Some of Belmont Shore’s biggest landowners and businessmen, operating under the authority of two quasi-governmental agencies in the quaint seaside district, are taking another run at a bond issue that would pave the alleys around their properties and pay a former city councilman $1.5 million for a parking lot. Good deal if you can get it.

The Belmont Shore Business Association and the Belmont Shore Parking Commission-headed by Gene Rotondo and Bill Lorbeer, respectively-has already tried and lost once. Their first shot at a bond issue in the March election failed when their proposal did not get two-thirds of the votes of local property owners.

Tuesday night they’re asking the Long Beach City Council to hold a hearing that would grant another election in November-this time with recently adopted rules that would increase their voting power. Instead of each property owner getting one vote per acre, the new rules give each landowner one vote for every dollar they would pay in increased taxes-thus giving the wealthier landowners more votes.

Jim McCabe, a retired Deputy City Attorney, doesn’t like the looks of the entire situation, and on Monday sent a letter of complaint to Long Beach Mayor Bob Foster and all nine city council members. The District Weekly has obtained a copy of the letter, in which McCabe’s lays out the tightly knit politics of Belmont Shore-the relationship among members of the Parking Commission, the Business Association, former Third District City Councilman (and prominent realtor) Frank Colonna and current Third District City Councilman Gary DeLong.

“The Parking Commission is controlled by large landlords and it and the Belmont Shore Business Association behave as though they are of one mind,” McCabe writes. “The Gene Rotondo-led Business Association rents its offices from a large Belmont Shore landlord, the Colonna family. The Business Association endorsed Gary Delong for election to the City Council. Gary Delong successfully proposed a $500,000 City loan for bar owner Gene Rotondo, a major tenant of [Bill] Lorbeer. Part of the proposed bond issue will pay Frank Colonna $1.5 million so that a Colonna owned parking lot can be used as a parking lot convenient to one of Frank Colonna’s buildings. Colonna is, of course, a large landowner in the Shore. Around and around we go.”

And where it stops? Well, for tonight, anyway, at the City Council meeting.

Tags: Belmont Shore Business Association, Belmont Shore Parking Commission, Bill Lorbeer, Bud Lorbeer, Gene Rotondo, Jim McCabe, Legends, Long Beach City Council, Mayor Bob Foster