Council Panel Agrees on Bond Measure Plan

In last-minute maneuvering, a Los Angeles City Council panel agreed to seek a $44.5-million bond measure for Exposition Park improvements and to determine later whether a $699-million bond for sidewalk repairs should also go on the November ballot.

The full City Council is expected to vote on the package of bond measures, including one for libraries and for the zoo, at its regular meeting today. If the council agrees, the city attorney will be directed to draft language for the various bonds, but the council has until the end of July to finalize the ballot.

When the council takes the matters up today, it is not expected to debate the most costly of the measures, the sidewalk proposal. Council members were told they do not need to vote on the sidewalk bond because they had previously directed the city attorney to draft that ballot measure.

Still, council members Laura Chick and Mike Feuer, who voted against the Exposition Park projects, expressed concern about asking voters to approve most of the measures without adequate scrutiny. Chick succeeded in getting her colleagues to approve a motion calling for oversight committees for the $178.3-million bond, the $45.5-million zoo proposal, the $699-million sidewalk tax and more than $1.2 billion in public safety bond proposals.

But it was the eleventh-hour move by Councilman Mark Ridley-Thomas to add the Exposition Park project to the November ballot that had some City Hall officials livid. Under that proposal, $30 million would be used for an aquarium at the new downtown science museum; $2.5 million for upgrading the rose garden, and $12 million for the regional recreation center, including the Olympic swimming stadium.

“This, to me, is the classic reason why people could have legitimate reason to discuss secession,” said one City Hall observer. “What kind of analysis has been done here?”

Added another: “There’s no room for Flipper in this bond measure.”

And a third said: “They’re putting out a fishing line to voters to see whether they’ll bite. It’s another example of Los Angeles swimming upstream.”

Chick said she believes the Exposition Park projects, which sound like reasonable ideas, need far more discussion. “This is absolutely not the right way of going about this,” she said. “It becomes almost: How do we pull this off?”

The council has until July 31 to approve the bond measures for the November ballot.

City officials have said they believe the November electorate could be favorable because of an expected heavy Democratic turnout for the gubernatorial race.

Ridley-Thomas said the Exposition Park bonds fit with the zoo and library proposals because they are all geared toward families and children.

“We are talking about repositioning our city,” Ridley-Thomas said. “I offer this as a complementary piece . . . advancing significant activities that are family-oriented.”

But while Ridley-Thomas said the improvements have been under discussion for a decade as part of the Exposition Park master plan, Feuer said this was the first he had heard about it.

“This is completely new to me,” Feuer said. “Certainly today I’m not prepared to move this forward to the next ballot measure.”

Mayor Richard Riordan’s spokeswoman, Noelia Rodriguez, said the mayor is reviewing the bond proposals but he probably will not support the Exposition Park projects.

“Nothing against the fish, but this is frivolous,” she said. “It’s not government at its best. . . . An aquarium is not high on the list of priorities, it’s on the wish list.”