Dear ER:
Your article about the AVP (“Down to business,” August 19, 2010) leaves several inaccurate impressions which need to be addressed. First of all there is no interview or comment from Leonard Armato. He is clearly one of the central themes in the article. I feel that it would have been very important to hear what he feels about the demise of the AVP. Secondly, the Shamrock deal requires more elaboration. The Shamrock offer was the culmination of a strategy set in motion in 2001 when the tour was acquired. The building of a sports media property was the goal and the sale to Shamrock was the endgame. Shamrock had “deep pockets” and a $275 million dollar sports and entertainment fund. The AVP shareholders objected to the sale because they thought that the Shamrock offer was too low. Many players also objected to the Shamrock deal and they turned down a contract extension in 2007 that would have guaranteed them $5 million, $6 million, and $7 million for this, the 2010 season. Many shareholders felt that the value was $50 million, or higher. From zero in 2001 to $37.5 million in 2007 was a great run. If it had been $50 million, that would have been fantastic. The disappointed shareholders made changes with the Board of Directors, replacing the old board with people who shared their opinion of the value of the property; enter Jason Hodell in the spring of 2008. Jason was a board member first, before becoming CFO.
The Crocs issue continues to get glossed over. Crocs had up to about $20 million left on their contract when they ran one of the most successful “bluffs” in sports marketing history. Threatening bankruptcy and a prospect of not being able to honor their contract, AVP management accepted a settlement offer of about $2.5million. Within months of the settlement Crocs had a new CEO, had stabilized the company, and were on their way back. The extra $3 million or so that the Crocs deal would have generated in 2010 would have substantially reduced the AVP’s losses this year and may have changed their outlook for survival.
The demise of the AVP has broken the hearts of many, but none more than the folks who worked there. Your August 19, 2010 issue did a great job of capturing the general spirit of beach volleyball and provided an interesting description of the business and political issues surrounding the AVP. However, I doubt if anyone will be able to capture the stories and emotion of what it was like to work there.
Dave Williams
Managing Director, Beach
USA Volleyball
Dear ER:
Let us not be naive. That mosque will be understood by all in the Islamic world and in some places in the West as an act of domination and disrespect (On Local Government, August 19, 2010). All the wailing regarding the first amendment aside, freedom to pray in an Islamic house of worship of its believers geographical choice is a scrim hiding the real intentions of Islam and Imam Rauf and those who financing the mosque. To impose Sharia law, to reconstruct the caliphate, to wage peace and war in such a way as to encroach on, over time, and dominate the West, the world.
If I am wrong, no real harm done. If I am right…. The Constitution of the United States was never meant to be a suicide pact.
No suggestion that we do some, but note that during the great European plague entire towns were burned to the ground, inhabitants included, to stop its spread. Grotesque beyond description. However, in many cases it worked so that only one third of the folks in Europe perished rather than one half, or more.
Tuchman’s A Distant Mirror should be required reading.
Dave Wachtfogel
Dear ER:
Geoff Hirsch attends meetings of the Pacific Coast Highway/Aviation Boulevard Improvement committee as an appointed member while at the same time serving as a paid reporter for a local community news website. Hirsch received $50 for a July 2, 2010, Patch.com article and $25 for two pictures, one of Councilman Howard Fishman. There are very close ties between Fishman and Hirsch. Hirsch said in an August 19, 2010 letter to the Beach Reporter, “Their does exist a lack of objectivity, full disclosure, hidden agendas, and cronyism regarding Roger Bacon.” Why does Hirsch make these calumnious remarks about me? My life, businesses, and charity work in Hermosa Beach is an open book and I am very proud of my accomplishments and business successes.
Completely paid for the restoration of the Vetter Windmill at Pacific Coast Highway and Aviation Boulevard. Funded, inspired, and created the Hermosa Beach Surfers Walk of Fame. Funded the Hermosa Beach Education Foundation through my banner program for approximately $200,000.
Roger Eldon Bacon
Ralphs Shopping Center owner
Hollywood Riviera
What’s Going on?
I am furious that Redondo City Councilman Bill Brand filed a lawsuit against the city. Without thinking through the consequences he has sent us back to 1964 zoning or the Heart of Redondo. So we went from a reasonable zoning position to either a “Back in the Heart of the City Days,” or even worse, back to the ‘60s when it was even more industrial. So now we have to go to a vote. This vote alone will cost us over $200,000. It is interesting that Brand abstains from voting on the council when we now have to deal with the consequences!
I urge all council members to listen to the City Attorney Mike Webb. We all have our futures on his shoulders. Webb has reviewed the zoning alternatives and is unbiased in his opinion.
I urge all residents to really understand what is happening. We are all busy with families and jobs but we must not allow this to continue.
I am not a stakeholder in the harbor area. I am not a developer. I am a citizen of Redondo Beach. My wife and I own a home here, raise our children here and send them to Redondo Beach Schools. I am not a proponent of over development. I was a volinteer during the Heart of Redondo, walking the avenues collecting signatures and getting keeping my block informed But we need to move on.
Ken Strouse
Redondo Beach
Dear ER:
Browse to Hermosa’s city website “hermosabch.org” and click on “W2 Earnings for All Employees, Calendar Year 2009?. Displayed are the federal W2 reported earnings paid to every full and part-time city employee during 2009.
For Hermosa Beach, a 1.3 square mile beach town of 18,000 residents, the data indicates that 17 city employees were paid from $150,000 to $258,000; 33 were paid from $100,000 to $150,000; and that an additional 15 were paid from $75,000 to $100,000 for the year, not including lucrative benefits such as retirement.
