On Wednesday evening at 7, in the Vets Auditorium, the experts architects and City Hall habitues will present their findings to the community.
As John Fisanotti, redevelopment project manager for the Community Development Dept., described the intense and whirlwind 72-hour invasion by the national experts:
Monday Listen to the community.
Tuesday Process and synthesize the information gained.
Wednesday Package it into a general plan that blends the wisdom of the specialists with the issues pertinent to Culver City.
For latecomers or casual passersby, Mr. Fisanotti, himself an expert, delivered a Tiffanys- like definition of the concept of sustainability.
Sustainability, he said, means to look at the way a city functions and find ways to improve efficiency by reducing the consumption of resources.
This has a broad impact across energy, transportation, land use, economic, and water and air quality.
As Grace Perdomo, an architect and the panel moderator, helpfully pointed out, she and her colleagues did not fly in to apply a template tourniquet that they may also have commended to the same size towns in Iowa or Montana or Minnesota.
Culver City, neighbors agree, not only is different, worthy of its own solution, it is unique.
What Is Distinctive
Two indisputable but contentious facts were held to be crucial:
With a population of 40,000, Culver City unquestionably qualifies as a small town. Logically, that conclusion would call for small town-type environmental solutions.
But because of its location, intimately adjacent to one of the worlds largest cities, should Culver City be seeking the environmental recommendations for an urban setting or for a suburb?
That stumper the panel was performing surgery on today.
While the panel of mavens analyzes and dissects the entire conundrum today and tomorrow, Culver City activists can take pride in having impressed the specialists with the breadth of their grasp of environmental nuances and more overt issues.
Residents Could Take a Bow
A sophisticated chorus of informed, invested, environmentally educated residents including June Walden, Maryanne Green, Jim Lamm, Loni Anderson, Alice Barriciello, Rich Kissel, Gary Russell stepped up to a microphone and talked in depth about the enlightenment and the advice they believe the community needs.
Although a measure of disappointment was expressed over the pocket-sized community turnout, accentuated by the cavernous auditorium setting, the savvy of the neighbors who participated shortly vanquished the perceived gloom.
A Vargas Production
The labor required to stage this marathon Town Hall event was driven inside of City Hall, by the organizer Cathy Vargas.
For neighbors who had not heard of the occasion, a banner is strung across Overland Avenue, in front of the Vets, waving a flag for the acronym SDAT the Sustainable Design Assessment Team.
Last night was hardly a free-for- all. The agenda was devoted to the residents. Otherwise, except for Mr. Fisanotti and Ms. Perdomo, the panelists were virtually silent.
Note-taking or Not?
How much the panelists were absorbing was still an open question by the end of the evening.
Possibly they were memorizing the concerns of residents. Hardly anyone was seen taking notes.
Several complaints were voiced that the subject of the three days was too broad to promise effective answers.
When residents probed, even pushed hard, for panelists to speak up and talk about general recommendations they favor, Ms. Perdomo kept the door to further discussion tightly shut.
Ms. Vargas talked further about the plan and the objectives.
The collaborative SDAT, she said, brings together design and planning professionals assembled from across the country to provide a roadmap for communities seeking to improve their sustainability as defined by a communitys ability to meet the environmental, economic and social equity needs of today without reducing the ability of future generations to meet their needs.
Naming Names
Besides Ms. Perdomo, the other seven panelists included Pasadena educator Dr. Julianna DelGado, a transportation specialist; two officials from Northampton, Mass., Karen Bouquillon, the citys waste management director, and Wayne Feiden, a city planner; Dr. Prakasam Tata, an environmental pollution and public health specialist from Chicago; the architect Peter Hind of Lincoln, Neb.; Erin Simmons from the staff of the American Institute of Architects; and Paul Connor of Washington, D.C., whose strength is resource conservation.
A Rose by Any Name
On the wonk-ish side, this is one of those sustained conferences where government-speak peppers much of the dialogue.
Calling residents residents is regarded as unacceptably pedestrian.
For these three days, residents have been elevated to the stature of stakeholders. They not only wrote stakeholders, they actually used the same term when speaking.
