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It Also Approves Six Summer Concerts Good things came in sixes at April 8’s City Council meeting, where the Council chose six members for the new Finance Advisory Committee and also approved six concerts for the summer concert series at City Hall courtyard. Finance Advisory Committee members include three residents, three business members, as well as three members appointed rather than elected by the Council. The three resident members are Crystal Alexander, Alejandro Lara, and Steven R...
Some Will Affect Culver City A City Council subcommittee has been at work these past few months, studying proposed state and federal legislation. At the City Council meeting Monday night the subcommittee, composed of Council members Jim Clarke and Meghan Sahli-Wells, presented the first in an ongoing series of reports to keep the Council briefed on upcoming legislation. “We felt it was important for the city to take a position on legislative issues that have an impact on the city,” said Clarke....
Teen Dating Violence Interests School Board A report on teen dating violence and a presentation on the GATE (Gifted and Talented Education) program at Culver City Middle School were the highlights of last week’s School Board meeting. Both presentations featured Mariko Rooks, an eighth grader at CCMS, whose ambitious work seems to characterize the abilities of the GATE students. Rooks’ teen dating violence report actually stems from a project she did with her Girl Scout troop. She has put in more...
Dog Park Pays Light Bill for 20 Years City Councils are accustomed to groups coming to them with requests for money. But at their meeting Monday night the Culver City Council received money from a group. Friends of the Culver City Dog Park presented the Council with a giant mock-up of a check for $35,000, a photo-op gimmick that required the entire Council and several of the Friends to hold the check up as they were photographed. (Yes, there was a real check for $35,000, delivered by hand). The...
California’s pension plans for government workers will be undergoing changes next year, under a new standard set by GASB (Government Accounting Standards Board) and Culver City will be among the cities impacted. "In 2014, new GASB rules will require California's local governments to acknowledge their actual unfunded pension obligations on their balance sheets," said Mark Bucher, president of the California Public Policy Center (CPPC), which has released a study on the pension changes. "Unless t...
Application Forms Provided Confusion The City Council was poised to vote on members for the new Finance Advisory Committee at Monday’s meeting when a glitch came up. It seemed that the applications were so muddled it was hard to tell if people were applying as resident members or business members. Council member Mehaul O’ Leary brought up the problem just as potential members were coming up to the podium to give statements about their qualifications. He complained that the applications were “co...
Buyers Find Less On The Market Culver City is one of the most desirable places to live in the greater Los Angeles area. But is it currently difficult to buy a home here? That may depend on the buyers and what they want. Julio Leyva, an agent with Cavanaugh Realty, told the Observer that, “Statistically, prices and sales are both up from the previous year. “I usually keep track of the market and Culver City in 2012, at least in the areas I surveyed, was ahead by about $35,000 compared to 201...
Meeting In Sacramento Produces Results Mayor Andrew Weissman may have felt himself to be in a bit of a daze when he was seated at Monday’s City Council meeting. He had just returned from Sacramento, where, accompanied by City Manager John Nachbar and Community Development Director Sol Blumenfeld, he met with the State Department of Finance’s budget subcommittee to talk about how the “winding down” of Redevelopment Agencies was affecting Culver City. Reporting on the subcommittee meeting...
‘Legado Crossing’ Gets Unanimous Vote A multi-use building with landscaping and a public park will be built at the intersection of Washington and National Boulevards next to the Expo Line station, thanks to the City Council’s approval Monday night of a zoning map change and comprehensive plan. Known as “Legado Crossing,” after the company involved in its development, the five-story project will feature approximately 31,240 square feet of commercial uses and 115 residential units, located a...
Linwood E. Howe Elementary School and Culver City High were the spotlighted schools at the Culver City School Board’s first meeting of the New Year on January 22. Kim Indelicato, principal of Linwood E. Howe (or as it is familiarly known, Lin Howe), gave a presentation on her school as several students sat on the floor in front of the podium, all wearing Linwood E. Howe T-shirts. “We focus on a well-balanced approach…..a challenging, authentic, and nurturing environment,” said Indelic...
Local Panel Hears Concerns Three thousand miles from Culver City on the morning of December 14, a tragic shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut was having repercussions all over the world. At Veterans’ Auditorium that morning, a group of community members spoke to a panel consisting of Mayor Andrew Weissman, Council member Meghan Sahli-Wells, and Assembly member Holly J. Mitchell, on the subject of hydraulic fracturing (also know as fracking) to obtain oil and gas from rock. B...
Culver To Follow County-Wide Trend “It’s going to be an anticlimactic discussion,” was Mayor Andrew Weissman’s assessment of the City Council’s reaction to an action item on regulation of plastic bags in Culver City. And it was somewhat anticlimactic, as the Council agreed unanimously on directing staff to draft an ordinance modeled on the Los Angeles County ordinance—banning use of single-use plastic bags in retail businesses and charging ten cents for each paper bag used. The unsurprisin...
