A shot of the overflow crowd from December 6th’s Council meeting.

 3:00pm | In a rarity for Long Beach City Council meeting, over a hundred people were barred from entry into council chambers Tuesday due to a capacity crowd inside, leaving the overflow relegated to watching the meeting via video stream in a library theater.

A threefold combination of topics was responsible for the overwhelming public interest:

  • the proposed Southern California International Gateway project (SCIG), a proposed West Long Beach railyard to be developed by BNSF Railway Company. In a recommendation to oppose the project, Councilmembers James Johnson and Rae Gabelich expressed concern over the detrimental health effects that would result fro the additional 5,500 trucks and eight trains per day that the facility would bring near to  neighborhoods and schools, as well as the at least 1,200 local jobs that would be lost.  
  • a proposed citywide policy “that promotes good nutrition and healthy environments within City facilities and at City-sponsored meetings/events … [and as concerns] the beverage vending machines on City-owned property, which are under the direct control of the City and that are accessible to the public.” This was discussed as two separate resolutions, one concerning a “Healthy Snack Food and Beverage Policy” and the other a “Healthy Beverage Vending Policy.”  
  • Occupy Long Beach, which, despite indications at the November 15 city council meeting, was not on Tuesday’s agenda. Nonetheless, a contingent of OLBers showed up, claiming more than half of the general public-comment spots for non-agendized items at the beginning of the meeting, as well as working OLB concerns into public comment on various agendized items, including the SCIG project.  

OLBers expressed their dismay that, despite council instructions, City Manager Pat West did not include OLB the process of compiling the council-requested report on options going forward with OLB. Gabelich began to speak to this issue, telling the OLBers, “What we did ask for was for your participation to identify a way to make it work for everybody;” and saying she had told West prior to the council meeting, “We are going to have this discussion tonight and … identify what happened during the process.” But City Attorney Robert Shannon stopped her, saying that this discussion could not take place because the item was not on the evening’s agenda. Gabelich stated the issue needs to be agendized in a future meeting, and asked West to engage OLB in “ongoing dialog.”
 
Discussions of the SCIG project and citywide food/beverage policy were over two hours apiece, largely due to voluminous public comment. The vast majority of commentary on the latter was in support, and after taking it behind the rail and hashing out some details, both healthy food/beverage resolutions were passed.

The SCIG commentary, on the other hand, was far more divisive. Included in the discussion was the Chamber of Commerce and some local trade unions advocating moving forward with the SCIG project, while the West Long Beach Association and numerous area residents coming out against it (mostly due to its proposed location directly adjacent to their community). The majority of the discussion pivoted around the potential job gain/loss and environmental impact that would result from the project.

Once the matter was taken behind the rail, Mayor Bob Foster raised the question of whether the Port of Los Angeles (property owner) BNSF, despite a history of being a good corporate partner with Long Beach, has done its due diligence in terms of working with the current business tenants of the proposed site for feasible relocation sites.  “I don’t believe they [i.e., Port of Los Angeles] has done squat,” Foster remarked.

In the end, the council unanimously passed a substitute motion by Councilmember Steven Neal asking the Port of Los Angeles to provide further information concerning the current unfeasibility of zero-emissions technology, alternate locations for the facility not so close to a residential area, the job-loss impact of the project, light and noise that would be generated by the project, and the choice of the draft EIR baseline.

The motion included the call for the information to be submitted to council by January 17.