Somebody probably should have whistled a time-out last night at City Hall so that both sides could gargle a little deeper to facilitate more crystallized speaking voices.
To explain:
After the City Council last month vaguely granted a request from neighborhood activists to notify certain, but unspecified, factions when building permits are filed at City Hall, the Community Development Director, Sol Blumenfeld, raised his hand last night to pose a rudimentary question:
How will the process work?
Actually, as a literary gentleman, Mr. Blumenfeld cloaked his inquiry in more elegant language. “We are looking for direction on how to make the notification process more inclusionary,” he said, the key to his thinking being lodged in the final word.
Passel of Questions
Furthermore, exactly who will be contacted?
Will it be carte blanche on permits?
Will a wide swath of organizations and individuals be notified each time a permit is recorded?
Mr. Blumenfeld did not inquire as to whether it would be necessary to hire a modern-day Town Crier to gallop through the neighborhoods of Culver City. But it may come to that because:
Among the critical unsolved puzzlers encircling this major revision of policy is the considerable matter of who will pay for these freshly grown, and hefty, costs?
The Motivation
Embracing the same early-detection principle that tends to choke off life-threatening diseases, residents say that the earlier they know about new development plans, the better they can organize to influence a more moderate vision.
To place Mr. Blumenfeld’s questions in context, activists could be pardoned for feeling frisky these chilly autumn evenings.
They have scored several important victories recently in their historically bumpy relationship with City Hall. Chief among them, they managed to derail the dreaded, arguably “oversized,” South Sepulveda Boulevard remake. Subsequently, they have gained a wider voice in influencing development plans across the city.
Clarification
Before the City Council — acting in its role as the Redevelopment Agency — could respond to Mr. Blumenfeld’s questions, two activists, Rich Waters and Eleanor Osgood, repeated their commonly misunderstood position on development.
In Mr. Waters’ words, “We are not against just any kind of growth. But let’s make it smart growth,” a harmonious physical fit for the neighborhood. Ms. Osgood said her Gateway neighborhood presently is being “inundated with condo conversions.”
Being government, the grateful activists realized that the City Council’s new policy was not as simplistic as granting it today and implementing it tomorrow.
Anyone for a Prediction?
The Redevelopment Agency’s first, second, third and fourth inherent instincts were to respond with historic predictability.
Form a committee.
Turns out, that won’t be necessary. One already exists.
The first Agency member to speak, Steve Rose, said that of four options presented — including starving the new policy to death — sending the thorny, bulky matter to the Economic Development Subcommittee was the most logical. Mr. Rose and Agency Chair Scott Malsin bookend the subcommittee.
Short-Lived Opposition
The only dissenting voice heard in Council Chambers came from Agency Vice Chair Gary Silbiger, the champion populist of City Hall. “The subject is not necessarily economic development,” he said. “This is just about people who want to be notified. I think a new subcommittee should be set up with the specific task of gathering information.”
“Nothing involves neighborhoods more than economic development,” countered Mayor Alan Corlin.
Unable to attract minimal interest in his proposition, Mr. Silbiger joined his colleagues in endorsing the Rose-Malsin subcommittee.
Nearly everyone went home happy from the low-key evening. Mr. Blumenfeld confidently estimated he can return in a month with a high-gloss new policy parked in the City Hall show window.
COUNCIL NOTES — Because of the Veteran’s Day holiday, next week’s City Council meeting has been shifted to Wednesday evening at 7…Mr. Waters probably produced the Line of the Night. Alluding to the frequency with which development crises have driven him to the Council Chambers’ microphone, he deadpanned, “You guys are going to make me a good speaker yet”…
