In the City Council’s recently renewed enthusiasm to broaden the community’s role in future development plans, Steve Rose, the lone conservative on the Council, wonders if his colleagues have gone too far.
Although the details are far from being finalized, the City Council has approved a concept to increase notification to the public — probably a combination of individuals and neighborhood organizations — on building permit applications filed at City Hall.
Mr. Rose poses numerous questions whose potential answers worry him.
He asks:
“At what stage of the permit process do we notify the public?
“All permits or some? Where do we draw the line?
“When a neighbor wants to build a second floor, do we send out public notices?
“Do we send out this information by mail — which is expensive?
“If so, who pays the costs? The developer or the homeowner?”
By agreeing to widen the public’s role as an influential opinion-shaper on many or all projects, Mr. Rose worries that such a change could slow up or stymie development across Culver City.
Which, he suspects, is the objective of his most liberal colleague, Gary Silbiger.
“I think Gary’s goal is to create such an impossible-to-manage development process that it turns into anarchy,” Mr. Rose said this morning.
What Are the Qualifications?
He asks if the prestigious label of “activist” is being handed out willy-nilly to any person who speaks up, in order to create the impression that an exaggerated state of turmoil exists in the community.
Following the squeaky wheel principle, Mr. Rose said activists attract an amplified amount of attention because protestors routinely claim to represent the thinking of unseen dozens or hundreds.
“But is that really true?” asks the skeptical Councilman “When an activist from the Gateway association stands up to speak, how many people does he represent?
“Hundreds? A few? Or just himself?”
Speaking with Authority
As chief executive of the Chamber of Commerce, Mr. Rose said the Chamber is an authoritative voice, speaking for 836 businesses and 30,000 employees.
“The vast majority of people Gary Silbiger considers activists,” Mr. Rose asserted, “are really just ordinary citizens who become aroused when an issue affects them. This has been a tradition in America for moiré than 200 years. Once the problem is settled, they go back about their business. They become ordinary citizens again.”
After 7 1/2 years as a member of the City Council, and having listened to protests by the hundreds in Council Chambers, Mr. Rose insists that the number of legitimate political activists in Culver City is small — no more than 20.
“We need to keep their size and their influence in perspective,” he said.