OPINION FROM LBREPORT.COM: SELECTIVE CITY HALL SECRECY ON SECOND+PCH PROJECT
By LBReport.com
LONG BEACH (Via LBReport.com)—On July 7, the Long Beach Planning Commission shrugged when two taxpayers indicated that City Hall appears to have shared information with the developer of the Second+PCH project that is being kept secret from the public.
On Tuesday (July 12), at least one City Council member needs to insist on openness and fairness and ask city management publicly to confirm or deny whether city staff plans to bring the Second+PCH project—including City Hall’s final EIR responses and developer-sought zoning changes and variances—to the Planning Commission for voted approval on August 18.
This has become an issue because the developer’s social-media machinery told project supporters roughly a week ago—by e-mail and via its website and Facebook—about an Aug. 18 hearing date. Meanwhile, City Hall has told the public nothing.
Either the developer received access to inside City Hall information that the public didn’t get—the date hasn’t been officially confirmed or denied—or the developer is hallucinating or trying to manipulate a hearing date.
Giving the developer notice of the hearing date this far in advance enables it to activate its base while leaving the impacted public in the dark with the possibility of receiving as little as 10days notice of the EIR hearing. In our opinion, this indicates a City Hall thumb on the scale in favor of the developer.
When taxpayers Kerrie Aley and Melinda Cotton put this issue on the record on July 7, city staffer Derek Burnham could have—and in the opinion of LBReport.com, should have—simply confirmed or denied the August 18 hearing date. Unfortunately, he didn’t, instead offering a non-responsive response.
Likewise unfortunately, not one Planning Commissioner stood up for the public’s right to know by asking the obvious question: “Is staff planning to bring this item to the Planning Commission on August 18, yes or no?”
Instead, the Planning Commission’s chair pretended he couldn’t do anything when all he had to do was just get a straight answer on a scheduling matter.
Aley and Cotton received similar circumlocution when they asked that the public be given at least 30 days to review city staff’s responses to public comments on the final EIR.
4 Comments
Sounds eerily similar to Mayor Foster’s and Councilman DeLong’s secret wetlands deal with Tom Dean that was going on for 9-months before the public found out. According to emails secured via the California Public Records Act, Mayor Foster instructed city staff multiple times to keep the pending deal secret.
I guess it worked in their favor last time, so why stop now.
Citizen Journalist Quotes of the Day — The Tunnel at the End of the Light
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives… I am liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.” — John Lennon
“Things are always darkest just before they go pitch black.” — Kelly Robinson
“Madness need not be all breakdown. It may also be breakthrough.” — R.D. Laing
“When you are insane, you are busy being insane — all the time… When I was crazy, that was all I was.” — Sylvia Plath
“You know what scares me? When you have to be nice to some paranoid schizophrenic, just because she lives in your head.” — Steven Wright
(Source: SUNBEAMS — ”The Sun Magazine,” July 2011, thesunmagazine.org)
Is this interesting and timely disclosure of information about Long Beach elected officials acting in an apparently secretive fashion to benefit moneyed interests best described as a “rant”? Seems pretty measured to me.
Former City Manager and Harbor Commissioner Hankla seems to get it:
“What is unimaginable to me is that some Long Beach residents continue to oppose new investment or any development that would provide some of the revenue base to support the level of services we have come to expect. Apparently they see no nexus between growth, new revenue and the city’s ability to provide services.”
http://www.presstelegram.com/ci_18546227?IADID=Search-www.presstelegram.com-www.presstelegram.com