of the City Clerk’s office this morning, Dep. City Clerk Ela Valladares told the newspaper that Culver City has 29,298 registered voters.
This means all but 29,098 voters have caught the recently diagnosed School Board Election fever.
Statisticians tell us it is mathematically possible that four different combinations of 29,098 voters were out of town on Oct. 5, Oct. 16, Oct. 18 and Oct. 25. Evidently the statisticians do not vote in Culver City, either.
I missed the first forum because of a Jewish holiday. The start of other three had to be delayed in the faint hope that several more live ones would stumble in because they were lost or bored.
Meet the Powerhouses
Roger Maxwell, Scott Zeidman, Steve Gourley, Alan Elmont and Mike Eskridge form an all-star field for the two available School Board seats. Any combination of two should be effective once elected.
How is that for sheer luck for an apathetic community.
After interviewing them privately and sitting through three community forums with them, it can be said without equivocation that they are surely the best-informed, best qualified rotation of Board candidates Culver City has produced.
Each one knows the issues as well as his own pedigree. Not one has wavered, has been caught short, has shown a single dent in his knowledge file and ability to communicate.
Blowing a Chance
No matter where 29,098 voters have gone to become better acquainted with the contenders and their positions, they can’t come close to mining the information they could have learned by taking one hour to sit in on a forum.
Eighty percent of Culver City voters historically thumb their noses at casting a ballot, especially in School Board elections.
Who cares?
Culver City does not.
