Gary Walker’s headline in the April 12th edition said it all: A new era begins as another ends.
Monday night’s inaugural City Council meeting gave us the opportunity to celebrate this shift in the expectations of Culver City voters.
I would like to thank the recent Council, and give a special acknowledgment to Christopher Armenta
for helping bring civility back to the Council.
Now that we have restored civility, we are calling on our City Council to build on it – with the building blocks called collaboration. To thrive in these economically challenging times, we need much more community involvement.
Meghan Sahli-Wells was elected because of her commitment to to participatory democracy. I am especially grateful that she will work on our behalf to have a sustainability committee among other community needs she will be representing.
When running for re-election, our new Mayor Andrew Weissman commented in this newspaper about the need for a lot of public input regarding establishing Special Districts to help cut costs. This leads me to believe that Mr. Weissman also sees the value of actively engaging and empowering the electorate – as Mark Ridley-Thomas did by establishing Neighborhood Councils when he was on LA’s Council, and as Karen Bass welcomes all constituents to Town Halls and People’s Committees to better inform her of our needs.
I trust the entire Council sees the need to put an Oil Field Safety committee in place very soon — inviting the expertise that lies hidden in our City to provide needed input for the upcoming Culver City CSD to avoid economic losses and avert the inadequacies of the County’s CSD & settlement, that allowed fracking without notice. I would love to see our new Vice Mayor Jeff Cooper spearhead this effort, as too Councilman Mehaul O’Leary, who has always lent a listening ear to this potentially life-threatening issue.
These and other committees would help lessen demands on Council members’ time by providing Volunteer Aides to attend and/or represent our Council at various inter-city, County, Metro and other meetings Council members attend on our behalf.
To win first time round by such a wide margin tells me that Jim Clarke is a consensus builder, respected in both political & business circles. Your platform of listening to our concerns to respond to our needs tells us that you too recognize the era of well meaning patriarchal type of democracy is morphing into one of participation and that you will inviting more and more community involvement.
With that said, I call on the People of our City to unite once again as we did to help fund our Schools. And as we give thanks for all the hard work & people that have made this City great, let’s volunteer to welcome and help usher in a new era in Culver City, – one that invites and welcomes collaborative changes, so that while other cities may struggle to survive, — Culver City will become even more vibrant and alive as we continue to thrive!
For as we know from organisms to organizations – those that adapt and develop the interconnections to respond to changing needs become strong, vital, vibrant. Those who cannot, die.
Together let’s make Culver City a model City for our Nation to emulate.
Suzanne DeBenedittis
