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For those who missed my commentary last week, I am once again attaching a chart to this column showing the names, positions, and total amounts that key Culver City employees earned in 2017. The figures include both wages and benefits. If I were a City employee and found that the information included in that previous column was incorrect, I would have raced over to the City’s Human Resources or Finance Department for verification and scream. But because I haven’t heard any unusual sounds, I must...
How much do you make each year? Are you, as a popular TV and radio advertisement asks, “financially comfortable”? Perhaps you are not, but many of our taxpayer-funded City employees are. According to Transparent California, the state’s largest public pay and pension database, here is what Culver taxpayers are paying for their “public servants”: 2017 salaries for Culver City. Name Job Title Total pay & benefits total Robert Bixby Police Chief $539,278.78 David White Fire Chief $502,129....
COMMENTARY By Neil Rubenstein Observer Columnist The Culver City Community Development Director of the Housing Division, Tevis Barnes, will soon be presenting to City Council a proposal for three areas of study related to affordable housing and homelessness. • Re-use of motels, with the goal of converting them to affordable-housing units. • Sites for small, pre-manufactured homes, which may include shipping-box style homes. • Seasonal homeless shelters. The tentative date for this prese...
School districts across our state need to encourage and hire new teachers to come into the profession as veteran teachers retire. The average rate of teaching staff retirements found in most school districts is less than 10 percent annually. Having your highest-paid teachers retire is one way that school districts can reduce staffing costs. But it’s those same teachers that usually have the most expertise gained through classroom experience. So, it cannot be done willy-nilly. If the retirement plan is not properly balanced, an “experience gap...
It is my firm belief that City Hall over the years has squandered city assets to pay for huge salaries and benefits. Coming soon, a startling expose. No, probably not in your neighborhood but in Fox Hills with “Those People.” When Culver Villas Apartments at 4043 Irving Place in Downtown Culver was originally proposed as a low-income housing project, an unnamed Culver City councilperson quietly approached the Culver City Community Development Office and requested that the plans be changed. The...
Last July, our state’s Legislative Analyst’s Office (LAO) reported that from June 2016 to June 2017, the state pension fund (CalSTRS) had its unfunded liabilities increase by almost 11 percent, from $96.7 billion to $107.3 billion. That’s despite school districts (statewide) increasing their contributions over 70 percent, from $5.9 billion in 2013-14 to $10.1 billion in 2016-2017. According to an LAO analysis from last February, we haven’t even seen the last of these contribution increas...
The Culver City Unified School District’s annual contributions to CalSTRS and CalPERS, two of the state's largest public-employee pension funds, were expected to rise 215 percent by the year 2020-21. But, under this Board’s fiscal leadership, they have gone up more than 446 percent--just in the last four years. The unexpected huge increase is the result of the Board's continued unrealistic hiring practices and giving unwise, unsustainable salary raises along with their approved increases in dis...
I've been a volunteer at the Culver City Senior Center for over 14 years as their Karaoke DJ on Tuesdays. We have a wide spectrum of personalities who come to the Center, and sometimes it's difficult for all factions to get along. Upon occasion, I have encountered disruptive personalities who make it difficult for the majority of us to have a pleasant time. People who create discord should not be tolerated, and I commend the Staff for doing what must be done to make the Center an enjoyable...
I’m disappointed that there hasn’t been more news coverage, or seemingly any follow-up, to the coyote issue facing various Culver City neighborhoods. There are many community members who still have no idea what has been happening since May in our neighborhood. A dedicated and growing group of people in the Carlson Park/Culver Parks East area has maintained a daily dialogue with each other, asking about missing animals and mourning over each new discovery of a beloved pet found half-eaten. Fly...
When is the Culver City Senior Center administration going to be fair and honor the civil rights of seniors by providing a hearing before an unbiased judge--not staffers who make a complaint--and the ability of a senior who is accused of wrongdoing to cross-examine witnesses against him or her as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution before punishing these seniors for challenging this corrupt and biased system? When these problems were reported to City Manager John Nachbar, Nachbar said that he...
Dear Editor, It is unfortunate that the Culver City Council's only answer to rising pension costs is to again tax the City's residents. Other cities have found solutions that do not require raising taxes. In fact, if the City is granting large salaries and pension largesse to attract the best talent, then that talent might be asked to share the load: What if they had to lose their jobs in cutbacks instead of more taxes? Would a City employee toss some of his earnings and cut his pension in...
The obvious winners from the Supreme Court's decision in Janus v. AFSCME last month are the hundreds of thousands of teachers and other public workers who will no longer have union “agency fees” involuntarily taken from their paychecks. In the long run, however, the benefits to "Blue State" budgets may prove more consequential. Having promised public workers big pensions without saving the money to pay them, many of these states are fiscal time bombs. Nationwide, state pensions have unf...
Dear Editor, Drought? We don’t got no (sic) stinking drought! On May 22, I emailed the city manager, John Nachbar, regarding a massive ongoing water leak from the irrigation system at the Culver City Post Office at Culver Boulevard and Lincoln Avenue. He replied, as did one of his minions, that the situation would be corrected. I've also tweeted to culvercity311 about this situation twice. Yet, here it is--two full months later--and water still floods the gutter on Lincoln all the way from C...
