All your emails, comments, text messages, and conversations over the last few months came together last night as the City Council voted for a community budget that finally starts to fund our real priorities.

On Monday June 9, the Culver City Council will vote on the city budget, and we’re asking them to make sure the community’s voice gets heard. Whether you care about lifeguard pay, park improvements, or affordable housing, our voices are stronger together.

Culver City is in a fiscal crisis. That much is true. But Jubilo Village — the affordable housing development with 93 apartments for low income families — isn’t the financial disaster that affordable housing opponents claim it to be.

We’re very pleased to report that the City Council unanimously rejected the lifeguard outsourcing contract, instead calling for more effective and efficient hiring practices, better treatment of employees, and rehiring the existing Plunge lifeguards!!

Last week, without any public input or discussion, our Parks & Rec Department emailed the lifeguards and swim instructor who work at The Plunge to say they are being laid off and replaced in mid-June by an out of town, for profit company with a troubled history of labor and safety violations. And on Tuesday night, the Culver City Council is being asked to approve a contract for $671,940 with USA Pools of California, a division of USA Management, to begin immediately.

Earlier this year, Our Culver shared a budget survey with the community. In the survey, we described various city departments and then asked if each department should get more money, the same amount of money, or less money in the budget.

Everyone knows housing costs are out of control. We feel it every month when the rent or mortgage payment is due. In Culver City, half of renters pay more than 30% of their income on rent. One in four renters pay more than 50% of their income on rent.

Last weekend, our second annual Fund This! Town Hall brought close to a hundred Culver City neighbors together to talk about how to best use our General Fund budget and other public funds. Our Culver is proud to have hosted the event and we’re committed to helping even more people get engaged in their local government.

On Monday, the City Council heard your demand to fund affordable housing! Vice Mayor Freddy Puza, Council Member Yasmine-Imani McMorrin, and Council Member Bubba Fish voted to loan $16 million to the proposed Jubilo Village development. Jubilo Village will bring 93 much-needed affordable homes to our community, and this vote closes the funding gap so that construction can begin later this year. On June 9, the City Council will vote to approve the full 2025-2026 city budget – including the $16 million loan for Jubilo Village.

Jubilo Village is a 93-unit affordable housing development set to be built at 4464 Sepulveda Blvd, where the Culver-Palms United Methodist Church currently stands. The church partnered with Community Corporation of Santa Monica, an affordable housing developer, to design and build this project.

Jubilo Village is a 95-unit, 100% affordable housing development, ready to be built at 4464 Sepulveda Boulevard, on a major transit corridor, right next door to the Culver-Palms YMCA. The development is “shovel-ready,” with all necessary approvals, but it has a $16 million funding gap.

With corporate money flooding in to elect certain candidates to City Council, it’s worth taking a moment to ask why? What exactly do the corporate special interests hope to gain from spending tens of thousands of dollars to deluge us with negative mailers and deceptive social media ads in the last days of the campaign?

They’re at it again. Big developers, real estate interests, oil companies and the police officers association are lining up to write checks to brand new Political Action Committees (PACs)  formed to defeat the progressive candidates running for Culver City Council.

Oct 12, 2024 is the one year anniversary of the passage of a $25 minimum wage for healthcare workers in California. Just 10 months earlier, in a 3-2 vote, Culver City Council conservatives rejected the very same healthcare worker minimum wage.

Our Culver is excited to endorse Nancy Barba, Bryan "Bubba" Fish, and Yasmine-Imani McMorrin for Culver City Council.

Across Culver City, people are talking about housing costs, traffic congestion, renter protections, and public safety. On Sunday, Fox Hills residents had the unique opportunity to meet all seven candidates one on one and learn about their vision to tackle these issues, if elected.

Another school year has started in America and we have seen yet another school shooting; this time in Georgia. We all know that our national politicians are unwilling to enact sensible gun laws. Yet, here in Culver City, our City Council has taken measurable steps to make us all safer from gun violence.

The results from Culver City's annual homeless count are in, and there's good news: we're seeing significant progress in providing shelter for the city's unhoused residents. You might be wondering how the city has been handling these issues, so we put together an explainer to answer your questions.

Culver City has adopted a new General Plan, a vision statement to guide the next 20 years of development and maximize the opportunities our unique city can build upon. The General Plan continues more than a century of suburban American practices dictating where changes to the built environment should and should not occur, and who should be impacted by urban change or not.

The latest conservative Supreme Court ruling on homelessness bears similarity to some policies enacted here in Culver City.