She was scheduled to undergo surgery today, and she will submit to her regular dialysis treatment tomorrow.
“If she is okay after that, and if she gives me her blessing, I will run,” Mr. Vera said.
Supposedly, the three-term Councilman who is in his early seventies had rendered a binding decision last month. On the day of the filing deadline, Friday, Jan. 13, he shocked the Culver City political world by passively declining to file. Even then, mixed signals were being telegraphed to the people who count.
Throughout that day, Mr. Vera reinforced the widely-held notion that he was running. He assured the deputy clerk, by telephone, that he would report to City Hall before it closed. Only when 5:30 came did the realization strike that, by inaction, he had chosen not to run.
The Point of Ignition
How many thunderclaps can you wring from one political campaign?
Mr. Vera’s decision to withdraw unexpectedly climbed out of the grave during an overheated moment near the end of an unusually emotional Council meeting.
Furious that he was on the losing end of stormy community issue, Mr. Vera said he would show those who had opposed him by reinserting himself in the April 11 election as a write-in candidate.
He was sizzling because a majority of his Council colleagues adamantly opposed his bid to again delay a controversial street-parking ban on recreational vehicles.
Glaring toward his colleagues after adjourning the meeting, Mr. Vera told thefrontpageonline.com, “They really (ticked) me off.”
No stranger to outbursts, the mayor said he was so angry that he was inclined to vacate the dais immediately and turn the meeting over to the vice mayor. By turn, he aimed flaming words at the City Council and conciliatory, rally-the-troops messages to the largely pro-RV audience.
Establishing himself at the outset of a two-hour debate as being firmly in the pro-RV camp, Mr. Vera steadily lost ground. Momentum never was on his side. The more his opposition prevailed, the more he seethed.
In a departure from respected City Council custom, Mr. Vera directly addressed the large, wrought crowd in Council Chambers numerous times.
Eschewing his presumed neutral role as the referee, he assured RV owners that somehow a compromise was within reach. He pledged to do everything necessary to forge a settlement, regardless of what his colleagues think or do.
After failing to convince the City Council that a subcommittee should be formed to help mediate the fast-burning dispute with City Hall, Mr. Vera reverted to a more familiar stance.
Spurning the notion of operating as a team player, he tried the paternal touch, which always works for him. It has a double effect of soothing the audience with a warm, rinsing feeling and convincing the majority to swing their support toward him.
Mr. Vera told the aroused RV owners that he, alone, would aggressively pursue a compromise plan. Anyone interested in making peace, he said, should telephone him or visit his store.
Skepticism Dominates Reactions
Absent from this latest decision by Mr. Vera was the awe with which last month’s shocking news was greeted. The loudest sound this time was from skeptics.
Since the mayor said he was serious, about running, Dep. City Clerk Ela Valladares was busy this morning. She verified the state’s modest signature requirements. Mr. Vera must obtain between twenty and thirty if he truly intends to become a write-in candidate on the April 11 ballot.
Tuesday morning, thefrontpageonline.com asked each of Mr. Vera’s four City Council colleagues, Do you believe he will run?
Carol Gross: “I don’t know.”
Gary Silbiger: “”Oh, gosh, you will have to ask him.”
Alan Corlin: “He is not running.”
Steve Rose: “No.”
The always-crowded Vera bandwagon may not fill up so fast. For example, Councilman Corlin called the mayor’s supposed bombshell “an interesting statement. But he is not running. I don’t see how he can.”
You need a scorecard these days to track Mr. Vera’s will-he or won’t-he calls.
Two years ago this spring, Mr. Vera told The Front Page that he would run again. Periodically, he repeated the vow to the other Culver City newspapers before this week’s indecision.
Mr. Vera’s seeming change of heart could be traced to his emotional entwinement in the ugliest Council debate of the winter season, over where RVs should be parked, in storage areas or on the street, any street. He perspired. His eyes watered. His voice occasionally quavered.
He snapped a whip at his Council teammates. Bitterly, he accused them of being needlessly inflexible toward RV owners who simply want to park on the city’s streets.
