Demonstrating once again that evenings with the unpredictable Mr. Vera are not to be dissected by members of the Culver City Logician Society, the mayor dusted off an old magic trick.
Pulling the equivalent of a shiny coin from behind his favorite ear, he played a new pivotal card in this debate. Up to here, he has asked his colleagues to be sympathetic while he thinks of a settlement. This time, he made concrete if unorthodox announcement. He was, he said, attempting to work out a compromise solution with the Congresswoman Jane Harman, who lives in Venice and mostly represents the South Bay.
Vera Good News for Breakfast
By the breakfast hour this morning, Mr. Vera had managed to make himself a magnet once again for lovers of hometown politics.
This is what people were wondering:
What does Jane Harman have to do with whether recreational vehicles should be allowed parking space on commercial and residential streets during the wee hours?
And there is that tired old wheeze that has arisen again: Will Mr. Vera, percolating along in his early seventies, end up running in the April election?
Coquettishly, like the bashful young maiden at her first dance who couldn’t decide whether to flirt or unflirt, Mr. Vera has been busy making up his mind. In both January and February, he said he would run, then he wouldn’t run, then he may run, then he probably would not run. Last weekend at Culver City Park, separate parties reported that he said he will run and he won’t run.
At their most recent meeting, the mayor’s best pals rigidly concluded that he may run or he may not.
Having missed the standard candidate filing deadline in mid-January, Mr. Vera still can qualify as a belated write-in candidate if he completes his filing documents by March 28.
The History of a Disputed Ordinance
Three months ago, before Christmas, Chanukah, Kwanza, Dick Cheney’s hunting mishap and Chelsea Cheney’s first child was born, the City Council ordained a very controversial notion.
In the quietude of Council Chambers, while the rest of the city was out shopping, they deigned that as of the first week in January, recreational vehicles would be barred from overnight parking.
The City Council was responding to a barrage of complaints that unattractive — ugly, said some — recreational vehicles were cluttering some Culver City streets. Worse, undesirable types who had idly ankled into Culver City were living in some RVs, completing a portrait of condemnatory blight, said the boo-birds.
In early January, infuriated RV owners stormed City Hall. They rode in on two main waves of complaint:
First, they said the RV community had not received sufficient notice, and they needed a fresh cycle of time to figure out where to park their vehicles.
Second, they said even if they had fifty years to think over the City Council’s proposed ordinance, it was a lousy idea that should not be forced upon undeserving ordinary people.
Depicting themselves pretty broadly as older, more or less blue collar-types with modest streams of revenue, they complained back even louder than the original complainers. They pleaded for compromise. They suggested awarding permits to Culver City residents while throwing out the out-of-town bums.
With Mr. Vera again in the forefront of sympathizers on the dais, the protest by RV owners worked. Considerably less than unanimously, the Council ordained a thirty-day delay in implementation of the ordinance while promising to pursue an alternative solution.
This scenario was roughly ditto’d for February. Now it has happened for a third time.
The clock for the most recent deadline was ticking so loudly that some owners felt like screaming. They did.
As of next Monday, any RV parked on a Culver City street was scheduled to be ticketed.
Now She Feels Good
The symbol of protest this time was a tall, articulate woman, a veteran of thirty years in the entertainment industry. She lives under the blue skies in a neighborhood in southern Culver City.
Her home does not include a driveway accommodation for her aging but clean RV.
Vacillating between heartbreak and fist-shaking fury, Sharon Thurgood, a recreational vehicle owner for forty-one years, said that as a pensioner she probably would have to sell her beloved RV.
“I can’t afford the monthly storage fee,” she pleaded.
For the moment, the subject was dropped.
But her appearance tormented Mr. Vera’s heart, and he brought up the topic later in the night, after Ms. Thurgood had gone home and was long since tucked in.
She didn’t hear the good news until yesterday afternoon. “I am very, very happy,” she told thefrontpageonline.com. “I was so disappointed before the Council meeting started. Now I think this is just going to be great.”
Confident that a solution was available if only she could buy time, Ms. Thurgood arrived early in Council Chambers. After huddling with City Atty. Carol Schwab, Ms. Thurgood said she was exasperated by the failure of the Council to find a compromise.
Sounding like a woman of diminishing faith, she said she did not know what she was going to do when city officials were scheduled to begin ticketing next Monday.
“I just hope one of those Council people thinks of something,” she said.
Wittingly, Mr. Vera dashed to her rescue.
After hearing the mayor announce that he was consulting the congresswoman Ms. Harman to produce an alternative option, Councilman Alan Corlin quickly made up his mind to become a Vera ally.
“With all his years of service,” Mr. Corlin said, “Albert has contacts and influence the rest of us don’t have. My attitude is, if Albert has something going for him, I’m going to let him do it. Go for it.”
Time to Applaud with One Hand?
Councilman Steve Rose thought Mr. Vera’s notion was one of the more feckless ideas he has heard this century. Councilwoman Carol Gross did not think it was even that good.
Leaving not a drop of doubt about the firmness of his stand, Mr. Rose said resolutely: “I am not willing to spend political capital or government money to subsidize other peoples’ lifestyles.
“Some RV owners think it’s our job to find parking space for them or to find free parking.”
Just when it looked as if the mayor’s delay proposal might stall, Mr. Vera affirmed his native political smarts once more.
With the stout opposition of Ms. Gross and Mr. Rose looming, he managed to cobble together a majority with the help of Vice Mayor Gary Silbiger and Mr. Corlin.
To put a better face on the debate, and with the outcome assured, the City Council unanimously endorsed the moratorium for March.
COUNCIL NOTES — The instantly popular Friday night series Music in the Chambers, in Council Chambers, returns this week with a 7 p.m. performance by bassist David Young of the Los Angeles Opera company…Four months after the promised Thanksgiving delivery date, a sculpture of city founder Harry Culver and family will be unveiled Sunday, March 26, 2 p.m., in Town Plaza, in the shadow of the Culver Hotel…Vicki Daly Redholtz reports that the Dog Park will open any edition now atop Culver City Park. She urged dog owners to make sure their pets are licensed in order to insure their admission to the Dog Park…Frank Campagna, the resident spokesman for a segment of mobile home owners on Grandview Boulevard, was sighted in Council Chambers for the first time in months. Nothing has changed, he said, since last October when, against their will, mobile homers in both Grandview parks were excluded from City Hall’s neighborhood redevelopment plan…
Walter Lamb told the City Council he hopes there is “a broader solicitation of input” before members make their second final decision on Monday on where to place the new Skateboard Park. Councilman Corlin’s suggestion for derailing the vote until late in April was foiled…Parks & Rec Commission member Jeff Cooper, an advocate of shifting the Skateboard Park to an already paved area in Culver City Park, piggybacked a second suggestion. Having seen a skateboarder or two sail down the paved road beside the park, he urged installation of speed bumps…