Waterfront Presentation Postponed After Brown Act Violations

A possible violation of the Brown Act resulted in the cancellation of CenterCal Properties' latest presentation of its vision for the Redondo Beach Waterfront on Tuesday night.

Dozens of people attended the meeting to voice their opinions; however, the majority left without saying anything.

"I want to thank everybody for showing up," Mayor Steve Aspel told the crowd. "We were going to discuss the MOUs or whatever with CenterCal and our harbor."

The Brown Act, California's open meetings law, "means we can't talk to each other about certain items that we're going to be discussing," Aspel explained.

"There is no reason other than (the Brown Act violation) to delay discussing this item because … we all showed up in our fresh suits just to talk about it," Aspel said. "We all agree that everybody loves Redondo and everybody's doing it for the right reasons … What we will not accept is any appearance of impropriety on ethics or anything like that."

The council voted unanimously to postpone the discussion to a later date.

According to City Attorney Mike Webb, the "aborted Brown Act violation" occurred because Councilman Steve Sammarco on Tuesday morning emailed his thoughts on the agenda item to the mayor, city manager and the rest of the council. This action violated the state open meeting laws because it is analogous to a secret meeting that the public cannot attend.

Fortunately, upon the direction of Webb, city staff were able to prevent councilmen Pat Aust, Matt Kilroy and Bill Brand from reading the email, so no violation took place.

A second possible violation occurred because Brand discussed the waterfront redevelopment project with Sammarco, who later visited CenterCal sites in Utah with Councilman Jeff Ginsburg. This could be considered a "daisy chain" serial meeting, according to Webb, where one councilman speaks with another, who in turn, speaks with a third councilman about the same issue.

"It's the general topic of the waterfront development and potential contracts with CenterCal," Webb said. "I strongly suggest that none of you (councilmen) discuss this tonight so that when you have that future agenda, everyone will have seen the email, and you're working from a level playing field."

Other members of the council agreed. Brand empathized with the people who came just to speak about CenterCal's plans for the waterfront.

"It's like going and getting your tooth pulled, and the dentist isn't there," Brand said.

"We might quibble like a bunch of spoiled little kids up here, but I don't doubt anybody's ethics on the dais," Aspel said. "We're trying to run a good, clean ship up here. We're trying to keep our names out of the paper on the bad stuff."

Only one member of the public spoke about the decision to postpone the hearing to a later date. Al Meissner, who lives in the Village and has been active in the "Residents for Appropriate Development" group, approached the dais during the public comment for non-agenda items portion of the meeting.

"This type of shenanigans continues to distract from the public's ability to participate on a very, very important topic," he told the council.

The item is tentatively set to appear on the Nov. 12 city council agenda.