Parcel Tax Measure Is A Board Bailout The financial health of most California school districts has improved remarkably over the past six years. Last year, budgetary uncertainties forced 41 local educational agencies (LEAs) to declare that they may be in financial trouble. Thanks to a strong economy and a fully funded share of state LCFF (Local Control Funding Formula) revenues provided in next year's budget, just 25 LEAs submitted a "qualified" fiscal report-which is a formal recognition to the...
Dear Editor, It is often customary, when writing a critique of an elected representative, to espouse one’s own political affiliation – to perhaps tout the fact that I’ve been an active member of the Democratic Party for close to 15 years. However, Net Neutrality is so blatantly non-partisan that it would be more relevant to tell you and your readership that I’ve been working with computer technology for close to 20 years, and that, like virtually everyone else, I use the Internet on a daily basis. I currently serve as the Coordinator for Sch...
Over five years, from 2011-2012 to 2015-2016, the Culver City Unified School District deficit spent $9 million more than it received in funding. If that wasn’t fiscally scary enough—hold on to your hat, Cousin Clem—in the past two years, the School Board has deficit-spent more than $9.1 million. And now, the District wants local taxpayers/homeowners to pass a new parcel tax to bail them out for their past years of deficit-addicted spending indiscretions. Does it really make sense for us to pa...
Dear Editor, My parents always taught me that when you’re angry about something, you have to take a step back, sleep on it, and decide if you are still angry enough to say what you wanted to say. It’s something I have followed all my life and it’s why I have waited to write about my thoughts and feelings regarding the June 25th City Council meeting. I have read the comments on Facebook, talked to some friends about what happened, and I am finally at the point where I am no longer angry, but I...
Dear Editor, As a lifelong Liberal Democrat and 35-year resident of Culver City, I've seen lots of changes--some good and some bad. But never yet have I witnessed the City losing its moral compass . . . until tonight, June 25, 2018. The City Council convened to discuss and revisit the recent events whereby the four so-called "Progressive" councilmembers banded together to disallow Goran Eriksson, the one remaining moderate member, his rightful turn as vice mayor/mayor and instead handed it over...
By Ron Bassilian I suppose my name has gotten out a bit ahead of me. In the past few months I’ve gone from casual observer of Culver City politics, to concerned citizen, to specter of the "Alt Right" that the City Council must defend against in the interest of all things human. It’s gotten a bit out of control, a bit much for any mortal voter to bear. So, I figure you should all know a bit about me, the man who was behind the June 8th Brown Act complaint against our Council, and how a few simple queries on rent control and policing have met...
Dear Publisher, I hope this email finds you well. Even though after 28 years I do not live in CC anymore, I still follow the politics from time to time. I would agree with your statement below, from the June 21st Observer, if it included "if possible." Despite differences in positions, past Councils have always opted to follow Council policy, so every member of the Council could serve at least once as mayor during their first term. There was no way either Steve Rose or Gary Silbiger could have...
A new day is dawning! We are awakening! People First participatory democracy is "happening" in Culver City! Former Mayor Gary Silbiger must be thanked for breaking ranks with almost 100 years of patriarchal top-down governance. Silbiger is constantly advocating for residents' active involvement in critical decision-making that directly affects us, and by his breaking with the “ol' boys network,” Mr. Silbiger paved the way for Participatory Democracy. Current Vice-Mayor Meghan Sahli-Wells exp...
It’s been almost six months that your friend and our friend Charles Stewart retired from 30 years of dedicated service to our community first with U.S. Rep. Diane Watson then many years with Holly Mitchell while she was member of the State Senate, and as a member of the Assembly. May I mention just one happening? It was in December 2017 when a car dealer wanted to mess around with our auto license plates. Although California DMV couldn’t find the “Bad guys” paper work Charles stuck with calling...
One year ago, fire fighter Cory Iverson died tragically battling the huge Thompson fire in Ventura county. Only 32 years of age, he left behind a wife and two little ones. Now comes Neil Rubenstein’s attack on our Culver City fire fighters, who also risk their lives for our safety. Singling out a handful of top earners in the department, he deploys the fallacy of composition in which one argues or implies that something is true of the whole that is only true of a part of the whole. He focuses o...
How one LA firefighter turned a $90,000 salary into $1.6 million over four years. Overtime pay that was at least triple his regular salary in each of the past four years allowed Los Angeles firefighter Donn Thompson to collect a combined $1.6 million in total earnings from 2014-2014-2017 – according to an analysis of newly released pay data from Transparentcalifornia.com. Such outsized overtime pays allowed Thompson to clear over $400,000 in cash earnings for each of the past four years – des...
There's a chance, if you dare, to see films you might never see; films at film festivals hope to nab distributors, yet most won't make it. You might get lucky enough to find them, one day, somewhere... That's what film festivals do; they curate, they cherry-pick, they create one splendid moment where their unusual finds come to you before their distribution hopes are crushed, or more likely, may get to join that heap of films you could never unearth. You have the prospect to see things that may...