Proposition 30 Money Provides Help Maybe it was because a number of high school students were present to cover the Tuesday night Culver City School Board meeting for their civics requirement, but Mike Reynolds’ presentation on the 2012-2013 budget and how newly passed Prop 30 will affect it was remarkably easy to understand. Reynolds, who became the Culver City School District’s Assistant Superintendent for Business Services last month, outlined the history of the District’s budget in terms that...
Public Hearing are Planned The City Council has taken the first step toward development of the Washington National Transit Oriented Development (TOD) zone surrounding the Culver City Expo Line station. An ordinance was introduced at the Council meeting Monday night that will amend the Culver City zoning map to allow development of the site, known as the “Triangle Site,” where Washington, National, and Venice Boulevards intersect. “Working with CalTrans and the City of Los Angeles, we’ve been abl...
Despite rumors making the rounds in Hollywood circles, Culver City’s Sony Pictures Entertainment is not going on the block, according to Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai. "There is absolutely no truth to rumors that Sony's entertainment businesses are for sale," Hirai’s October 30 statement said. Rumors had been fueled by news stories about Sony making cutbacks to production and by a recent interview with CBS CEO Les Moonves in The Wall Street Journal, in which Moonves stated that he was looking at the pos...
Council Considers Bike Sharing Program Monday’s City Council meeting seemed as green as the paper used for its agenda, with green transit the main focus. Topics ranged from speakers in public comment talking about walking to school to ease traffic, to Council member Mehaul O’ Leary giving a brief report on a group opposed to the building of Phase Two of the Expo Line, to the Council’s consideration of participating in the Westside Cities Council of Government Bike Share Program (WSCCOG). Bike sh...
Activists React with Skepticism On Tuesday night, about 200 community members and elected officials gathered at the Knox Presbyterian Church in Ladera Heights to hear PXP (Plains Exploration and Production)’s long-awaited report on the effects of hydraulic fracturing (also known as fracking.) The report, which became available to the public online on October 10 (www.Inglewoodoilfield.com), stated that in areas such as groundwater, seismic disturbance, and health risks, hydraulic fracturing did n...
Focus Will Be On Measure Y Funds Last week the City Council rejected the idea of a citizens’ advisory committee on fracking. But Monday night the Council approved the formation of another citizens’ committee--a finance advisory committee that would primarily have the responsibility of overseeing the use of funds accruing from the sales tax that will be enacted if Measure Y passes. The Council’s direction to city staff is to create a committee of no more than nine members. Three members will...
At Least For Now The idea of a citizens’ advisory committee on fracking-the controversial technique of accessing oil from rock via water pressure-was discussed by the City Council at its Monday night meeting-but the Council declined at this time to create such a committee. Meghan Sahli-Wells was the sole Council member in favor of forming a citizens’ committee. Noting that she had served on several similar committees and found them to be useful tools for getting information on issues, she sta...
City Council Receives Update Culver City residents have heard that West Nile Virus is active in the Culver City area. The unusually hot and muggy summer weather has triggered a rise in the positive indicators of the disease (dead birds, dead squirrels, sentinel flocks, and mosquitoes) compared to 2011. At Monday’s City Council meeting, at the request of Council member Jim Clarke, Elena Sweda Neff and Robert Saviskas of the Los Angeles County West Vector and Vector-Borne Disease Control D...
7-11, Help Group Prevail The City Council endured a long meeting on Monday night, adjourning at approximately 1 a.m. But the three public hearings that took up that time yielded victories for several private schools’ plans for expansion and victory also for a planned 7-11 store at Sepulveda Boulevard and Braddock Drive. The most controversial of these victories was the denial of an appeal of Planning Commission approval of the Administrative Site Plan review for the 7-11 at 4436 Sepulveda Boulev...
A Major Resolution Is Passed Another step was taken by the City Council on Monday night to ensure that the much-anticipated multiple-use project at 9300 Culver Boulevard (“Parcel B”) will be built. The Council and the Successor Agency to the Culver City Redevelopment Agency unanimously passed a resolution to adopt a Disposition and Development Agreement (DDA) between the City of Culver City and Combined/Hudson 9300 LLC, the chosen developer of the property in downtown Culver City. The pro...
Students Share Their Experiences With the budget done and other big issues winding down for the summer, the City Council took some time at its Monday night meeting to honor locals who had given their time and energy to Culver City. Several students in the Culver City Sister City Youth Ambassador program received citations for their work this past year, representing Culver City on trips to the sister cities Kaizuka, Japan and Uruapan, Mexico (the two other sister cities are Lethbridge, Canada...
The Culver City School Board voted to support a ban on the practice of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) in oil drilling at its July 24 meeting—but only after a discussion that resulted in passing the resolution in a diluted form. The modified resolution was passed as a result of disagreement between Board members, two of whom thought it was premature to pass the resolution as submitted because they said they had not had time to read and understand a state bill on fracking, support for which b...
