The releases are visible here and here.

LB city officials have been mum locally (thus far; that may change now) on the controversial transaction's financial close. LB's Mayor and City Council are currently seeking voter approval for a June 2016 ballot measure that would raise LB's sales tax to 10% (while it's 9% in Signal Hill/Lakewood and 8% in most OC cities) and could be spent for any general fund purposes...including Civic Center costs.

[Scroll down for further.]

The Civic Center transaction, approved without dissent by the Council in mid-December 2015 (Gonzalez, Lowenthal, Price, Supernaw, Mungo, Andrews, Uranga, Austin and Richardson) will contractually bind LB taxpayers to pay a private operator to finance, build, operate and maintain LB's Civic Center for 40+ years. The Council-approved transaction requires LB taxpayers to pay an annual sum that will increase each year per CPI, shrink the size of LB's current Main Library, and permanently give away for private development what is currently public property comprising part of the Civic Center (without a publicly released appraisal of its value.)

The P3 ("public private partnership") type of transaction is similar to the arrangement that State Legislative Analyst's Office concluded cost millions more than traditional financing when applied to new LB courthouse [LBREPORT.com coverage here.]

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An item on the April 19, 2016 Council agenda quietly mentioned (in its agendizing memo) that city management was planning to close the Civic Center transaction by the end of April; the item sought Council approval for findings and determinations regarding work usually performed by City employees and authorized city management to enter into a contract with the new Civic Center operator for custodial, maintenance and security services. Richard Suarez, representing IAM, the city employee union representing a number of those workers, testified in opposition to the Council action and alleged that the City's action violated the Meyers-Milias-Brown Act (after a meet-and-confer impasse, now awaiting an independent fact-finders findings.) The Council went on to approve the management sought action (7-2, Mungo and Richardson absent) after Mr. Conway said delaying action could create City liability in addressing City Hall's seismic issues.

Mr. Suarez has told LBREPORT.com that IAM plans to examine and pursue all its legal options, including filing objections with PERB [CA's Public Employement Relations Board]. If PERB were to find for IAM, it could make an award of a sum for the workers involved (roughly half a dozen we believe) against the City. [IAM previously filed objections with PERB over wider 2009 City Hall furloughs of IAM employees that cost the City over $4 million.]

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In 2007, the City was informed of seismic issues in its current City Hall but management and Councilmembers didn't seek bids for a retrofit of LB's less than 40 year old City Hall, which could have been financed through a bond with fixed (not escalating) annual payments and a vote of the people.

Instead, management argued (under Mayor Foster, with the early support of downtown Council reps Garcia and Suja Lowenthal) that City Hall's seismic issues offered the City an "opportunity" to have an entirely new Civic Center for roughly the amount the City was spending (adjusted for inflation) for its current Civic Center. Management portrayed LB's current City Hall (which won architectural awards when built) as "functionally obsolete" and contended LB's current Civic Center was a poor use of public space. With the exception of Councilwoman Gerrie Schipske (who voted against pursuing the transaction and exited the Council under term limits after an unsuccessful Mayoral bid in 2014), no Councilmembers voted against pursuing an entirely new Civic Center.

(The Port of Long Beach is also part of the new Civic Center to construct a new headquarters building, but its part of the transaction (approved by its Harbor Commission) is structured differently than the City's portion of the transaction.)

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City management initially told the public and the Council that the City wouldn't pay more than $12.6 million adjusted annually for inflation, a sum it said was based on the city's Civic Center costs in 2013, although city management ultimately acknowledged that the base sum was over $14 million and attributed the increase to various changes in the project. Management's proffered sum was publicly questioned Terry Jensen, a former member of LB's Redevelopment Agency Board experienced in commercial real estate development matters. In a series of opinion pieces on LBREPORT.com, Mr. Jensen (who didn't oppose the concept of a better use of the current Civic Center property) itemized with specificity areas in which he said management's figures were incorrect...and said he believed the transaction would expose LB taxpayers to paying millions of dollars more than the City could avoid using other financing methods (consuming dollars that wouldn't be available for other city needs.)

