Call last night’s City Council meeting Irresistible Temptation Revisited.
Asking the City Council to cleanly evaluate the bulky, labyrinthine revised dimensions for mixed-use developments across Culver City was like shoving a 7-tiered cake in front of a drooly-mouthed fat man while hiding the utensils.
Neither could fight off the temptation to dive in and create a holy mess.
Producing an unalloyed decision, merely yea or nay, was beyond the ken of a veteran Council whose members routinely prefer to argue with each other and declaim at statesman-like length rather than reach comity.
The only times during the evening when the well-practiced rhetoricians
on the Council interrupted their speeches came when members snapped at
each other, such as when the long-running feud between Mayor Corlin and
Vice Mayor Carol Gross boiled over once again.
They Return Next Week
As a result, the public hearing on modified standards for mixed-use projects failed to produce a decision. The hearing will be resumed next Tuesday night, which could foreshadow yet another marathon. (With the Presidents Day holiday on Monday, the Council will meet a day later than usual.)
Disagreeable and irascible with each other as ever, about the only point of agreement among Council members was that all of them were striving to achieve a delicate balance between the desires of residents for small projects and profit-seeking builders for large ones.
As the first discussant on the dais, Councilman Scott Malsin, ever the sunny one, foresaw a happy outcome — especially for residents.
“What we are doing here will equalize a situation that has been very, very out of balance,” he said optimistically as a builder or two in the audience winced.
Fractious Council
But the sharply divided and rambling rhetoric that followed on the dais — members routinely gave 15-minute soliloquies on the broad range of their beliefs — obviated any reasonable chance for success.
Since last summer, Mr. Malsin has been leading a charge to especially reduce the density of mixed-use proposals. Present plans call for cutting the number of dwelling units per acre nearly in half, from 65 to 35.
But a central unresolved question from last night was:
How small can Culver City make the numbers and still attract imaginative developers?
Ms. Gross worried that if the mixed-use dimensions were shrunk too much, developers would be discouraged from exploring Culver City.
Plenty of Developers?
The mayor said that was his least worry. “When I hear people say Culver City is not friendly to developers,” said Mr. Corlin, “I say bologna. They are out there. And they will come to Culver City.”
To the point of yawning, the five Council members argued, esoterically, for hours, as if no one else were in the room. They battled over how to divide mixed-use buildings between residential and commercial space to satisfy all parties, the city, residents and builders, while still producing a profitable venture for City Hall.
Having worn out each other, Council members later pressed City Manager Jerry Fulwood, Community Development Director Sol Blumenfeld and staff for exact and arcane data on proportions.
No Circle of Friendship
Throughout the seven years most of them have been together, it has been said, first in a murmur and then more boldly, that they genuinely do not like each other.
Critics say the mutual dislike most damagingly manifests itself in situations such as last night’s:
When the Council is obligated to make a call on a complicated, highly emotional issue — tightening height and density maximums on mixed-used projects — members fret and sputter while trying to please both constituencies.
A topic as wide and vague as mixed-use provides powerful temptations for all five to wander down rhetorical highways that are barely germane to the subject.
“Decision-making is not our specialty,” one soured member of the Council told the newspaper.
The amateur philosophers and orators on the City Council once again may have been their own worst impediment to clear policymaking when they were unable to agree on new guidelines.
Whose Turn to Sleep?
They sniped at each other as if they were stinking — and sinking — enemies.
Several members, not looking particularly concerned that the evening was slipping away, took turns falling asleep in front of a frustrated, unamused audience during the four hours of rudderless debate
With the intimidating half of its critics — fidgety, grim-faced, business-suited developers — glumly charting every drawn breath from the audience, the Council flopped, floundered and ultimately dissembled as midnight knocked on the door of Council Chambers.
Reviving a familiar scenario, the members resembled five persons hiking in separate directions, in quest of unrelated goals, thoroughly unable to decide on a common objective.
Strike up the Ban
At 12:30 this morning, a reported attempt by one Council member to act punitively against a City Hall colleague, passed unanimously. Without debate, the fatigued Council approved a new policy forbidding the city from hiring former Council members during their first two years out of office.