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Dear Editor, Thank you for your ongoing coverage of the Inglewood Oil Field. The good news for public health and safety is that both the EIR and scientific studies give our city council compelling evidence and legal grounds to adopt important safeguards including: a fracking ban; a 2500 foot buffer from homes, schools and parks; and no net new wells (i.e. an existing well must be safely closed for every new well allowed). The EIR and the science also both reach the same clear conclusion – there...
Dear Editor: Culver City schools are consistently rated as among the best in the state. This is due, in large measure, to the dedicated and talented teaching force, staff, and administration and Board, in that order. Therefore, to encounter more whining from Neil Rubenstein (11/16-22/-18) about compensation for Culver City’s public schools teachers is astonishing. Providing a safe, effective, and enjoyable education for our children is more than a generational obligation. We also reap huge benef...
Monday night, November 6th, the Culver City Council will decide if they want to allow further discussion and comment on 1000+ pages of a Specific Plan showing where they will allow oil wells to be drilled & fracked within Culver City and its Environmental Impact Report (EIR). The EIR and Specific Plan cost over a million dollars of Culver City taxpayers' money and took more than nine years to prepare. Have you even heard of it? What the effects will be on you, your home, your loved ones? By...
I am a resident of Culver City and founder of Angel City Ferret Club. This past week we have requested Culver City City Council to become a Ferret Friendly City; publicly supporting the legalization effort here in California. Since 1988 ferret enthusiast have been trying to change the 1933 law banning domestic ferrets. Supporters have tried every conceivable path towards legalization; legislative, regulative, in the courts and even a ballot initiative. The plain fact is that we the people don’t have enough political power to change this unjust...
While watching a video of one of last month’s School Board meeting, online, something happened that set me back. At the one-hour, seven-minute mark David Mielke, the Teachers Union president, was there to address the Board about School District salaries. While he was handing out an L.A. County salary survey and before he could get to the rostrum, Kathy Paspalis set the desired tone for Mr. Mielke’s address. She chirped in with a well-placed exclamation, “We’ve moved up!” Arriving at the speaker'...
While watching a video of one of last month’s School Board meeting, online, something happened that set me back. At the one-hour, seven-minute mark David Mielke, the Teachers Union president, was there to address the Board about School District salaries. While he was handing out an L.A. County salary survey and before he could get to the rostrum, Kathy Paspalis set the desired tone for Mr. Mielke’s address. She chirped in with a well-placed exclamation, “We’ve moved up!” Arriving at the speaker'...
Steve, I writing you as President/CEO of the Culver City Chamber of Commerce and you as a past Chair of the Board. I find it disturbing that your Centennial publication choose to pick one position of the chamber over its 96-year history as Culver City’s leading business organization to leave a negative image of the Chamber for history to judge us by for current and future citizens of Culver City. As a matter of fact, 50% of the RAP program is being spent on administrative overhead; we did not think that was an appropriate expenditure of rare c...
Dear friends, My name is Ed Ryba and I thoroughly enjoyed reading your "Culver City Centennial Special Edition” from cover to cover! Although it contains quite a few typos every one of them is completely forgivable. Taking on a project like that had to be a daunting and ambitious piece of work and you did it beautifully! However, you did miss one important event in your “Culver City Timeline”. In the year 1955, I WAS BORN HERE! Unfortunately, I didn’t grow up in Culver City. My parents moved to California from Chicago in 1951. When they we...
Dear Editor, As many residents learned last week the new operator of the Inglewood Oil Field, Sentinel Peak Resources, dropped its request that Culver City delay its release of the draft Oil Drilling Regulations, Specific Plan and Environmental Impact Report. Further, SPR declared that they would no longer negotiate during meetings that included our city staff, consultants and the two-member Culver City City Council subcommittee that focuses on oil drilling. With each passing day during the...
Dear Editor: On Saturday, July 8 my son and I planned to drive to Solvang, California for 24 hours of relaxation. As we reached Santa Barbara, intending to drive to Solvang via Highway 154, we were stopped because a fire had erupted in the area of Lake Cachuma. When we finally reached Solvang, we contacted the Santa Barbara authorities in order to help with evacuations. On Sunday the fire had grown considerably in two locations in Santa Barbara County. As we drove back to Culver City on Route...
Dear Editor, The Inglewood Oil Field is the largest urban oil field in the contiguous United States. Roughly 10% of the field resides here in Culver City but that 10% is of arguable value to the field’s new owners Sentinel Peak Resources. If the show or lawyerly force coupled with worker testimony at the City Council’s community meeting on the issue in April is any indication the value of fossil fuel resources in the Culver City portion of the field is outsized compared to the small percentage s...
While Neil is mostly correct that Fox Hills Residents have been largely unrepresented on City Commissions; his comments that Fox Hills residents have "never" served on "any commission" is incorrect. I served on the Park and Human Services Commission from 1974-1981 and lived in Fox Hills from 1977- 2002. At the time of my appointment at age 24 I had lived in the non-Fox Hills portion of the City my entire 24 years....
