Brea Council Meeting on Jamming Through $9MM Parking Structure, Part 1: Audience Matters

Joe Manzella (standing) explains his daring while Dwight Manley (left) keeps his head down.  (See part 3 of post.)

[Cross-posted from this story at THE BREAN.]

1. Introduction

Brea’s City Council doesn’t have many Wednesday night meetings, nor many four-hour meetings, but it did both this past week.  The meeting was a larger version of one of the Council’s “Study Sessions” that usually take place upstairs and off-camera.  As they were deciding on committing to a $9 million expenditure of tax dollars (from some unidentified account), with questionable payback, they wisely decided to have it in public and on camera.  (Good thing, too:  about 40 people were there besides the Council and eight staff, and they wouldn’t have all fit upstairs.)

The bottom line, as the City website says, is that “the Mayor and the City Council directed staff to compile additional information and bring the item back at a future council meeting.”  They came within a hair’s breadth, though, of approving a plan to proceed with the project, based on a spitballed $7.9 price tag.   Had anyone come up with a funding source for the City to satisfy the hard-sell demands of Dwight Manley, “Tower Records Building” owner Mark Caplow, and TAPS owner Joe Manzella, it likely would have passed.

The City announces:

The meeting was televised and webstreamed live. Televised replays can been seen daily at Noon and 9 p.m. through April 30 on Time Warner Cable Channel 3 and/or AT&T U-verse Channel 99.  [It also can be watched at the city’s website at anytime and offers some useful links. ]

But let’s face it: you are probably not going to sit through four hours of video.  So THE BREAN is here to get you the information you need much more easily – in the length of time it takes you to read our posts.

(This is a deadly serious business, by the way, about a huge expenditure of tax payer money.  The light comic touches you see below are just spoonfuls of sugar to help the medicine go down.)

2. What the Audience Had to Say

We’ll start with the first substantive part of the meeting, “Matters from the Audience,” which in this case largely sets forth the various “sides” and issues.  Nine people (not counting Council and Staff) spoke during this period.  Most of them were well known to politically active Breans.  Here’s the roster:

Don Parker was skeptical of the plan.  He noted that Redevelopment was dead and done and said that we do not “owe” benefits to the Brea Downtown Owners Association (“BDOA”) that were explored when Redevelopment funds would pay for them.  He also argued that the Council had to be prudent and be sure that it was doing what the public wants, which he seemed to think doubtful given the minimal publicity for the meeting.

Greg Diamond (writer and publisher of THE BREAN) said basically: Developer Dwight Manley gave newly elected Councilmembers Cecilia Hupp and Steve Vargas the benefit of a whole lot of money in 2014 (some to their campaign but mostly through the California Homeowners Association PAC – see a previous long post at THE BREAN – Why Did Brett Murdock Lose Re-election to the Brea City Council?) so it would be best to take this matter slowly and with great public scrutiny lest it look like that money was spent to elect them to Council primarily so they could vote “Yes” on this plan, which would look very bad.

Jane O’Brian was another skeptic, noting that Brea’s downtown was designed as a walking district, and one of the structures was generally free.  She also stated that few people were aware of the meeting and that it was held at an inconvenient time.  She thought that the people that wanted a parking structure, rather than taxpayers, should pay for it.

Dwight Manley spoke next, beginning by accusing me of lying, although he seemed to be refuting things that I never actually said.  He noted that he owned only half of one building on “Superblock 1,” where the Parking Structure would be built.  He doesn’t own the largest (the Tower Records building owned by Mark Caplow) or the oldest (TAPS, owned by the Manzellas), but the building with military recruiters, Buffalo Wild Wings, and the new Manzella restaurant “Lillie Q’s.”  He put millions into the buildings anticipating a parking structure through redevelopment funds and he thinks he’s earned it.  There’s much more, which we’ll cover later.

Lynn Daucher agreed that the Downtown needs “refreshing” but said that it was clear that people were not yet ready for it.  She also thought that the anticipated revenue of just under $200,000/year was a low return for a $9M expenditure.  She had some interesting ideas for what might be done with the “back” parking structure as part of a larger plan.

Bev Perry wondered why the Downtown Owners weren’t paying for this if they were the ones who would most benefit.  She also wondered who would pay for service and maintenance of the structure.  She was concerned over where the money might come from, especially that it would come from the Olinda landfill payments from the County for Brea’s hosting of the landfill (informatively named “fund 560” by city staff) — saying that it would be taken from “560 over my dead body.”

Wayne Wedin emphasized that he was speaking only for himself.  He noted that some people were opposed to tax money going to build the Brea Mall, saying that Sears should pay for it.  He considers this an investment and also suggested a Public-Private Partnership.

Mark Caplow accused me of depicting him and Manley as “evil.” [Note: I didn’t say this and don’t believe it.  I think that they’re self-interested businessmen whose interests are not entirely aligned with the City and who are apparently exerting great influence on the political process to get themselves the best deal.  Adults can distinguish between a legitimate economic and political dispute and actual pillaging and plunder.  Caplow, who spoke multiple times, is going to get one or two stories all to himself; maybe even more.  Be patient; it will be worth it.]

Chris Snyder, President of the Manzellas’ restaurant group that includes TAPS, Lillie Q, and The Catch (next to the Anaheim Stadium parking lot) was in favor of building the structure and said that the City needs to keep expanding its downtown.

3. The Highlight of the Meeting

One more person came up from the audience later.  The single funniest moment of the meeting came in an exchange between Steve Vargas and Joe Manzella — owner of TAPS and Lillie Q’s.  (The time stamps refer to Part 2 of the four-part video recording of the meeting on the city website, the first of three portions on “Item 2.”)

STEVE VARGAS:         [65:03]  So you have two properties, and yet you’ve decided to open a second restaurant on a Superblock that you claim has terrible parking.  Is there a rationale there, that you made that decision?

JOE MANZELLA:         Yeah.  [65:18] ‘Cause I’m a riverboat gambler. 

ZING!

I don’t know which is worse: if he had actually planned on referring to himself as that sort of bad boy or if it just slipped out of his unconscious mind at that moment.

Manzella may like to think of himself that way, but consider this:

If a “riverboat gambler” makes a bad bet, and then comes to the government for help to bail him out, and gets public money due to his close relations (including alliance as a big donor) with the people on the City Council — then it wasn’t much of a gamble, was it?  It was playing with the house’s money — which is exactly the problem here!

Stay tuned.  Much, much more to come.