A comedy of envelopes at Redondo Beach City Council
City Attorney Michael Webb stuffs an envelope with the text of Measure C and the certified March 7 election results to send to the California Coastal Commission at Redondo Beach’s April 11 City Council meeting. Photo
Much ado was made about envelopes at the Redondo Beach City Council’s April 11 meeting, when nearly an hour was spent discussing a Measure C-related resolution that was pulled from the agenda by popular request.
At Council’s April 4 meeting, the City certified the March 7 election results, including zoning changes brought by Measure C that effectively halted planned waterfront redevelopment by CenterCal Properties. Mayor Bill Brand then requested that the Council discuss a resolution to formally submit Measure C to the California Coastal Commission for review, based on his conversations with Coastal Commission staff.
From there, the Commission would take any number of actions, likely beginning with a public hearing. The Commission might then either approve of Measure C, or recommend modifications to its language.
But proponents of the Measure, including sponsors Nils Nehrenheim, Martin Holmes and Wayne Craig, felt that Measure C would not require certification due to its language and intent to protect water-oriented access.
As such, they requested that the City pack Measure C and the election results into an envelope and send it to Coastal Commission headquarters. That, Webb noted on April 4, was something anyone could do after election results were certified. Webb also believed that would not be enough for Commission recognition.
However, both Holmes and CenterCal requested that the City pull the resolution from the agenda, leading to Webb’s recommendation to do just that.
But before that, Webb — in deliberate public view — took the text of Measure C and the March 7 results and placed them into six envelopes to be sent to members of the California Coastal Commission, and immediately placed into a mailbox.
“But I’m confident that we’re probably going to get a letter from the Coastal Commission asking us to pass a resolution and we’ll be back here again,” Webb said.
After nearly 45 minutes of public comment, which included multiple requests for the City Attorney to drop Measure C in the mail (an act his office performed earlier that very meeting), the Council withdrew the resolution discussion from the night’s agenda.