City Council Dog Days

Welcome, fearless readers.

Recently I made some disparaging remarks about the excitement level at City Council meetings. “Dull,” I think I called them. Well, after reviewing the video of this week’s meeting, I take it all back.

This week was a doozy—a four hour and 16 minutes slugfest that epitomized everything about the game politic.

There were aggressive attacks, defensive feints, and powerful returns between the opponents—a real skill tour-de-force.

Yes, uncommon skill was a common virtue at this match-up (apologies to Admiral Nimitz) and in the end it came down to a tense one and a half hour final round of battle culminating in a nail-biting 16-14 final set duel.

Final set????

Oh, poop. I’ve been watching Sunday’s Wimbledon final, not the City Council. My bad.

Okay, then, let’s take a quick look here at the real Council meeting… okay… call to order, agenda, talking, public comment, more talking, ordinances, and gavel ends meeting.

Wow, was I off the mark. My bad, part deux.

As Chevy Chase might have said on Weekend Update (with apologies to any Franco fans), “This just in, City Council is still dull.”

Dull or not, here are the glorious highlights if Tuesday’s meeting.

The City Council unanimously awarded the Queen Mary, Wokcano, and the Shore Ultra Lounge one-year entertainment permits just before the public took to the podium for about 25 minutes, talking about everything from “no parking” signs at Pacific Place to police statistics.

On the Consent Calendar, the Council gave, well… consent… to nine of 11 items without comment.

The two items they did talk about—which both passed unanimously—were a $200,000 increase in legal fees to fight two class action lawsuits by city police officers over alleged unpaid overtime and a permit request for a kitesurfing and paddle surfing concession on the city beaches.

The Regular Agenda was the real battle royale of the evening—well, actually no it wasn’t, but it did generate more comment from the Council members than any other section of the meeting.

Highlights of the Regular Agenda included: approval of a recommendation to study lowering fees for residents installing solar panels, approval of a motion to sell Natural Gas Revenue Bonds to make some quick cash, approval of a motion to allow the Port of Long Beach to rebuild the intersection of Santa Fe Avenue and Anaheim Street, and the city’s phone and data contracts were re-upped.

Ordinances regarding notification of residents over nearby development, regulations on mortgage modification consultants and local business preferences in city contracts were each read and held over to the next Council meeting.

With a bang of the gavel (and with the motion of a blackjack dealer at the end of a shift), the Council was done.

Like I said, not the stuff of a Hollywood action movie.

However, fear not intrepid readers, for that summer blockbuster “The Budget” is soon to make an appearance at the Council chambers. And it promises to be a Technicolor epic with something for everyone—cuts, furloughs, rollbacks, concessions—a real Cecil B. DeMille extravaganza with a cavalcade of stars.

And although not even a trailer of “The Budget” is set to be screened next week, two items of interest are worth mentioning on the July 14 Council agenda.

The first prompts a question: what do you put in a retail development that promised an IMAX Theater but still remains empty years later? Well if you are the Pike, the City would like to see—what else—a new five-story 125-room hotel built over a 15,000 square foot retail space instead of the aforementioned and much-ballyhooed IMAX theater. One good thing about this proposed project will be that many more travelers will be able to peruse the collection of signs in the vacant Pike windows promising certain retailers at some future date. Hey, success is “coming soon” for the Pike.

The second item worth mentioning for next week, only for the irony value, is a motion to accept a grant for just over $1 million from the feds for bioterrorism preparedness. The agenda item says that the money will be used by the Health Department for, among other things, to educate the public on disaster preparedness (I think the gist is, if a bioterrorism event happens, don’t breathe), and to continue training Health Department officials in detecting and dealing with such an event.

Now if we could only find some funds to train for an attack by sharks with laser beams attached to their heads.