Supervisor Assails Reporting on Marina Lease

For the past week, the Los Angeles Times has run articles on the lease negotiations under way between the County of Orange and the marina leaseholder at Sunset Marina Park. These articles have failed to accurately present the series of events that led to the early renegotiation of the lease.

I believe that your readership deserves to have a fair accounting of those activities, rather than the sensationalized reporting that has thus far appeared.

To set the record straight, I have long fought for additional parks and park improvements within the 2nd District. I have no apologies to make for that stand.

Sunset Marina Park is among those the county had planned to improve via an updated General Development Plan during the mid-1970s. The passage of Proposition 13 reduced the funding available to proceed with the improvements, and so it sat on the shelf along with other county park plans developed during that time.

As limited funding again became available in the latter part of the 1980s, the county’s Environmental Management Agency took a look at its park improvement “wish list” and determined that the plan for upgrading Sunset Marina Park could be accomplished, provided that the current leaseholder agreed to early renegotiation of the lease.

At the time, the existing lease had 11 years remaining of an essentially unbreakable agreement negotiated in 1969, I might add, long before I came to hold office as a county supervisor.

In 1989, the Harbors, Beaches and Parks division of EMA contacted me to discuss the options included in the General Development Plan Phase II expansion for Sunset Marina Park. I concurred that the long overdue improvements should be undertaken, and EMA requested approval to proceed from the Board of Supervisors on Dec. 5, 1989.

The reporter failed to accurately portray the events that led to that initial action. Instead, the reporter focused only on the fact that my adult son was employed by Goldrich & Kest, the leaseholder, without informing your readers that my son’s role was primarily administrative land-use processing and therefore had no relevancy to the policy decisions that were to come before me.

I cannot speak to any negotiations that went on during 1990 between the lease-holder and the county.

Contrary to the impression created in your articles, I was not a party, directly or indirectly, to those activities. Nor did I, at any time, become involved in determining who among county staff would serve on the negotiating team, as a report from the director of the county’s Environmental Management Agency will substantiate.

It is disturbing, if not alarming, that a reputable paper such as the Los Angeles Times would print a story without ensuring that all the facts are revealed. It is even more unfortunate that the fine work of county staff to negotiate a lease agreement that provides the best financial return the county has ever realized from a marina lease has been put under a cloud of suspicion.

HARRIETT M. WIEDER

Supervisor, 2nd District