Sorted by date Results 176 - 199 of 199
City Council Has Two Meetings in One Night As promised, the City Council and Redevelopment Agency held another discussion and public input session on proposed developments for Parcel B (9300 Culver Boulevard) on Monday night. Some members of the public were confused however, as the input session was scheduled during what was termed a “regular” meeting of the Council and Agency that was preceded by a “special meeting” at 6 p.m. However, the “special meeting” featured other agenda items, whil...
October is Disability Awareness Month, as declared by the City Council at its meeting Monday night. Appropriately, the Council and Redevelopment Agency, during an agenda item on appointments to boards, appointed two new members to the Disability Advisory Committee. On June 23 the Council agreed to expand the membership of the Disability Advisory Committee from seven to nine members. Six applications were filed for the two additional seats. Three of these applicants spoke in public comment...
Council Chambers Packed Both Nights The City Council chamber was packed on Monday and Tuesday evenings as Council/Redevelopment Agency members, civic leaders, and the public got to see and hear previews of the four developments proposed for 9300 Culver Boulevard, “known familiarly, if not poetically, as Parcel B,” in the words of Redevelopment Chair Scott Malsin. The redevelopment of the site, currently being used for parking, has been a topic for almost 20 years, with past proposals fai...
A development for Parcel B (otherwise known as 9300 Culver Boulevard) is moving closer to reality as the City Council and Redevelopment Agency received and filed a report outlining the process for selecting a developer at their meeting Monday night. In February the Council and Agency approved a two-step process to select a developer for Parcel B. Step One involved issuing a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to identify firms that would be most qualified to develop it. In June, the firms were...
The new school year is upon us and the first meeting of the Culver City School Board got off with a bang—in the form of some angry words from a resident. Superintendent Patricia Jaffe had praise for the School District in her report, saying the first day of school had gone smoothly as she visited all the school sites. “We are fortunate to have such dedicated teachers, classified staff, and students,” she noted. But a presentation about Special Education compliance brought protest from a woman...
With the school year over, business at the Culver City School Board at its meeting Tuesday night was mostly concerned with the budget and safe routes to school. The budget presentation by Assistant Superintendent of Business Services Ali Delawalla, gave a view of the budget that although serious, offered some positives. This is the fourth year in a row that Culver City Unified School District’s (CCUSD) budget has been impacted by the economy. The state budget had just been signed on the afternoo...
The meeting of the Culver City Council and Redevelopment Agency Monday night saw local citizens not happy with a proposed project which garnered unanimous Council/Agency approval in spite of community concerns. The approval of issuances for the RFQ and RFP involved the development of city owned property at the northeast and northwest corners of Centinela Avenue and Washington Boulevard. The issuance of the RFQ was for the purpose of soliciting developer interest in the development of a “market h...
A packed Board room cheered loudly Tuesday night as the Culver City School Board voted to amend the interim superintendent agreement with Patricia Jaffe, enabling her to be considered for the permanent superintendent post. The 3-1-1 vote (Karlo Silbiger voted against the amendment and Patricia Siever abstained) came after numerous emails, phone calls, and comments by a number of speakers who gave their enthusiastic support to Jaffe. But not everyone thought the amendment was the right thing to...
Culver City loves its summer concert series and its citizens appreciate the work done by longtime producer Gary Mandell. But despite a show of support by speakers in public comment at the Redevelopment Agency’s Monday night meeting, the Agency did not make an absolute commitment to having him back as producer for the 2011 concert series. The Agency’s options for producing the festival included suggestions from the events subcommittee of the Cultural Affairs Commission: shortening the existing fe...
It has been seven months since former CCUSD Superintendent Myrna Rivera Cote left the District for a position closer to her home. Since that time, the Culver City School Board has been searching for a new permanent superintendent. Since July 1, former Assistant Superintendent Patricia W. Jaffe has been Interim Superintendent. She has been acting in the position as per an agreement with the Board that states she is not eligible for the permanent position. There is however, a growing movement in...
The City Council and Redevelopment Agency heard a preliminary year-end report on Culver City’s fiscal circumstances in 2009-2010 at their meeting. Monday night As Chief Financial Officer Jeff Muir put it, the report painted “a sufficiently gloomy picture” of finances. The initial numbers overall were: revenue: $81 million, including over $2.1 million in one-time revenue; expenditures: $82.6 million-with an operating deficit of $3.8 million. Personnel-related expenditures are one of the big p...
On Monday night the City Council and Redevelopment Agency approved an amendment to the Settlement Agreement between the City and West Los Angeles College regarding the 2010 Final Supplemental Environmental Impact Report (FSEIR) for the College’s Facilities Master Plan. The Master Plan had been approved by the WLA College District Board of Trustees on August 11, who also certified the FSEIR. Previously, on July 12, the Council/Agency considered, but did not approve, a prior version of the A...
