CITY COUNCIL: City will launch a non-profit to fundraise for Begg pool
by Mark McDermott
The LoveMB Foundation had a messy birth at Tuesday night’s Manhattan Beach City Council meeting, but by night’s end, the City’s own non-profit was alive and kicking — very specifically, as it turned out, towards a new Begg Pool.
An ad hoc committee that grew out of discussion betweens the Council and the Parks and Recreation Commission regarding fundraising for City projects, specifically a new Begg pool and community aquatics center. presented its proposal. Tentatively called MBLove, the non-profit would work in partnership with the Council and provide funds for projects ranging from trees and park benches to art installations and swimming pools.
“You know how we do things in this town,” Karen Komatinsky, a Parks and Rec commissioner and member of the ad hoc committee. “How things get done in the 90266 is you get people generating ideas and coming together and collaborating. There’s a lot of people who really do want to get involved.”
Mark Leyman, the director of the City’s Parks and Recreation department, said that the ad hoc committee researched both how other cities had launched successful foundations as well as the 400 existing non-profits within Manhattan Beach. He said 29% were family trusts or foundations, a third of which are inactive, and a fifth of which have budgets over $100,000 annually; 16% were athletic clubs or sports teams; 15% education or art space groups; 12% business or government foundations; and another 20% a variety of religious, medical, environmental and other miscellaneous non-profit groups.
“Looking at those 400 existing non-profits, I think this really does show that LoveMB provides a unique opportunity for donors in Manhattan Beach,” he said. “….This shows that there is a niche specific to benefits to the City of Manhattan Beach. Looking at all the other nonprofits, globally, and all the time that we’ve spent doing that — there’s really just this sense of community, there’s this sense of ownership. People are interested in contributing their time or contributing towards a project and really making it their own, within their own community.”
The sticking point was the price tag. In order to get LoveMB off the ground, the ad hoc committee was asking for $104,900 for its first year and $73,000 for each of the next two years. Among the initial costs was $30,000 to build a website and $40,000 for a part-time executive director.
Councilperson Steve Napolitano expressed concern over the costs. He asked Gary Wayland, the founder of the school district’s MBX booster club and co-founder of the Manhattan Beach Education Foundation, what it cost to get those two successful non-profits off the ground.
“Did the school district fund that?” Napolitano asked. “Or did they have a bunch of people to dinner and they had some chardonnay and everyone said okay, at the end of the night, this is a great idea, I am going to write my check, and that’s how it got started?”
Wayland, a financial patron saint for local charitable endeavors, was at the meeting to support the proposed LoveMB. He responded that what was magical about MBx and MBEF was that “they raise money to make everybody’s boat go higher.”
“But how did it start?” Napolitano asked.
“Well, all we did was we rolled out the map and said if you donate and you want it to go to lacrosse equipment, that’s where it goes,” Wayland said. “We didn’t do any fundraisers. We didn’t do anything other than make the tools available to make direct donations.”
Councilperson Amy Howorth said that what was different between launching LoveMB and MBX is that the latter had Wayland.
“I’m sorry, Gary, I know you’d like to be humble, but MBX didn’t have a board and didn’t need $80,000 to get started because it had Gary Wayland, who kind of single handedly created the track at Mira Costa, who kind of single handedly does all these things,” Howorth said. “And he’s retiring, people, so that’s how much it costs to replace Gary Wayland. Not quite, but the funding that they’re asking for is so it doesn’t take five or 10 years to get this going.”
She expressed strong support for funding the launch of LoveMB.
“By funding it to this level, I think this is going to benefit our community and our city for years to come,” she said. “It’s going to be such a wise investment. I think if we don’t, I think we will set ourselves back. So I am going to be making a motion to support it.”
Wayland said he was confident residents would rally around a non-profit that supported City projects.
“I think you can’t always look at not-for-profit, fundraising, like you do with business,” Wayland said. “I think there is untapped potential in Manhattan Beach to do a tremendous number of projects. And I think what you’re doing is providing them an easy opportunity to move forward and to take it. I think MBEF has shown that, MPX has shown that, and many of those foundations and organizations that you all support have shown that if you give them something to donate to and a reason to do it, they will make it happen.”
Mayor Joe Franklin, who grew emotional in talking about what MBX had done for his own children, likewise said residents would support the new non-profit.
“Don’t underestimate the effort of determined people,” the mayor said. “Especially parents who want to have better facilities.”
Every council member expressed support for the idea. But skepticism remained over the cost. Napolitano said a successful non-profit, such as MBX, showed “proof of concept” by attracting the funding from donors for their own launches.
“The proof of concept was the fact that people were writing those checks,” he said. “What I would hate to see is the sinking of $252,300 into this, and after three years, we’ve collected maybe $50,000. That’s a loss and it doesn’t prove anything. The proof of concept would be something like choosing [Begg] pool and saying, ‘This is what we’re going to fundraise for, people, because we took a poll and everyone says we support the pool. Well, let’s see financially, how much they really support it. And maybe that’s your initial project to get off the ground.”
Begg Pool, the city’s only community-serving aquatic facility, is 83 years old. City staff has determined it is beyond its useful life, but its location — within Polliwog Park — is a challenging site, construction-wise. Council last year hired a firm, at a cost of $250,0000, to come up with several designs, ranging from a refurbishment of the existing facility to the creation of a two-pool facility that includes a competition and wading pool. But the cost is likely to be well north of the $11 million neighboring El Segundo spent on its new aquatic facility a few years ago, far more than the City, with its competing capital needs, can afford to spend.
Howorth ran with the idea. The council’s conversation with the Parks and Rec Commission began with Begg Pool, she noted.
“What I’m hearing is if we focus on this one thing, the pool, that’s going to really draw people in,” she said. “So let’s do that, and show success, and then you have the structure of the 501(c)3, and then you can keep going.”
She also proposed $50,000 to help the launch, and that the council revisit progress in six months.
Napolitano, who seconded the motion, said he had no problem with that amount.
“Because that is investment in a larger return on something that we specifically want to start prioritizing as the next big project in Manhattan Beach to take care of,” he said.
The motion passed unanimously. ER