LBEPORT.com's Upcoming Series On Airport "Feasibility Study" And City Att'y Memo Re Customs Facility / Int'l Flights

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LBREPORT.com's Upcoming Series On Airport "Feasibility Study" And City Att'y Memo Re Customs Facility / Int'l Flights

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(Oct. 30, 2016, 8:55 p.m.) -- LBREPORT.com will shortly begin a series exploring reasons why in our view, an Airport-hired consultant's "Feasibility Study" (697 pages, visible here) and an accompanying City Attorney memo (23 pages, visible here) are seriously flawed.

We don't believe these materials will protect Council members who reflexively accept their reasoning. When examined on their merits, we don't believe they provide instant justifications for turning the City's Airport into an international facility.

[Scroll down for further.]

Among other things, we hold a view on economic impacts that the Feasibility Study doesn't acknowledge and Long Beach elected officials rarely if ever acknowledge. We happen to believe that every family home is effectively a family business. Beyond producing City revenue (City Hall's largest General Fund budgeted revenue source is secured property taxes), each home reflects a family's business interests in the property's value, the family's finances, their children's needs (including college), retirement plans, inheritance plans and current net worth and accessible equity.

In our view, LB's Mayor and Councilmembers should treat those tens of thousands of family business interests respectfully and seriously, not impliedly belittle them as somehow inferior or otherwise subordinate to corporate interests. We doubt that 5th district Councilwoman Stacy Mungo would have been elected in June 2014 if she'd told voters what she told concerned residents at the July, 7, 2015 Council meeting where she made the motion (over the dissents of Councilmembers Supernaw, Austin and Uranga) to prepare the Feasibility Study: "I want all of you to stay in the homes you're in, but quite frankly if you moved, the city would actually increase its property tax revenue."

We acknowledge that our conclusions differ from many of the Feasibility Study's conclusions. We remain unpersuaded by much of its reasoning.

We disagree with some assumptions in the City Attorney opinion memo, We also acknowledge that we have no ready response (at least as of Oct. 30) to some of its more troubling statements...but we're separately pursuing those issues.

However we do believe that if our reasoning is correct, the upcoming Council vote on a customs facility / international operations will be unlike other Council actions. It doesn't involve some abstract City Hall boondoggle; if our reasoning is correct, it could affect tens of thousands of families personally.

We reject in advance those who may try to label our questioning as some sort of civic apostasy. History teaches differently.

Roughly ten years ago, another LB Airport-hired consulting firm recommended building permanent terminal area facilities roughly 30% larger than the Council ultimately approved. The consultant-recommended size would have effectively produced a monstrosity that would have destroyed LB Airport's boutique size that travelers enjoy. Fortunately, LBHUSH2 and Neighborhoods First opposed the consultant's recommendation, and a thoughtful Council agreed and approved the more modest design we have now which is why LB has an Airport that travelers enjoy and wins awards.

Roughly fifteen years ago, the City Attorney's office reasoned that it wouldn't risk LB's protective Airport ordinance if the Council changed LGB's rules for allocating flight slots under the ordinance by letting new carriers hold them longer before flying them. Based on that City Attorney office advice, the Council voted 8-1 to make the change. Within days, a relatively new operator, JetBlue, took all of LGB's then vacant large aircraft slots, and it eventually became known that LB officials had met quietly with JetBlue reps before making the change. Two other carriers objected, prompting an FAA inquiry that might have escalated to a full-blown challenge to LB's Airport ordinance until JetBlue gave up a few slots. (At the next ballot opportunity, voters voted out two Mayor-backed Council incumbents, including the one who'd sought a delay in the Council action.)

Past is prologue. Consultant reports may not always advise what LB really needs. City Attorney opinions may offer advice in good faith that blows up in the real world.

But long after details of this consultant's study and this city attorney's memo are forgotten, tens of thousands of residents will remember which Councilmembers cast votes robotically, or thoughtfully, when those electeds seek re-election or higher office.

Watch for our series starting soon...on LBREPORT.com.