The Mission Bay Park Committee (MBPC) questioned a proposed policy for city leases and also considered dredging the bay when it met Tuesday, June 5, at the Santa Clara Recreation Center, 1008 Santa Clara Place.
City Council had not yet approved Mayor Jerry Sanders’ new appointments to the advisory board, so acting chairperson Bob Ottilie and most of the existing committee returned. The council is expected to approve Sanders’ appointments in July.
As the committee has made financing park improvements its top priority in recent years, park leases ” and the way the city manages them ” have come under fire.
After a 2005 audit of the city’s Real Estate Assets Department (READ) revealed incomplete inventories and mismanagement of city-owned property, Councilwoman Donna Frye and others called for the resignation of director William Griffith, who stepped down after the discoveries were made.
“Things couldn’t get any worse than they were,” READ director Jim Barwick said.
Barwick met with the MBPC in July 2006 shortly after assuming leadership of the beleaguered department.
At that meeting, Barwick and the committee agreed that developing a clearly defined, transparent lease policy was critical to getting the maximum value for city-owned property.
A draft policy for selling and leasing city-owned property is scheduled to go before the city’s Land Use and Housing subcommittee this week, but the committee is not completely happy with the development.
Noting that Barwick agreed in July to bring the new policy to the committee for review, Ottilie asked, “Where did we get cut out of the process?”
“Where do you strike the balance between efficiency and getting our work done and including citizen input?” Barwick responded. He likened soliciting community input while managing the city’s roughly 3,400 properties to “doing open-heart surgery while running a marathon.”
Mission Bay Park leaseholders generate 40 percent of the city’s total lease revenue, Ottilie noted.
“That sets us apart from all other committees,” he said.
Mission Bay Park was not left out of the process, Barwick said. The Mission Bay Park Lessees Association reviewed the policy draft. City Council provides the necessary checks and balances, he added.
Committee members feel that more citizen input is necessary.
“The purpose of all these advisory committees is to have a voice,” said the MBPC’s Council District 2 representative Judy Swink. “The city is a public entity, not a private business entity.”
“There is a belief that your administration is more business-friendly than community-friendly,” Ottilie said.
Consulting advisory groups during a lease negotiation could compromise the process, according to Barwick. “We do not want to negotiate our deals in public,” he said. Furthermore, he added, no existing policy requires him to come before the MBPC before or during a lease negotiation.
The committee is not asking to be involved in the negotiation but would like to see leases before they go to City Council, Swink said.
“My understanding is that we advise City Council on Mission Bay Park,” said Council District 6 representative and newly appointed chairperson Rick Bussell. “It seems logical to me that we be involved in the process.”
Not all committee members agree. “[Lease negotiation] is not what this group does,” Mission Beach Planning Board representative Pamela Glover said.
Barwick recommended that the committee appoint one or two members to work with READ.
He agreed to consult the group on leases.
Commenting on expired leases, Ottilie asked what happened to the renegotiations of the Mission Bay Sportscenter, whose lease expired in 2005, and the Mission Bay Aquatic Center, whose lease lapsed in 2000.
The Sportscenter lease is going before the Park and Recreation Board, said Barwick.
Both leaseholders have been paying the city their previously negotiated rate. The MBPC voted in 2006 to deny the requests of both lessees to exclusively renegotiate their leases, arguing that the cash-strapped city “” and Mission Bay Park “” could get more money if other bidders were included in the process.
Mission Bay Park’s most delinquent lease, the San Diego Mission Bay Boat and Ski Club, expired in 1988. The city can’t offer a long-term lease on the property for a number of reasons, including the uncertain status of DeAnza Cove, Barwick said
“It gets down to prioritizing,” he said.
The expired holdover leases generate $289,000 combined annually, or roughly 1 percent of the park’s $27 million in lease revenue.
Ottilie believes they could net more revenue if renegotiated.
Turning its attention from the properties in Mission Bay Park to the bay itself, the committee considered dredging the bay.
Calling the manmade bay “a very poorly designed exercise in hydrology,” Bill Evans of the Mission Bay Lessees Association said, “This is a problem that is not going away. It’s like rust on a boat.”
Evans’ own boats cannot go out on the water during low tide, he said, because it is simply too dangerous when there is less than a foot of water under keel.
In the past year, the Bahia Hotel was unable to use its boats on 42 days, said Evans. The Catamaran Resort and Hotel also cannot renegotiate its lease until the bay is dredged, he said.
“You couldn’t build Mission Bay today for $1 billion,” Evans said. “It’s asinine not to protect it.”
“It’s going to get worse and worse,” said Sgt. Bender of the San Diego Lifeguard Association.
“Unless we want to be a mud flat again, we have to fund maintenance,” said Marshall Wiseman, general manager of Campland on the Bay.
Dredging is expensive, though, noted Paul Jacob of the Park and Recreation Department.
In 1980 the area from Rose Creek to the Grand Street Bridge was dredged, but then the money ran out, so a trench was dug.
Environmental impacts, such as eelgrass, would also have to be mitigated, Jacob said. There are no ongoing programs for deep-water dredging, Jacob said.
Park and Recreation doesn’t think of the water as theirs, Evans said. “It’s a forgotten child. It’s not their water.”
If Sanders’ new appointments are approved, the MBPC’s July meeting could welcome some new faces. Reflecting on their years of service together, Ocean Beach Planning Board representative Mindy Pellissier said, “We’ve done a lot and there’s a lot left to do.”
Ottilie told returning committee members, “No one’s going to come to you, you’re going to have to go to them.
Ted Jardine, who has spent decades serving Mission Bay Park, offered this simple advice: “I think this committee needs to get out in the bay. Go meet the leaseholders where they are. Review their ideas, not the city’s ideas.”