News Articles

The newspaper once again will go dark on Tuesday and Wednesday in deference to the eight-day Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which began on Monday night and concludes in the middle of next week. Sukkot commemorates the Jews’ living conditions during the 40 years of their exodus, from slavery in Egypt to freedom in the Promised Land.

Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger is, by far, the most persistent advocate on the City Council for his particular agenda. Community participation in important decisions never is far from the busy mind of Mr. Silbiger, who seems to manage a way to weave it into Council exchanges virtually every Monday night..

When the hiring of a well-known recruiting firm to find a new City Manager turned up on the Consent Calendar of tonight’s Council meeting, Mr. Silbiger used it as a springboard to once again aggressively assert one of his favorite causes, direct community participation in city business.

Tantalizingly close to fulfilling a longshot promise made last October when bankrupt Brotman Medical Center was wandering in the financial wilderness, CEO Stan Otake said this afternoon that Culver City’s hospital should be within view of quitting bankruptcy following a statutory hearing on Nov. 8.

“This will be the final step,” said Mr. Otake, trying to prevent himself from exulting too soon because a legal hurdle, always unpredictable, remains.

With little more than three weeks to go before the Nov. 4 election for a new County Supervisor, the campaign for state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Culver City) has leveled fresh allegations against rival Bernard C. Parks.

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A Ridley-Thomas spokesman said that Mr. Parks, a Los Angeles City Council member, “has unlawfully turned his city-funded 8th District Newsletter into an anti-union propaganda bulletin in an unlawful attempt to use city resources to promote his campaign.”

First of two parts

“I didn’t ride on the freeway five hours a day, five days a week, for the last 5 1/2 years just to generate a salary,” says outgoing City Manager Jerry Fulwood.

“It was a commitment to Culver City to do the right thing. That was what kept me here,” but that didn’t curtail clouds of floating rumors that he either was on the brink of resigning or was about to be shoved.

There will be no Thursday edition of the newspaper in honor of Yom Kippur, probably the most solemn day of the Jewish year, but also one of the most joyful.

Eight hours and 40 minutes after the hardy County Regional Planning Commissioners took their decision-making seats in downtown Los Angeles at 9 o’clock this morning, they made their payoff move of the season:

Following what both parties agreed was two months worth of extraordinary probing, pushing and deliberating of esoteric and complicated environmental issues, the Commissioners arrived at the moment that some Culver City activists have been dreading since last spring.

School Board member Scott Zeidman was the special guest last night at the Friends of the Library’s “Spooky Story Time and Craft” event at the Julian Dixon Library.

With his young sons Jason and Brandon at his side, Mr. Zeidman arrived dressed in Halloween orange and black, armed with lighted Jack-o’-lanterns, a fiber optic Halloween pumpkin headed scarecrow, and a smack-talking lighted replica skull.

With less a month to go before Election Day on Nov. 4, County Board of Supervisors candidate state Sen. Mark Ridley-Thomas claims that his rival, Bernard Parks, has been busy struggling to pay off his primary election debts instead of campaigning – and still has $390,000 in outstanding debts, according to campaign reports filed with the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder’s office.

City Manager Jerry Fulwood’s anti-climactic public retirement announcement at last night’s City Council meeting was mindful of a visit to a cyberdentist:

Swift, pain-free and totally devoid of even a teardrop of emotion.

There was not a damp eye in the joint, partially because of Mr. Fulwood’s barely visible public persona and because his departure has been well publicized.