Second in a series.
Re: “Rose: Time to Bury Term Limits”
Once he was term limited off the City Council seven Aprils ago, and determined he was through with elective office, could anything have changed Steve Rose’s mind about coming back?
“Oooh,” he said, as if he were entertaining second thoughts. “Probably not.”
If term limits are overturned, as he hopes, Mr. Rose asserts one stipulation.
“Part of the issue of term limits,” he said, “is that for the last year and for another year, four of the five members (except for Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells) of the current Council are term-limited out.
“With a super-majority of Council members not having to face re-election, there could be a lack of responsiveness from those members about overturning term limits. I am not saying it is happening now, but it could.”
Mr. Rose summarized his point:
“When you have a legislative body where a majority is not facing the voters again, this could have a negative effect on the democratic way of doing things.”
Like all but one Council member before and after him during the past quarter-century, Mr. Rose turned off the lights, closed the door and disposed of the key once his eight years were up.
“I enjoyed my time on the Council,” said the single conservative of modern times. “I had a lot of fun. It was the golden age of redevelopment in Culver City (2000-2008).
“I had a lot of frustrations, too.”
And then he pried open a box with Pandora’s name writ large.
“The only sad part was that in those years a majority of the City Council were always fearful of building affordable housing,” still a sizzling subject this very week, more than seven years later.
(Before the current City Council on Monday night narrowly approved a detour of funds from the General Fund into the city’s Rental Assistance Program because of the broke Housing fund, previous, unidentified Councils were scolded in a staff report. They were charged with failing to use then relatively plentiful Housing revenue to build affordable housing, presumably leading to the present crisis.)
Mr. Rose was warming to the subject.
(To be continued)