[img]1|left|||no_popup[/img]It was painful to watch members of the Sister Cities Committee engage in parry and thrust last night with the City Council, which was determined to amend — read: tighten — its 45-year relationship with the Committee.
Not a word that Sister Cities members uttered in protest was unreasonable. These are civic-spirited workaday people, not hardline professionals. They have committed a segment of their jammed lives to the honorable cause of drawing together, and gently stirring, cultures of the world who don’t know Culver City from cabbage.
The change is that, after years of blithe, carefree existence, members were forced to pass from adolescence to adulthood.
Remember the first time you told your oldest child he would have to pay for his own car insurance. He fainted.
This is what happened with Sister Cities.
Financially speaking, City Hall has held their hand every step since the group was organized 45 years ago last month.
The ‘Free’ in Free Lunches Disappears
But last night, after years of cruising down a glassy river unperturbed by the realities of fiscal life, Sister Cities suffered the same kind of jolt I did a few years ago as a teenager.
When my much older cousin, who had been bankrolling our outings to baseball games, informed me that from this date, I would have to pay for my own ticket and noshes, I was startled. Hurt. Even angry, briefly.
Since I had turned a ripe, if not prosperous, 15 years old, he thought I should grow up.
That was the essence of the message the Council rather baldly telegraphed to Sister Cities.
What Is the Problem?
Councilman Gary Silbiger’s thin objections notwithstanding, Sister Cities, it seems to me, still is getting a robust deal from City Hall.
Their $14,000 in yearly funding is intact. All they have to do is cover their own insurance tab. No programming is scheduled until July, which would not seem to justify the perspiration I saw.
City Hall’s insurance does not activate until the $1 million level is reached. Staffer Ned Kimball told Councilman Scott Malsin that in the event Sister Cities was sued, the city would be the target of “first resort” not “last resort.”
If you believe in transporting people back and forth across the world, the responsibility is bound to be starchier than that of an elderly gal in a retirement home who tries to remember where, or if, she left her cup of hot chocolate.
This being my second piece on the subject this morning, the correctness of the City Council’s position improves with each new argument.
A Rosier View
Council member Steve Rose, the point man for his colleagues and the leader of the call for changing the relationship, sounded the way Pop did when he informed me I needed to accept the responsibilities of a grownup.
“This amendment is necessary,” Mr. Rose said, “because government has become more complex and more domineering in our lives — at the wishes of the public. Laws need to be followed.
“By forming a 501 (c ) (3) charitable non-profit, Sister Cities’ ability to expand its financial goals and its growth will be easier to handle — under the thumb of government bureaucracy.
“By becoming a charitable organization, they will be able to solicit funds, under IRS rules, on an open basis.”