April 1, 2005

Commission Nearly Upends Park
By Paul Rosenberg, Senior Editor

     A last-minute letter from the California State Lands Commission (CSLC) nearly upended plans to purchase a key piece of property for the long-sought San Pedro Welcome Park, and highlighted one fault-line of longstanding organizational differences that could profoundly affect efforts to mitigate environmental impacts in the Harbor Area.
     At the same time, questions were raised about another fault-line, concerning plans to constitute the Port as its own redevelopment agency—rather than working with the City’s existing redevelopment agency, and its local community advisory committee. This would drain funds from the community into the Port—the exact opposite of what the Welcome Park seeks to do, to mitigate environmental impacts on the community.
     At its March 23 meeting, the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) Board considered postponing a vote on the resolution to purchase property at 415 North Gaffey, but ended up approving an amended resolution, in order to secure the property, pending further developments.
     “The [CSLC] letter is pretty strong,” said POLA Commissioner Tom Warren, when he initially moved to table the resolution, calling attention to the final line of the letter, characterizing the purchase as “misappropriation of trust funds.”
     Other language appeared to threaten the Commissioners with personal liability.
     “We were surprised” by the sudden shift of position of CSLC staff, Port Attorney Tom Russell told the Board, since CSLC had previously been moving toward finding common ground on elements of the proposal—notably “signage and wayfinding”—as revealed in several earlier letters.
     “Can the State Lands Commission say we can’t buy any land to put signage on?” Russell asked rhetorically.
     CSLC’s position was supported by a 1955 California Supreme Court decision ruling that Long Beach could not use tidelands oil revenue to fund city parks. But “that case did not address a park with a physical nexus,” Russell noted, so there is “no controlling [California] Supreme Court ruling.”
     Furthermore, “It’s not going to have traditional park features,” he added.
     “Why don’t we call it a kiosk?” POLA President Nick Tonsich asked.
     But Commissioner Camilla Townsend pressed Russell on the broader issue of redefining Tidelands Trust Law interpretation. A state law written by then-Assemblymember Alan Lowenthal has expanded the scope of included activities for the Port of Los Angeles, but the LA City Charter has not been amended in parallel, since the City Attorney has ruled it wasn’t necessary for any current projects—most notably the Waterfront Promenade.
     However, Townsend said the issue arose again and again in considering mitigation measures for the China Shipping Agreement, of which the Welcome Park is the premiere example. As Co-Chair of the Port Community Advisory Committee (P-CAC), Townsend has been closely involved in the process of considering the measures, many of which have been challenged by CSLC staff.
     There was a strong feeling that POLA Commissioners needed to deal directly with CSLC Commissioners, and instructions were issued to secure a spot for them on the April CSLC Board Agenda.
     Meetings with CSLC Commissioners Steve Westley and Cruz Bustamante “went very well,” Townsend told Random Lengths last year, after she and P-CAC Community Co-Chair Jayme Wilson had a series of meetings with the CSLC staff, commissioners and California legislators.
     “I think the elected officials were very receptive to positions from San Pedro that the impacts can expand beyond the port boundary,” Wilson said then, but staff was unconvinced at the time, and remains so today, despite apparent progress that seems to have suddenly unraveled.
     Ultimately, the problem is that port-related impacts extend far beyond the tidelands, stretching inland as far as Riverside, and that governance structures and stakeholder representation do not exist to reflect current realities.
     One proposal, by State Senator Alan Lowenthal, SB 762, would create a port congestion and environmental quality district, akin to the South Coast Air Quality Management District. Townsend has also expressed interest in bringing together diverse stakeholders and government/agency representatives on a regional or statewide basis to create a better fit between the physical problems generated, those interested or impacted, and those responsible for mitigating the problems.
     Ironically, one proposal seems headed in the opposite direction. Assembly Bill 1330 would establish the Port proposal as its own redevelopment agency—a move that would, in effect, subsidize Port development with taxes diverted from City and County services. This point was raised by Noel Park in a statement read into the record during the public comment portion of the March 23 meeting. The bill “has appeared with no notice to the public,” Park said, and Townsend herself was evidently taken by surprise. “If this legislation emanated from the Port, we should have been briefed on it,” she said after the meeting.
     Lowenthal went further, highlighting the burdens of grappling with redevelopment law. “I think that it puts the Harbor Commissioners in a very difficult position to now have to assume this whole other area of law. Their job is to uphold the interests of the tenants. Now to ask them to take on another whole area of law doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me.”