The Council voted to approve the trnsaction without adding a condition that the Aquarium operator allow public access to meetings of its decision-making governing board (current members here.) It's a level of transparency that the non-profit private entity that runs the publicly owned facility has prevented for over two decades with tacit enabling under three Mayor by multiple City Councils. .

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In 1995, LB city officials told the public that expert forecasts indicated the Aquarium could likely pay its annual bonded debt service from its own generated revenue without tapping public funds. (Taxpayers who doubted this were labeled "naysayers.") Since 1998 (year of the Aquarium's opening) the City has let a non-profit corporation operate the publicly owned Aquarium.

Within a few years, the forecasts proved untrue and a Council under Mayor Beverly O'Neill approved a de facto annual rent cap for the Aquarium operator that now drains taxpayer Tidelands funds each year to pay a portion of the Aquarium's debt service.

For more than a decade, LBREPORT.com has advocated public (and press) access to the Aquarium operator's board meetings as a matter of transparency and public oversight. The May 5. 2020 Council agenda item was the latest opporunity when the City Council could have done this. It didn't.

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On May 3, LBREPORT.com published an article (here) describing the upcoming May 5 agenda item. Veteran Long Beach journalist Phillip Zonkel (a former PressTelegram reporter who founded and now publishes QVoiceNews) saw the piece and asked Mayor Garcia at a May 4 City briefing if the Mayor believed a condition of that loan should be allowing the public to attend the Aquarium operator's governing board meetings.

Mayor Garcia, who was the City's 1st dist.(downtown area) Council representative from 2009 through mid-2014, avoided answering the reporter's question. (He professed uncertainty about the board's rules and its membership (neither of which pertain to the Council's ability to condition a loan of public funds to public access to the board's meetings) but added that he supported the agenda item.

The reporter Q & A was by telephone (and not a good connection) and Mr. Zonkel didn't have a chance to follow-up.

To hear an audio clip of the exchange between reporter Zonkel and Mayor Garcia, click here.

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Mayor Gracia ended his May 4 comment by predicting a "robust" Councild debate on the agenda item the next night. That didn't happen.

At the May 5 Council meeting, Councilwoman Jeannine Pearce made the motion to approve the agenda item. Councilwoman Mary Zendejas seconded the motion. ,No Couniclmembers raised the issue of public access to the Aquarium operator's governing board meetings. The agenda item passed 9-0 with no assurance of public access to meetings of the Aquarium operator's board meetings that will ultimately decide how to spend it, how to repay it and how to continue its operation of publicly owned facility.

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