Call Only if You Remember
Comes now Culver City residents.
Some demand they get a helping hand from City Hall to jog their memories about when City Council meetings are held.
Among oldtimers, no one can remember a meeting night other than Monday for the City Council. So Monday has been the night as long as any resident has been alive.
Where, Praytell, Is the Mystery?
They meet in one of the largest buildings in Culver City.
It is not a secret.
Looks to me as if all of those people with bad memories but good hearts devoted to a beautiful cause are trying to emulate Rocky Delgadillo, the City Attorney of Los Angeles, who, scandalously, cannot remember to pay his rudimentary bills.
It is elementary, my dear reader.
These Are the Salad Days
Your life may grow tougher later. But in these days if you cannot remember that the Council meets at 7 in Council Chambers on Monday night, how are you going to be an activist, or even a one-shot protestor?
To those who claim City Hall should blow presumably precious revenues on messaging them or is it massaging them? about the weekly meeting, I would suggest they search out new interests.
Councilman Happy to Co-operate
Naturally, these people who place entitlement ahead of personal responsibility, have an important ally in City Hall.
Wonder if these people used to get post-card invitations to attend grammar school.
From behind the Enabler Desk, good-hearted City Councilman Gary Silbiger frequently chastises City Hall on the dais.
He scolds them for neglecting to send sufficient post-card or e-mail reminders to the appropriate residential parties preferably weeks in advance when certain items of interest are coming up on the Council agenda.
He Is Right and He Is Wrong
Mr. Silbiger is correct to encourage ever wider community participation in Council meetings.
He is completely wrong, however, in faulting City Hall for not sending an ideally timed engraved invitation to each unmotivated person who may or may not be curious enough to stand up, get in the car and drive all the way to Council Chambers, possibly 5 to 7 minutes from home.
On many Monday nights, the crowd at Council meetings is small enough for me to take each one home in my little car.
Throwing Money Down a Sewer
For certain high-profile Council meetings, do you realize that City Hall messages 10,000 Culver City residents?
Do you realize that City Hall squanders $75,000 a year post-carding or otherwise contacting residents about the date and time of their special-interest Council meeting?
It is said that 80 percent of Culver City is online. How much effort is required to dial culvercity.org?
Democrats Are in Favor
I raise this deeply annoying subject for the second time in three days because two persons of whom I am fond brought it up again Wednesday night.
When the discussion at the Democratic Club meeting curved into a review of last Mondays City Council meeting, immediate past president Tom Camarella spoke up.
He was mad because notification of a crucial Council meeting had not been mailed to residents in a timely manner. Club President Greg Valtierra strongly seconded Mr. Cs critique, and the crowd urged them on.
Succinct Description
As positive as I am that they are wrong, I am equally certain this entitled feeling will not go away until someone on the City Council stands up and describes it in one appropriate word.
Nuts.