Are language immersion programs working? That was the question School Board President Steven Gourley had for Tracy Pumilia, principal of El Marino Language School and project director for FLAP (Foreign Language Assistance Program), which gives grants to schools’ language programs. Pumilia and FLAP Grant coordinator Mina Shiratori gave a presentation on CCUSD’s language immersion programs at the School Board’s meeting Tuesday night Pumilia noted that CCUSD only received one FLAP grant last year,...
Council Considers Charging in Free Structures Monday night’s council meeting marked the appointment of John Nachbar as the new City Manager. One issue that he may have to deal with in the near future will be the problem of parking in Culver City, especially in the downtown area. Parking was the issue for most people at Monday’s meeting. During public comment, Council meeting regular Cary Anderson presented a video slide show featuring photographs taken during the recent Culver City Car Sho...
While parking in the Hayden Tract was the most discussed issue of the night the council came out of an extended closed session dealing with several issues including a performance review of Culver City Police Chief Don Pedersen. The hot topic of the evening was the reported no-confidence vote by the Culver City Police Officers Association of Pedersen. The department as gone through numerous changes since the departure of former chief Ted Cooke who retired after 28 years as Culver City’s Chief. Af...
By Lynne Bronstein Observer Reporter Culver City sure knows how to throw a goodbye party. On Monday night the City Council chamber was the scene of a big goodbye party for outgoing Council member Gary Silbiger, in honor of his eight years of service to the City. Following a party-type gathering in one of the side rooms, with a huge cake and other refreshments, the Council meeting began with a tribute to Silbiger that included certificates and letters of tribute from dignitaries such as Senator...
It was the next to last meeting of the lineup that has been the Culver City School Board for the last two years and there seemed to be a sense that old business should not hang over for the new Board that convenes on December 8. One such issue is the validity of student assessment tests, which came up Tuesday night during a presentation by El Rincon Elementary Principal Dr.Tom Tracy. Tracy was “taking [the Board] on a tour of [his] school,” with a PowerPoint presentation showing the typical cha...
Culver City’s very busy Line 6 bus will be getting Rapid Bus service beginning in January 2010, thanks to City Council approval of service changes at Monday’s meeting. Transportation Director Art Ida gave a staff report, and with Transit Operations Manager Samantha Blackshire, answered questions concerning the changes. Currently, Line 6 serves a north-south corridor of Culver City from the Metro Green Line station up past LAX Transit Center, Howard Hughes Center, the Westfield (formerly Fox Hil...
The progress of La Ballona Elementary School, and an energy analysis update were major topics at the Culver City School Board meeting Tuesday night. It was a very crowded Board room, as this was the last meeting before the November 3 election for School Board members. Candidates Patricia Siever, Robert Zirgulis, Karlo Silbiger, and Alan Elmont were all in attendance, but Board president Jessica Beagles-Roos began the meeting with a caveat that everyone should respect the meeting as a meeting...
El Marino Language School received the spotlight at Tuesday night’s School Board meeting, as principal Tracy Pumilia gave a presentation on student achievement for the 2008-2009 school year. Overall, El Marino is doing very well, with exceptionally high scores on assessment tests. At the state level, El Marino students scored at or above proficient in 2008 and 2009, with 77.3 per cent of students at or above proficiency levels in English Language Arts in 2009, and 83.5 per cent of students at o...
All six candidates for the Culver City School Board were on hand for the candidates’ forum at City Hall October 8. Co-sponsored by the League of Women Voters and the Culver City PTA, the two-hour forum featured questions collected from audience cards and from Facebook. The pace was rapid, with questions quickly asked and answered within a one-minute time limit. Each candidate was asked to describe how he/she differed from the other ones. Robert Zirgulis declared “I am very outspoken-some wou...
The Culver City Council voted Monday night in favor of an interim ordinance to extend the temporary moratorium concerning land use for oil drilling in Culver City. A four-fifths vote was required for passage, but all five Council members gave the ordinance the green light. The Council had adopted an ordinance on August 24 that established a 45-day moratorium on the use of land for the drilling, re-drilling, or deepening of “any wells within the jurisdiction of the City of Culver City that are a...
Facing a lively audience in the auditorium of El Marino Language Immersion School, five of the six candidates in the race for seats on the Culver City School Board discussed their views in a forum last Thursday. Candidates Alan Elmont, Patricia Siever, Kathy Paspalis, Robert Zirgulis, and Karlo Silbiger answered a series of questions put to them by moderators Roberta Mailman and Judith Martin-Straw. Twenty of these questions were drawn at random from a hat and asked of two candidates each. The...
Students and School Board members both need to be held to accountability. That seemed to be the theme of Culver City School Board meeting Tuesday night . Assistant Superintendent Gwenis Laura gave a presentation on the tests used for district-wide accountability. The seemingly complicated system (it contained a lot of acronyms, defined in a glossary in the agenda booklet) includes three “high-stakes” test sections. The STAR (Standardized Testing and Reporting) group, includes CST (Ca...
