Impressions, both surprising and disappointing, from last night’s City Council meeting:
Item No. 1: You may not want to travel cross-country, by car, with Robert Zirgulis in the passenger seat because sleep likely would convert into an artifact of the increasingly distant past.
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Robert Zirgulis, where he is comfortable, in the middle of traffic
On the second unused hand, the fiery City Council candidate has turned his bid for office into a commendable Conscience of the Community campaign, lashing out at vulnerable civic targets.
Like 20th century classic populist politicians, sometimes you feel a surge of enthusiasm for him, and you want to jump onto the running board of his pocket-sized bandwagon. At other, exasperating times, you want to hand him a GPS designed for the moon.
For weeks, in his patently unsubtle way, Mr. Zirgulis has been unsmilingly haranguing the City Council to either kill red light traffic cameras or at least refine the fines to a level an unemployed laborer can cover.
He holds that the $500 fines are obscene, that the municipal motivation of revenue raising is nakedly greedy, that the designated intersections are traps, and besides, City Hall derives too small of a slice, $150, from which further costs are subtracted.
Putting aside the merits of Mr. Zirgulis’s arguments, did you know that running a red light signal in California — miles distant from traffic cameras — also carries a kick to the belly $500 fine?
What Are We Arguing Over?
I don’t hear any drivers objecting.
Could it be because it seems so much more civil and tolerably personal to receive a fire-hot $500 ticket from the warm, loving clutches of a cop than receiving a chilling, impersonal notification by mail that you have been nailed by a roving, little-noticed camera?
Here is an explanation intended to soothe rattled red-light victims:
The actual fines, in both cases, are $100. The remaining 80 percent of the assessment was tacked on by legislators in Sacramento, I assume, to defray their bare-necessity costs of living away from home.
Since the price tag is identical, with and without cameras, it seems to me, an imperturbable gentleman of calm reflection, that ending the cameras would not serve a useful purpose.
Here is the punchline:
A keen-eyed judge of my acquaintance, who has interviewed parades of creative candid camera drivers, said the boys and girls got religion by paying $500 and doing traffic school. Darned few second-time offenders, he found.
I can attest to the verity of that claim.
Ten years ago, I was among the pioneer victims of the dreaded cameras. Returning from El Segundo one late evening, I became an unwitting poster boy at Green Valley and Sepulveda, I recall. Nobody was around, I thought. Weeks later, I examined the dreaded photographs that would not be mistaken for the Mona Lisa. After flashing anger and briefly considering a mistaken-identity plea on the grounds it was my recently surgically separated Siamese twin brother, I reached for my wallet.
Ever since, when I strategically pass through a camera’d intersection, I envision a formerly fetching former Mrs. Noonan. It always works. Suddenly I slow to a crawl. The camera-fed penalty is quite worthwhile, Mr. Zirgulis.
Item No. 2: Finally and briefly, there was School Board member Karlo Silbiger’s appearance before the City Council. One person in Council Chambers branded his working visit “weird.”
She was correct.
Young Mr. Silbiger committed an inexcusable faux pas.
On his own, as if he still were a private citizen, he came to petition the Council, a glaring gaffe that should draw a public rebuke from School Board President Steve Gourley at next Tuesday’s meeting. Mr. Gourley, perhaps the red-light traffic camera of Culver City politicians, possesses the ideal temperament to issue a verbal spanking. I will look for it.
Mr. Silbiger has been accustomed to operating like a free agent, probably all of his life.
After three months on the School Board, however, he should not have required a public reminder that he is a member of a five-person team. Alone, he is a single, powerless vote.
Equipped with an enviably savvy mind, Mr. Silbiger has a brilliant future in politics. He should consider the needed scolding an unrepeatable mis-step, and move on.