What doesn’t belong with these earnings data is a press release from ceremonial Mayor Michael DiVirgilio regarding transparency and of running a fiscally tight ship. DiVirgilio is essentially saying, “Trust me, and permit me to tell you what to believe.”
The City Council or next mayor, Peter Tucker, needs to direct that the City Manager remove such biased rubbish from the employee earnings data, along with all the other of DiVirgilio’s self-serving stuff on the city’s home page.
News that City of Bell officials plundered their city’s treasury and their own residents’ wallets has some now believing that Hermosa Beach’s payment of “only” $258 thousand last year to Hermosa Beach City Manager Stephen Burrell, not to mention what Burrell will receive in future retirement benefits for life, is somehow a bargain.
Hermosa’s council will be doing their fiduciary and elected duty when they conduct a search for a new city manager, and while they’re at it, a new contract city attorney.
Howard Longacre
Hermosa Beach
Dear ER:
Sunday’s Hermosa Beach concert on the beach was very well done and the music was great. Thanks to the Sanford brothers and the others who organized it. I hope they are willing to book the bands for the Hemosa Beach Fiesta, too.
Gary Kazanjian
Hermosa Beach
Dear ER:
I’m soooo relieved that we can have this annoying concert again (“Summer concert series rescued,” ER August 19, 2010). Yep, I just love the traffic and the litter it creates. Let’s not forget the drinking on the beach. Legal? Oh, and don’t forget the homeless guys with their very pleasant smell. Now we have to put up with the beach being commercialized.
Joan Smith
Web site comment
Dear ER:
The Redondo Beach planning commission just approved a 25,000 sq. ft. big box, high end wine and beer superstore adjacent to the Galleria South. This will make the 48th store that sells or distributes alcohol in the tiny fourth district. A Sprouts market is also slated to go in by the Galleria South. Sprouts also sells beer and wine, which will then make the 49th.
My question to the city and the state is, How much is enough for one area?
What district 4 does not have is: Public or private tennis courts. Permanent public or private skate park. Public or private swimming pools other than the swim lesson pools at South Bay Aquatics on Artesia Boulevard, which are great for young children. Family activity oriented areas such as Kids Concept in Torrance, and miniature golf similar to the mall off the 405 in Huntington. A rock-climbing wall like the Beach Cities Health District has in Manhattan Beach and the YMCA has in Torrance.
No Build A Bear that receives a lot of my hard earned money.
The Galleria South has the potential opportunity to be something different for the residents that surround it. Maybe the folks over at Body Glove could envision a Redondo wave that was not by the beach but rather by the mall. We can always dream can?t we?
Bruce Szeles
Redondo Beach
The Manhattan Beach Community has serious public sector concerns.
Part of the problem is systemic and emerging unprincipled public egocentric management obvious from surrounding unethical if not corrupt communities like Bell, South Gate, Compton, Lynwood, Vernon and Bell Gardens. Moral, ethical character in our public servants counts.
Revisit the union demands in Hermosa Beach. All of this is an emerging and disastrous civic cancer in California at large, a disparate lack of parity and sustainability between the public and private sectors, a legacy of many local and state politicians including Jerry Brown, research Oakland and his thirty years in the public sector. A City review, transparent, internet available, must be mandatory as to salaries, per diem, golden parachutes, automatic raises, healthcare, perks, expenses reimbursement, and retirement legacy expenses.
A detailed overview by the Bond BB Oversight Committee would forestall rising valid concerns. Has the Bond M Oversight Committee recommendations ever been adopted?
Many of these communities, over the years, have adopted egocentric charters, with selfish mandates, well concealed in the vague and purposefully hidden or obfuscating wording and fine print, which needs to be eviscerated and renegotiated, if not made null and void with bankruptcy.
There seems to be no local newspaper scrutiny as yet as the details of the Dolan issue which is still clouded. The citizens are not paying much attention and when they try to get information the City and MBUSD appears to be stonewalling. Extreme transparency is the ultimate immorality disinfectant.
Surprise the MB electorate with clear, concise, honest, detailed and transparent accounting.
Donald A Sellek
320 1st Place
Manhattan Beach, CA 90266
1-310-376-1236
Dear Editor:
Several hundred people have come down with Salmonella enteritides poisoning, leading to the recall of 380 million eggs from 17 states by the Wright County Egg Company of Galt, Iowa (www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/08/18/AR2010081805682.html). According to the Centers for Disease Control, more than 100,000 Americans suffer from egg-borne Salmonella infections each year. Common symptoms include diarrhea, abdominal cramps, and fever.
Salmonella infection is only the most publicized health effect of egg consumption. An average egg contains loads of fat and 213 mg of cholesterol, key factors in the incidence of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and diabetes.
Incidentally, those 380 million eggs were the product of nearly 1,500,000 birds suffering for a year in tiny wire-mesh cages that cut their feet and tore out their feathers. Their waste was dumped into a nearby stream, contributing to massive pollution of the Mississippi River, and eventually, to a “dead zone” in the Gulf of Mexico three times the size of the BP oil spill.
The good news is that our local supermarket offers a number of healthful, eco-friendly, delicious egg replacers. More details are available at www.chooseveg.com/vegan-substitutes.asp.
Sincerely,
Jack Matler
235 35th St
Hermosa Beach, CA 90254
888-834-2693
