What To Watch For On Queen Mary Re-Do Vote Tonight: Responsibility Exercised Or Scorned

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: [UPDATE] At its Jan. 5 meeting, no member of the City Council (Austin absent for entire meeting) pulled for individual discussion the Queen Mary lease re-vote agenda item. Some individual (currently unidentified) agendized the Queen Mary re-vote for the Council's "consent calendar" where it would receive no individual discussion unless pulled for individual discussion by a Councilmember, the Mayor or City Manager...and none did. Prior to public testimony, a motion and a second was made on the entire consent calendar with the exception of one item pulled for individual discussion by Councilwoman Stacy Mungo: a resolution supporting "Homeowner Exemption Month" [a non-substantive item.] However the Council had to allow public comment on the collective consent calendar items, and retired Deputy City Attorney Jim McCabe used the opportunity once again to urge the Council to ask questions about aspects of the proposed Queen Mary lease (whose text wasn't disclosed, summarized in a management memo.) LB Taxpayers Ass'n co-founder Tom Stout questioned why the City was again offering a private entity a 66-year lease term for a city asset. The Council then voted 8-0 to approve the consent calendar. LBREPORT.com coverage with audio is here.

(Jan. 5, 2016, 8:38 a.m.) -- Thanks to retired Deputy City Attorney Jim McCabe, Long Beach City Council members have the opportunity today (Jan. 5) to do their job...which in our opinion they didn't do on November 17, 2015 in what we considered a taxpayer-unfriendly, corporate deferential action regarding the Queen Mary and the public property surrounding her.

In our view, the Council has a duty to protect the public's interest in the publicly owned ship and the publicly owned Tidelands property. That means discussing publicly at tonight's City Council meeting what the lease will or won't let the Council's chosen lessee do or not do for the next 66 years with historic ship and the public property surrounding her.

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What does the LLC lessee plan to do with the surrounding public property we're leasing away for 66 more years? A nuclear waste dump? A brothel? Some other things?

We watched in amazement on November 17, 2015 when eight incumbent Long Beach Councilmembers -- Gonzalez, Lowenthal, Supernaw, Mungo, Andrews, Uranga, Austin and Richardson -- didn't even ask. Only Councilwoman Price timidly, deferentially, almost apologetically sought a tiny little peek at what the LLC might want to do...and then she let management brush her back.

Suppose the public and the City don't like what the LLC decides to do? What mechanisms are written into the lease to protect the rights of the public and the City to protect what's done on the the ship and what's done on the developable property?

This isn't plain old developable property. It's publicly owned Tidelands property and what the City allows on that property shouldn't simply be left to the whims or profit motives of some LLC and its delegees. A Mayor-chosen so-called "Task Force" to talk about and invite the public talk about they'd like is in our view absurd if the Council approves a lease tonight that would let the lessee legally decide what's done.

And the ship itself isn't just some ordinary city owned structure. The Queen Mary is a priceless historical asset. Its historic preservation shouldn't be basically left to a single individual (even a friend of some Councilmembers with a general knowledge of art deco.) In our opinion, the Queen Mary deserves protection in the lease terms with inclusion of a meaningful role for a non-profit entity with demonstrable Queen Mary expertise and interests.

All of this is impossible to do without seeing the lease terms. A rosy management written memo is clearly insufficient. The Council should insist on its right as decisionmakers, and the public's right as taxpayers, to see the proposed lease before agreeing to it. To ensure real transparency, LBREPORT.com has for many years urged the Council to require management to disclose the terms of all major contracts/leases (as a number of responsible City Councils in other cities do) before they're agreed to, not afterward.

Retired Deputy City Attorney McCabe, who oversaw Tidelands leases on the Queen Mary and other matters, testified on November 17 that in his opinion (based on the barebones management memo) what management has proposed in financial returns for the public is less than the public deserves.

The City Council has an opportunity to do the right things tonight. To do so, it will require at least one Councilmember to pull the Queen Mary item from the consent calendar where some cynical person inside City Hall tried to hide it. If not pulled for individual discussion, Councilmembers could evade an individual recorded vote on the Queen Mary item separately tonight, leaving the record with only a vote on the collective consent calendar.

The public can comment on the item either way (as a part of the consent calendar or individually) but in our view it is ultimately the duty of Long Beach Councilmembers to address these issues in a businesslike manner for the City and a respectful manner for the public. The entire City will be watching.

LBREPORT.com will (as always) carry tonight's Council proceedings LIVE on our front page: www.LBREPORT.com

And thank you, retired City Attorney McCabe.

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