City tries to dig itself out of a messy situation.

LINE FORMS HERE: Those who think there’s too much horse manure at City Hall might have Palos Verdes Estates in mind.

The city’s horse stable houses 80 boarders that produce up to 200 cubic yards of dung a week, says stable manager Sallie Reed. The beneficiaries of all this have been fertilizer companies, which since 1993 have paid for the right to haul the manure to their factories.

But the bottom is apparently falling out of the manure market--companies are selling less and less of the horse byproduct, Reed told the City Council last week. That means the city must pay about $14,000 a year to haul the manure to the fertilizer factories.

Trying to slash its manure surplus, the city is now offering the manure for free. Over the weekend, Reed said about two dozen people, including some from local community gardens, stopped by with trash bags, trash cans and pickup trucks to haul away 15 to 20 cubic yards of the stuff.

Still faced with the prospect of hauling away the leftovers, the city may raise its $315 average monthly boarding fee by $10, Reed said. She said the stable has enough reserves to prevent fees from going up this year, but it may have to cut back in other areas.

Reed says fertilizer companies need less manure because they are using more green waste clippings from plants, trees and grass. So the silver lining, Reed says, is that people are recycling more green waste.

But she is tiring of the nicknames. “I’ve become the manure queen of Palos Verdes,” Reed said. “The princess of poop.”

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THE ODD COUPLE, TOGETHER AGAIN: Former Redondo Beach roomies Julian Sirull and Chris Boyle--the two politicos who got into a much-publicized tiff several weeks ago--will meet Feb. 14 to try to patch things up.

It won’t be easy.

Sirull, who ran for state Assembly last year, was arrested after he got into an argument with Boyle over the volume of the TV set. Boyle, a Redondo Beach gadfly, wound up in the hospital and has since obtained a restraining order against Sirull. Sirull, who was arrested on misdemeanor battery charges, has said that Boyle has blown the incident out of proportion.

Since then, attorney Tony Capozzola has stepped in to try to mediate the dispute.

“This is amazing,” Capozzola said. “You talk about the odd couple. . . . I’ve never seen a roommate situation attract this attention.”

One of the sticking points: who gets the choice apartment on the Esplanade.

Now the matter is headed to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Prosecutors will decide after the Valentine’s Day meeting whether to press charges against Sirull.

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WHERE IS THE SOUTH BAY?: Few economic studies have come around in recent years that don’t lump the South Bay in with the rest of Los Angeles County.

The South Bay Assn. of Chambers of Commerce and Cal State Dominguez Hills are all set to come up with an economic forecast for the South Bay region, in hopes that its distinct boundaries will help in marketing and applying for government grants. Problem is, they first had to define exactly what the boundaries of the South Bay are.

“You can’t start marketing the South Bay until you can define exactly what it is,” said Alan Schwartz, president of the South Bay Assn. of Chambers of Commerce.

Real estate forecasters, for example, many times include Long Beach as part of the South Bay. Other groups include Santa Monica.

But Schwartz said they’ve come to a consensus. The boundaries are roughly Manchester Avenue on the north, the Port of Los Angeles on the south, Alameda Street on the east and the coast on the west.

Not that we’re crowing, but those are roughly the circulation boundaries of The Times’ South Bay section, which also includes Compton.

Compton “really wants to be part of the South Bay,” Schwartz said. “They have a warehouse and industrial component that the South Bay needs.”