Remember how the city’s proposed Los Cerritos Wetlands landswap with uber-developer Tom Dean included trading him the city’s public service yard along the eastern bank of the Los Angeles River?

And remember how relocating city services somewhere else was projected to cost $500,000–in a time when we’re facing a $43 million structural budget deficit in the 2009-2010 Fiscal Year?

Well, city officials may have found the money to relocate the public service yard.

As the Press-Telegram’s Paul Eakins reports, Long Beach City Council will consider Tuesday whether to approve restructuring Long Beach Gas & Oil bonds, in order to “put savings from future gas expenses in the hands of city officials now.”

Writes Eakins: “Officials expect the bond restructuring to produce $25 million in one-time money, which would mostly be used for unplanned costs such as relocating gas pipelines and helping pay for Long Beach’s new utility billing system. The money would also pay for moving the public service yard operations from San Francisco Avenue on the east side of the Los Angeles River to Gas & Oil’s site at 2400 E. Spring St.”

And here comes the denial–which may be perfectly on-the-beam:

“City Treasurer David Nakamoto said that the public service yard, and even some of the Gas & Oil projects, weren’t the original reason that the bond restructuring was considered,” Eakins writes.
” ‘The wetlands deal wasn’t a motivation for doing the bond tender offer,’ Nakamoto said. ‘The original intent of the gas pre-payment deal was to fund LBGO’s infrastructure.’ “

Now here’s a question for all of us to ponder: this is money that “which would mostly be used for unplanned costs,” according to the P-T–but $25 million is a lot of money, even a lot of money to be spent on so complex and costly a deal as the wetlands swap.

Might some of what’s left over be used to retire the Long Beach Museum of Art’s $3 million bond debt? I’m sure you could argue that that’s an unplanned cost–in the sense that the city would say that it didn’t plan to have to deal with this debt; it didn’t plan to go into hock for an art gallery, etc.

Just a thought.

Tags: California, Long Beach, Long Beach City Council, Long Beach Gas & Oil, long beach museum of art, Los Cerritos Wetlands, Paul Eakins, press telegram, Southern California, The District Weekly, Theo Douglas, Tom Dean, wetlands landswap