Last Monday night’s City Council discussion and vote on the future of the oil field was impassioned and challenging. Anyone who listened knows that my critiqueand questions, for the new oilfield operator Sentinel Peak, were incisive and exacting. The company’s presentation to Council and the public was not encouraging. Their responses to our questions were inadequate. There were compelling reasons to simply name Sentinel Peak an enemy, to go directly and immediately to antagonism, to refuse to...
Republicans want to take away health care from millions of people. The proposed cuts to Medicaid will wreck our state budget and hurt people in our community who already are struggling to make ends meet. Their plan weakens Medicare. It takes three years off the life of the Medicare hospital fund in order to give a huge tax break just to people earning more than $200,000 a year. Their plan does nothing to deal with skyrocketing prices for medical care and prescription drugs. Thank you, Susan...
Having read in your news that councilwoman Salhi-Wells is sponsoring fund raisers for Habitat for Humanity to build 10 affordable units on Globe, adjacent to the 405 freeway, I am compelled to object. As a Realtor, I have sold many homes with various statutory admonitions for the buyers to take note so that they will make an informed decision. Buying a home within 1000 feet of a freeway is a mandatory disclosure in California, set in place to educate buyers in that zone of potential danger. The danger is obvious: respiratory disease and...
Dear Editor, My name is Cathy Zermeno, my husband George and I have lived on the Crest since 1954, we raised two children and they attended Culver Schools. It has been a perfect community to live in. I am writing because I am surprised that the Planning Dept allowed the plans for 10753 Crank Road to pass. This house has 5,000 feet and they are planning on building a two-story unit beneath it on the Terraced Hillside, a proposed rental that will include an elevator and a 2,200 feet of floor space. This Hill has had a lot of problems.1978 1993...
The press release from Karen Bass on the death of Fidel Castro was not stupidity, rather simply ignorance. Take it from someone who was there until Jan.4, 1961 having lived the first two years of the Castro dictatorship. Thank God I was able to leave and not be subjected to the full 57 years of that criminal monster. No labor unions or political parties other than the Cuban Communist party! No private home ownership, businesses or even jobs not controlled by the government! Did Miss Bass not...
Dear Editor, The Vulgar Herd reared its ugly head, saw the river with the bully-gators, got a glimpse of the elite and them that's with em, standing off to the side, waving the Herd on to the river, shouting "all is well, all is well!" From out of nowhere an old Bull cried, "follow me, I know a better way!" Can life be good again for the Herd? Good enough is great with the Herd. It's a blue collar life they want to get too. Like grandma used to say "Lord only knows what's gonna happen next."...
Dear Editor, I was one of the thousands of dedicated volunteers who worked on the Clinton Campaign at the Culver Studios. Once again the city of Culver City and the Culver Studios have done us proud and deserve our gratitude for making the large Culver City Studios facility, as well as the downtown stores, restaurants, parking and services available for our mission. We now have a new mission, and it is one that will challenge all thinking and caring Americans throughout this great nation. Just...
Dear Editor. For your reading edification or disdain, the following will be my votes on the 17 propositions on this year’s California ballot. Prop 51 – Yes: Authorizes $9 billion in bonds for construction and modernization of K-12 schools, charter schools and community colleges. Education is the base on which we build our future, it deserves our funding. Prop 52 – Yes: The Medi-Cal Hospital fee is a current, successful program that saves California money and funds hospitals. It expires in 2018 a...
Dear Editor, I’m wondering if the city made the school district aware of the looming cost of the Clean Water Act when school board members were deciding how much bond money to ask from the community. In discussing how much bond money, local board members failed to heed the voices of the fiscal conservatives in the community, such as myself, not to spend our community deeper in debt beyond what we could afford or was absolutely necessary. Board members decided on asking for $106M including 12 i...
Let's keep our Police Chief and Fire Chief more directly accountable to the people by keeping them directly responsible to the City Council, rather than transferring this power to a City Manager. 1. True democracy holds elected officials responsible for major decisions. Ten years ago the Culver City Charter Committee (comprised of residents from a cross-section of the political spectrum) spent almost a year assessing what form of governance best suits the needs of the people in Culver City. The...
As former Mayors of Culver City we urge Culver City voters to join us in supporting Measure CA on the November 8 ballot In 2006 the voters approved changing our City Charter and our system of governance to a Council-Manager form of government, in which the Council hires, supervises and fires a professional full-time City Manager to run the affairs of the City. The City Manager, in turn, hires, supervises and disciplines the department heads. The part-time City Council focuses on policy matters...
Dear Editor, Do you want to preserve democracy in Culver City? If so, please go to the end of a very long ballot on Tuesday, November 8 (or when you receive your vote-by-mail ballot), and vote NO on Measure CA. If Measure CA passes it would take away the power to hire, supervise and fire the Police and Fire Chiefs from our elected City Council and give this power to a single person we did not elect—the City Manager. For almost 70 years our City Council has been in charge of our Police and Fire C...
Dear Editor: Culver City is an ethical desert due to lack of state-mandated ethics training and City Attorney Carol Schwab’s lax attitude toward ethics. In matters involving factual determinations the City Council is legally required to be a “reasonably impartial, noninvolved reviewer.” Politics and common law bias—“an interest … of such importance [] that it could have influenced [] judgment”—are verboten. At the September 12, 2016 City Council meeting, after presenting indisputable pr...
