The Oversight Board of the Successor Agency to the Culver City Redevelopment Agency - what a mouth full this is - met for the first time in Culver City on May 3, 2012. The question is, Will this Oversight Board be watching what the Successor Agency is doing - having “oversight” of the Agency - or will its work result in an “oversight”? In other words, will this Oversight Committee fulfill its role as an independent body or will it simply be a rubberstamp for developments?
The Successor Agency was created by the
California Legislature to wind down the business of the Redevelopment Agencies
that were dissolved by A.B. (Assembly Bill) x 26. The City of Culver City has been named by the
City Council as the Successor Agency.
California law requires an Oversight Committee to monitor and approve
actions of the Successor Agency (See
sections 34179 and 34180 of the California Health and Safety Code). This Oversight Committee must consist of 7
members: 2 appointed by mayor Andrew Weissman (who appointed himself and Nicholas Kimball,
a former employee of the Redevelopment Agency), 2 by the County Supervisors
(Richard Bruckner, Director of Regional Planning for Los Angeles County, and
Steve Rose, president of the Culver City Chamber of Commerce), 1 by the County
superintendent of education, (Sean Kearney, Fiscal Services Manager of the Culver
City Unified School District), 1 by the largest special district that receives
property tax revenues, and 1 by the Chancellor of the California Community
Colleges. By the time of the May 3, 2012
initial meeting of the Oversight Board, 6 of the 7 appointees had been chosen.
The first meeting of the Oversight
Committee was managed by Martin Cole, the City’s assistant manager and clerk,
and now also the secretary pro tempore - yes, this is the title given in the
agenda.
In a blink of an eye, decades of Culver
City procedures, processes, and rules came to a screeching halt without even a
modicum of “oversight”. Here are some of
the troubling rules and procedures utilized during the Oversight Committee’s
first meeting.
1.
Notice of the May 3, 2012 agenda was not sent to the City’s e-mail list
as some believe is required by the Brown Act, and is definitely part of City policy and practice. It should have been sent to the same group that
received the former Redevelopment Agency e-mails and currently gets the
Successor Agency, Housing Authority, and City Council ones. For each of these City bodies, the first page
of every item of the agenda has a box which notes what e-mail list received the
agenda and when. On the other hand, the
Oversight Committee has no such box on each agenda item. Someone took a perfectly good notification
procedure, which took years to establish, and deleted it from the Oversight
Committee. For that reason, I did not
receive the Oversight Committee’s agenda by e-mail and only by good fortunate
discovered it by speaking with a Culver City resident. When I raised the lack of proper public
notification at the May 3 meeting, Mr. Cole replied that because the Oversight
Committee is a State Committee, the City’s rules did not apply. However, on January 9, 2012 Culver City - not
the state of California - voted to serve as the Successor Agency. It is so easy to press the e-mail “sent”
button to notify the public of meetings, that to refuse to fulfill this
responsibility makes the public suspicious of wrong doing.
2.
All Culver City Commissions and Committees regularly meet at night. The
Oversight Committee, however, met at 2:00 p.m., thus preventing most working
people and students from attending as well as watching the meeting. There are many evenings available at the City
Council chambers for this monthly committee meeting.
3.
Although there are 7 required members, only 6 - including one who had
barely been chosen by the time of the meeting - had been selected by the May 3
meeting. Thus this gave both the
appointed members and the public insufficient time to study and evaluate the
crucial topics for this new and complex committee. All 7 members should have first been selected
before taking any business, including the election of officers.
4.
Mayor Weissman was selected for a position on this Board. It is wrong to have the same person serving
on both an Oversight Committee and the Agency it oversees - the Successor
Agency. Although state law requires the
mayor to appoint one member for the city that formed the redevelopment agency,
the appointee should not be the mayor due to the conflict that exists when the
same person votes both on items as a member of the Successor Agency and then
votes later as a member of its Oversight Committee.
5.
This Board was established to provide an independent and fair oversight
- to monitor and approve actions - of the Successor Agency to the Redevelopment
Agency. Steve Rose is the full time
salaried President of the Culver City Chamber of Commerce. Many, if not all, of the businesses having a
financial interest with the Successor Agency will be members of a Chamber of
Commerce. For those who are members of
Culver City’s Chamber of Commerce, a separate and local Chamber of Commerce
under its national association, Steve Rose will financially benefit from those
Chamber dues paid, some of which goes to his salary and other employee
benefits. A conflict exists whenever a
public Board member is the President of an organization who benefits from his
vote or who may gain financially.
6.
Do you want to review the webcast of the meeting of the Oversight
Committee? Unlike the City Council,
Housing Authority, Successor Agency, and all City Commissions, you will not
find the Oversight Committee’s webcast on Culver City’s webpage because it was
not televised. Although a duplication of
the audio tape can be ordered, it will not tell us who was speaking nor is it as easy
to follow.
7.
The May 3, 2012 Oversight Committee meeting agenda prepared by City
staff recommended passing 2 six month administrative budgets for the Successor
Agency, as required by state law, in order to have them later reviewed by the
Los Angeles County Auditor-Controller.
The money raised for the budget items will be paid by property
taxes. The proposed yearly budget for 13
part time employees comes to $824,628, including $41,698 for the City Manager
who will be employed at a 15% level and $23,283 for the Assistant City Manager
who will work at 10% rate.
Some members of the public have become
suspicious of the controversial Redevelopment Agencies that sometimes helped
change blighted areas into positive developments for the community, but other
times refused to provide the required affordable housing, developed on land
that was not blighted, gave large financial benefits to developers, and
approved projects that did not benefit the city.
It’s time to let the sunshine in. Publicize the meetings, hold them at night,
thoroughly explain the agenda items, and get rid of all actual and apparent
conflicts by the Oversight Committee members.
Without the public’s trust, no Committee can properly function.
Gary Silbiger is the Co-Editor of the Culver City Progress Blog and the former Mayor of Culver City.
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