Blog Post: Misplaced Initiative

The July 10 City Council meeting was a real eye-opener. One of the things we learned forces me to retract statements I’ve made earlier and admit I was completely wrong.

I had assumed there were two sides to the debate. The no power plant side that wants to force AES to stop generating power, had dominated the discussion. There also seem to be a few voices like mine saying we should work with AES to get the best deal for Redondo Beach, side No. 2.

We discovered Tuesday night there’s another side. There are people in the community who want a power plant in Redondo Beach. According to Councilman Aust’s count, only 40 percent of the people who spoke at the meeting supported no power plant. It’s never fun admitting you’re wrong but that’s what I’m doing. I’ve written repeatedly, no one wants the power plant and I was proven wrong.

We also discovered that four of the five coucilmen won’t let the high-volume rhetoric and threats of being characterized as taking no action on the power plant issue force them into voting for some meaningless resolution that sends a message that simply isn’t true. Councilman Brand says a resolution will send a message to the California Energy Commission (CEC). But considering there are at least two points of view that conflict with the no power plant opinion, can we really say that the community has a single message to send? Answer: no, and four of our five councilmen understood that fact and resisted pressure to follow the crowd. Bravo!

Councilman Brand and his long-time, no growth crusading partner Jim Light, have filed a document with the city of Redondo Beach stating they intend to circulate a petition to have an initiative placed on the March 2013 ballot. The Light/Brand team may have lost the Measure G bout by a decisive knockout but they’re back in the zoning ring and ready to slug it out with anyone who dares to challenge them.

The initiative would call on voters to agree to phase out industrial uses of the AES land. A statement by Councilman Brand said, “The new zoning allows for 30-40 percent commercial development such as hotels, and 60-70 percent for museums, sports fields, wetlands, educational facilities and open space, among other uses.”

We sure are lucky to have people like Messrs. Light and Brand to figure all this stuff out for the rest of us and put it all into a neat package. We’re fortunate these two individuals routinely take the burden of figuring out things like community planning off the shoulders of our elected officials and do all the heavy lifting for the City Council and the rest of us.

In fairness to Mr. Brand, he is a member of the City Council. He was elected with 827 votes, which were all cast in district 2. With approximately 40,000 registered voters in the city, that comes to about 2 percent of the total voting population who have affirmed Mr. Brand’s authority to represent them. As far as I know, Mr. Light doesn’t currently hold any elected, appointed or hired position with the city of Redondo Beach.

Read more of this post at buildingthebestredondo.com