Council Declares an End to Saga of La Mer : Ship: Members say the five-year history of the costly custom-built oceanographic vessel can give city officials ‘valuable lessons’ on what not to do.

The Los Angeles City Council on Tuesday ended an inquiry into the purchase of a new oceanographic vessel for the city, acknowledging that the city staff made many costly mistakes in spending five years and $5.7 million on the project.

Without fixing blame for the time and money spent on the 84-foot ship, La Mer, council members said its history provides “valuable lessons” for other city departments awarding design and construction contracts. The council directed the office of City Administrative Officer Keith Comrie to make certain La Mer’s lessons are “conveyed” to other city departments.

“Clearly, in hindsight, a different course of action and different decision might have been taken had the actual costs been known,” the council said in a report adopted unanimously. “However, the city now owns a functional vessel equipped to fully meet the city’s ocean-monitoring program” in Santa Monica Bay.

Council members examined the ship’s history after it was reported in February that the city’s Bureau of Sanitation and Board of Public Works had spent nearly five times original estimates on the design and construction of La Mer, French for “the sea.” The ship’s designer, a San Pedro naval firm owned by then-Port Commissioner Robert Rados Sr., had been paid $1.2 million--more than the entire cost of new oceanographic vessels recently purchased by the city of San Diego, the county Los Angeles and the state Department of Fish and Game.

Councilwoman Joy Picus called for sanitation officials and public works commissioners to explain the ship’s costs and problems that, until recently, kept the boat dry-docked for repairs in a San Pedro boatyard owned by Rados’ nephew.

In defending their actions, the commission and sanitation officials said the vessel was commissioned in 1986 to perform sophisticated water-sampling studies of Santa Monica Bay. The new ship was needed, they said, because the city’s old ocean-monitoring vessel, built in 1963, had mechanical problems and was unsuitable for an expanding ocean-monitoring program.

Further, the officials said the city needed a custom-built vessel because Los Angeles has far more extensive requirements for ocean-monitoring than other local, state and federal agencies--an assertion disputed by those agencies.

While the overall cost of the vessel and its numerous design and mechanical problems were at issue, city officials paid particular attention to the ship’s equipment and furnishings. The vessel, while designed principally for day trips in local waters, has sleeping quarters for a crew of seven and a galley equipped with two microwave ovens, a $450 toaster, a $270 coffee maker and a $64 can opener.

In their reports, city officials insisted that the vessel was functional, not extravagant. They also said the city did not specify the galley equipment to be purchased. That decision, officials said, was made by the ship’s San Diego builder, Knight and Carver Custom Yachts.

“To refer to it as a luxury vessel is just grossly misleading and untrue,” Councilman Marvin Braude, who toured the vessel several months ago, told colleagues during Tuesday’s debate.

But city purchase orders--among the hundreds of documents that chronicle La Mer’s history--show that the galley items were specified and approved by the city under its contract with the ship’s designer, which was also paid to monitor the vessel’s construction.

And during the council’s brief discussion of La Mer on Tuesday, Councilman Nate Holden made it clear he was less interested in the details of such purchase orders than the overall time and money spent on the ship.

Citing “error after error after error” in contract decisions affecting the ship’s cost and completion, Holden angrily told colleagues, “The public needs to know the error in judgment made by the bureaucrats once again.”

“It’s a clear example,” he said later, “of how to waste the taxpayers’ money.”

While the council’s action apparently ends one City Hall review of La Mer, the ship’s saga is far from over. Its builder, Knight and Carver, has sued the city for breach of contract for not turning over the final payment of $212,000 for the ship’s construction. And city officials, citing numerous design and construction problems with La Mer, have said they are considering legal action against both the ship’s designer and the builder.