It was good to see Robert Zirgulis at last Tuesday’s School Board meeting at City Hall.
Mr. Zirgulis, who previously ran for School Board on a campaign of the School District getting Big Money from Big Oil for operating environmentally safe oil drilling in Culver City's hills and surrounds, hasn't been heard from since British Petroleum demonstrated how unlikely it was for Big Oil to run environmentally safe oil drilling in New Orleans.
Subsequently, Mr. Zirgulis ran for City Council on the platform of environmentally safe oil drilling, criticizing the City Council for fighting Big Oil's so-called safety measures for the highly risky oil drilling around Culver City, and demanding that traffic light cameras be removed from Culver City's busiest and most dangerous intersections.
As of last week, Mr. Zirgulis is taking his alternate campaigns back to the School Board where he again has mentioned environmentally safe oil drilling and a “sale-leaseback” of the District's rotted Natatorium.
The District leaders and the District's environmentalists have decided to save money with a school-wide solar plan that has just been sent out by the District to solar companies — for bid rather than making money from environmentally safe oil drilling being overseen by a large national oil company proposing to make obscene profits.
While this should be the end of any serious enquiry into Mr. Zirgulis's plan to run for the School Board, I am afraid it is not.
Just as silly, perverse and dangerous as Mr. Zirgulis's plan for environmentally safe oil drilling is, Mr. Zirgulis's proposal to sell and lease back the Natatorium is dumber.
As Mr. Zirgulis should know from his years of experience as a real estate licensee, to make money from a sale-leaseback, the property, which would be sold by the District and then leased back from the new owner must be worth something.
The District cannot sell the Natatorium to anyone for $10,000,000 or any other amount because the Natatorium is not worth anything, zero, zilch, nada.
Thus, no one would buy it, and having sold it, the School District would have no reason to lease “back” a building worth nothing, but would cost more money to repair than the District would make in the hallucination Mr. Zirgulis calls a “sale-leaseback.”
Notwithstanding Mr. Zirgulis's challenging ideas, I can't help admiring Mr. Zirgulis for running in three consecutive elections for two different offices, especially with the rock-solid proposals he has for both the city and the School District.
Mr. Gourley, a member of the School Board and a former City Councilman, may be contacted at stevengourley@ca.rr.com