A few weeks before giving final voted approval (without dissent) to the Civic Center transaction, the Council agreed to spend $3 million from taxpayers' surplus (that won't be available for Council district infrastructure) and incur a debt bond that will cost LB taxpayers roughly $1.7 million each year for ten years (a sum that won't be available for police, fire, parks and libraries) to abate asbestos and in tearing down the former LB courthouse as part of the Civic Center transaction. City management had expected Sacramento would let the City tap Redevelopment sums (meant to abate blight citywide) to cover these sums, but Sac'to declined.

On December 15, 2015, after management acknowledged that its $12.6 million base sum (on which future CPI increases would be based) had now grown to over $14 million (which management vaguely attributed to additional items the City wanted, cost increases and the like), the City Council voted (without dissent) to give final approval to authorize entering into the Civic Center transaction.

Over a period spanning a number of years, LBREPORT.com editorially criticized the Council and city management for failing to seek marketplace bids for a seismic retrofit. In Council study sessions, city management told the Council and public that it estimated the cost of a seismic retrofit would approach $200 million, citing seismic studies but ultimately estimated by management in-house. No Councilmembers invited firms that actually do seismic retrofits to deliver presentations or offer information and cost estimates independent of management's cost figure.

As previously reported by LBREPORT.com, a representative of an award winning LB architectural firm (based in the 2nd Council district represented by Suja Lowenthal) said he believed an adaptive re-use plan ought to cost less than half than the management-estimated sum; his approach wasn't pursued. [LBREPORT.com coverage here.]

Roughly a year later, a Columbia University Master of Science graduate student (a Long Beach native) prepared a formal thesis for her academic work arguing that the City could retrofit its current City Hall for a fraction of management's estimated sum...and she included conceptual designs showing how it could be done. The concept came to light in testimony by veteran LB preservationist Nancy Latimer at a Nov. 11, 2014 Council meeting -- the only Council study session scheduled to discussing financial details of management's favored "P3" transaction (discussed in more general terms in other meetings.)

Management scheduled the financial "study session" for Veterans Day in a North Long Beach park's meeting room (one of the furthest locations from downtown.) Management delivered a Power Point slide show (not available for public review before the meeting) and provided no accompanying narrative memo. Councilmembers asked questions and then allowed members of the public three minutes each to speak...and Ms. Latimer volunteered that she'd given the Masters Thesis to the City but it appeared to be "going nowhere." [LBREPORT.com coverage, including conceptual drawing and details, here.] [LBREPORT.com has since learned that the Thesis was given to city management and shared with a number of Councilmembers.]

Management (per Mr. Conway) responded [paraphrase] that the Masters Thesis appeared interesting but didn't contain sufficient data to evaluate. [The thesis was for academic purposes, not a formal proposal, on which neither management nor Councilmembers chose to follow-up.]

In order to facilitate the Civic Center transaction, the City sought and obtained special Sacramento legislation. SB 562 (carried for the City by state Senator Ricardo Lara, D, LB-Huntington Park) extended the allowable period for the lease with the private developer/operator to up to 50 years. (City management initially indicated to the public that the lease would run for about 30 years, then 30+ years, and more recently, 40 years.) Extending the financing period means more payments that ultimately raise the total pay-out cost to taxpayers.

In May 2015, SB 562 cleared the state Senate's Governance and Finance Committee, with the support of its two Republicans -- Senators Janet Nguyen and John Moorlach. Testifying in support of the bill alongside Senator Lara was Mark Taylor, Chief of Staff to Mayor Robert Garcia, along with a representative of the Port of Long Beach and a representative of southern CA building and trade unions. There was no testimony in opposition. [LBREPORT.com coverage, including audio, is at this link. The bill ultimately passed the legislature with no voted opposition.

Under the Council approved transaction that has now reached financial close, City Hall's current seismic issues will remain until a new City Hall is completed, currently scheduled for occupancy in the latter half of 2019. At that time, annual escalating (CPI) city taxpayer payments to the developer/operator will begin and increase over a 40+ year period.