For the last two months, the new RV ordinance has been dangling in limbo. The pending law would forbid owners from regularly parking their RVs on city streets, although there would be exceptions. Both camps appeared to be in harmony on the popular suggestion by RV owners that permits be granted only to Culver City residents, separating the authentic hometown RV owners from less desirable types.
Mr. Corlin objected to the permit plea on the grounds that enforcement would soon turn into time-gobbling“a bureaucratic nightmare.”
Sparked by a spate of recent complaints, the ordinance appears to target homeless or otherwise illegal, messy persons who are fouling neighborhoods by keeping their RVs in one place for long stretches of time.
Some residents charge that RVs generally are a source of blight. When parked, they complain, RVs block views. Unintentionally, they add, oversized vehicles can be safety hazards.
Mood of the Crowd
The crowd started out in a raucous mood. From there, their conduct deteriorated. Contrary to the code of expected demeanor at public meetings, they shouted out protests whenever the spirit moved them.
At the end of an evening when the rules of traditional conduct had taken a bizarre battering, the divided City Council voted three to two to implement the ordinance in thirty days, early March.
Meanwhile, partisans on both sides were invited to continue to send their comments to City Hall or the city’s Web site, culvercity.org.
Mayor Left No Doubt
Like ivy climbing a wall, Mr. Vera’s stentorian tones nearly shook the walls of the Council Chambers.
Twenty members of the public — split in their views —spoke during the official comment period. Plenty more than that called out abstractly, from deep in the audience, during the ensuing salty discussion.
While the two sides wrestled in sloppy mud, Mr. Vera’s rapidly expanding fury was the engine that drove the argument.
What opened as a merely tough debate soon frayed, devolving into a shaggy-edged verbal brawl with bar-room overtones. Civility seemed to surrender.
The louder the mayor’s hard-charging voice became — in defense of the RV owners — the rowdier the crowd seemed to grow.
The outcome was apparent early to all in the room. Three City Council members, Ms. Gross, who was the hardliner leading the opposing side, Mr. Rose and Mr. Corlin, plainly favored implementing the parking ban as soon as possible.
Without anything tangible to appease the increasingly upset crowd, Mr. Vera vaguely promised the pro-RV partisans a solution sometime in the future. That failed to mollify anyone.
Decorum ducked out the door and down the street. For a few minutes, it appeared that the rule of order was threatened.
In the midst of this, Mr. Vera even raised his voice to talk over his old friend Ms. Gross. She was in the twelfth minute of a presentation.
He made his voice louder. First she tried to continue. Then she got mad. Normally allies, the two flung sizzling words at each other. Mr. Vera won a few chuckles and a smattering of applause when he said Council members should be restricted to three-minute comments.
This scarcely tamed the audience. Their mood grew darker, their calls to the dais harsher. The shouts were random, regular, shrill, occasionally vulgar.
It was the kind of raw behavior that never is heard, much less tolerated, in Council Chambers.
Ms. Gross, Mr. Corlin and Mr. Rose separately admonished persons in the crowd for their verbal unruliness. But Mr. Vera never did. The audience loved him for that.
“They don’t know what they’re doing,” Bob Young, a disappointed RV owner, grumbled later. “They couldn’t even answer my question about what constitutes an oversized vehicle. They didn’t do their homework.”
COUNCIL NOTES — Monday morning, for the second time in a month, the odious smell of gasses from a nearby oil well drilling wafted up the hill to Culver Crest. Numerous emergency agencies responded…The activist Egon Monostory continued his long-running feud with Councilman Rose…Fire Chief Jeff Eastman was named to the L.A. County Emergency Medical Services Commission, a policy-making body…The Julian Dixon Library will be closed for two weeks, from Wednesday, Feb. 15, through Wednesday, March 1, to improve parking conditions…Mayor Vera privately explained what he meant at last week’s Town Hall meeting when he linked the term “blackmail” to last October’s vote on the two mobile home parks on Grandview Boulevard. Mr. Rose strongly criticized him for using such an incendiary word. He wondered aloud what the mayor was talking about. Blackmail, said Mr. Vera, referred to the residents of the two parks who changed their minds about whether they wanted to be included in a city redevelopment project. When they chose to be included and became mad when the Redevelopment Agency voted to exclude them, that felt like blackmail, the mayor said…
