HUNTINGTON BEACH : Merchants Press for Main Street Projects

Faced with protests from downtown merchants, City Administrator Michael T. Uberuaga this week backed off his recommendations for how $10.2 million in unused bond money should be spent.

The merchants, who in the past few days have organized a lobbying campaign, argued that more than $1 million of the available bond money should be used for street and lighting improvements along Main Street.

The bonds had been issued for a parking structure that had been planned for north of the Municipal Pier. Since the City Council canceled that project last spring, the bond money has been freed for other projects.

Uberuaga had recommended that $5 million be used for the Central Library expansion, and the rest be spent on three beach-parking projects.

Merchants and other downtown advocates met Friday with Uberuaga and continued their campaign Monday with speeches at a City Council study session.

After that meeting, Uberuaga said he believes that it is “premature” to allocate all of the bond money at this time. He is still calling for half of the money to go toward the library project, but he now proposes that the rest remain unallocated.

The beach-parking projects, he noted, have not been officially considered by the City Council. Also, the council has yet to approve the design for a park-like plaza at the foot of the pier, which the downtown merchants are also strongly promoting. Because that plaza will be built on beach property, it will also require a citywide vote under a city growth-limitation law that voters approved last year.

“There’s no need to allocate this money at this time, except that we have to do something about the library,” Uberuaga said. The library funding is included in the city’s current budget, so the council must either retain the $5-million allocation from the bond money or find new funding sources, he explained.

Council members in the coming weeks will discuss the competing projects and decide which should be funded with the bond money. The council will discuss the library funding at its meeting Monday.

Uberuaga said he expects the council will take three to six months to allocate the rest of the bond funds.

The merchants, meanwhile, plan to continue their lobbying effort. They say their businesses have suffered in recent years due to ongoing construction, the pier reconstruction and other factors.