A scheduled discussion of a potential lease agreement between the City of Redondo Beach and CenterCal Properties was postponed until January, causing tensions and anger to reach a boiling point at Tuesday night’s meeting of the Redondo Beach City Council.
Following Dec. 13’s report on the Agreement for Lease of Property and Infrastructure Financing (ALPIF) for CenterCal’s Waterfront: Redondo Beach revitalization project, staff negotiators and CenterCal were sent back to the drawing board.
While both Council and the public seemed uncomfortable with many terms written into the last lease proposal, the crux was a lease option that would enable CenterCal to only complete the northern half of the project. That would leave the southern half of the proposed project — including the International Boardwalk, the Municipal Pier and the southern parking structure — untouched.
Opponents of the project were quick to seize the lease option as CenterCal’s plan all along, leaving the southern portion to fall into disrepair while exploiting the north. The deal, as activist Martin Holmes observed, was “giving away the harbor and entering a horrible relationship.”
Staff’s recommendation for the Dec. 20 agenda was to continue the scheduled public hearing until Jan. 17, to allow for the deal to be renegotiated.
“The fact is that there’s not going to be any decisions made tonight,” said Councilwoman Laura Emdee. “I think that the documents we’ll see on January 17 will be much different and [lead to] a much different discussion than you’d see today.”
Emdee motioned to continue the noticed public hearing until next month and extend the city’s Exclusive Negotiating Agreement with CenterCal until Jan. 31. The ENA obligates Redondo Beach to make a decision on a lease agreement with CenterCal before its expiration.
Councilman Bill Brand argued that the public should be heard, and that their comments should be part of the public record — meaning, he later clarified, as part of the public hearing.
But the confusion of terms led to feelings of betrayal within the audience, some of who saw the motion as a bait-and-switch tactic to suppress their comments. That forced City Attorney Michael Webb to clarify that all comments made in open session are part of the public record, while comments made in a hearing are continually included in those hearings going forward.
That did not stop angry project opponents from making their voices heard.
“Shame on you; when you notice a public hearing, you accept public testimony on the public record,” said Eugene Solomon. “You are, after all, a public servant…you are elected by the public and you serve the public. We are your boss.”
Solomon was, by then, the third speaker to take that tack with the Council, but the most pointed yet. But as Solomon continued, Emdee walked out of the meeting.
That tone continued as members of the public protested the move to continue the hearing to a later date. However, many others offered harsher criticism to Emdee for leaving the meeting early. More wondered how an agreement as with the previous version of the ALPIF made it to open session.
“A lot of things you’ve commented on are being addressed,” Aspel answered. “In closed session, when it’s voted forward, we [do that] to debate it in the public eye.”
Emdee’s motion passed 3-1, without her presence.
She explained her departure the next day, recalling her announcement that she needed to leave by 8:30 p.m. to make an engagement.
“It was a personal matter; I needed to be home by a certain time,” Emdee said. “I should’ve not gone to that open session at all, but I couldn’t win either way.”
Her reasoning, she said, was that the the information, including the lease option, that project opponents cited that night was outdated.
“We’ve told you that the document is changing and there wasn’t any reason to have a public hearing on it,” Emdee said. “If you don’t have the information, how can you have a discussion on it?”
A public hearing on a revised version of the lease is scheduled for Jan. 17. ER
