Writing Shotgun

“HERE’S THE CITY OF LONG BEACH, SPONSORED BY COCA-COLA”

Dave WielengaThu. February 21
 

Horrified by the prospect of pimping out Long Beach’s name, attractions, facilities - and ultimately, its reputation - for the pocket change of private-sector sponsors, Eighth District City Councilwoman Rae Gabelich this week delivered a passionate plea for preserving the city’s dignity. “I don’t want to be known as, ‘Here’s the City of Long Beach, Sponsored by Coca-Cola,” Gabelich told her colleagues in a nearly empty council chambers. “That seems so wrong.”

The Council had gathered in an afternoon special session Tuesday to hear a progress report from Premier Partnerships, a company Long Beach is paying $120,000-plus-percentages to secure sponsorship deals that are intended to help the city through troubled financial times. There wasn’t much progress to report.

After nearly two years of what company spokesman Randy Bernstein described as “in-depth meetings with corporations throughout the country,” Premier Partnerships has reached only two verbal agreements.

That was bad enough, especially since the still-unsigned deals - worth less than $300,000 a year, before Premier Partnerships skims an additional 15 percent fee off the top — are with Office Depot and Charter Communications, which already do significant business in Long Beach and might just as easily have been secured by city staff.

What Gabelich found worse - and the more she thought about it, a lot worse - was the entire humiliating concept of renting out bits and pieces of Long Beach, allowing sponsors to cover civic pride with corporate logos.

“It isn’t about government running this country, anymore,” Gabelich said disgustedly. “It’s about corporate America running this county.”

When Third District Councilman Gary DeLong of Belmont Shore and Naples heard that comment, he made a sour expression. And when Gabelich saw DeLong’s scrunched-up face, she made her point even more expansively and emphatically.

“Sorry Gary, but I have a problem with that,” Gabelich told him. “I drive through parts of our city where there are bus shelters with advertisements that are advertising things I don’t necessarily like to see advertised. I see those shelters as blight — they usually get tagged and you most often find them in low-income neighborhoods. I know you wouldn’t want to see them on Second Street, and I don’t want to see them in our neighborhoods, anymore, either.

“Our responsibility is to be looking at how we raise the quality of life and standards in some of our depressed neighborhoods, so we can raise the property values, so we can generate more business, so people can have more expendable income — so there will be a real revenue stream. Not by selling our soul to be advertising for corporate America.

“But we’re not even talking about corporate America. We’re talking about Charter Communications, which sponsors Sea Festival. How much is that contract for?”

The Long Beach city staffer working with Premier Partnerships couldn’t say. He couldn’t say because he didn’t know — and he couldn’t say because he isn’t allowed to know. “There is a confidentiality agreement,” he said.

That revelation incensed Gabelich anew.

“There is a confidentiality agreement because … why?” she asked. “Because the agreement is between Sea Festival and Charter? So the city, which hired Mr. [Chris] Pook to run Sea Festival, now doesn’t have the right to know what Charter paid to be the primary sponsor?”

The city official promised to look into it.

Meanwhile, Gabelich turned her attention to the City’s pending sponsorship agreement with Charter, which Bernstein said would pay $175,000 annually.

“$175,000 is nothing,” she said. “Selling our soul for $175,000 is not something I want to support.”

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Viewing 12 Comments

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    What is wrong with the people we elect to run our city?
    And what is wrong with us that we ever allow any of them to run unopposed?
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    Not sure I get your point, Selfish. Are you upset with the the low-rent attempts to sell off city sponsorships or with Gabelich's position opposing that?
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    “It isn’t about government running this country, anymore,” Gabelich said disgustedly. “It’s about corporate America running this county.”

    While I'm not exactly crazy about corporate America, I certainly don't want government to run our country. Rae does make a good point about the relative secrecy/confidentiality of the contracts. Meanwhile, if Rae and the council are so concerned about raising the quality of life in LB, perhaps they should take an extremely hard look at all the terrible decisions they have made...particularly as they pertain to the budget, pensions, salaries, etc. To add insult to injury, the mayor and council are now comptemplating what kind of tax increase proposal they want to place on the November ballot. For what reason? To piss it away, like they always do? To bail themselves out of financial situation that they caused? Bottom line, a tax increase isn't very neighborhood friendly. What is neighborhood friendly would be to put an immediate halt to being so beholden to the city employees' union. The mayor and council should serve its citizens, not the unions.
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    You don't want the government to run the country? Isn't having a government kind of what MAKES a country a country? Otherwise, we have no laws, right? You're cool with that?
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    The City has handled sponsorship opportunities poorly for more than a decade. In the early '90s a landscape company said they would plant and maintain the ugly berm on the east side of the LGB runways parrallel to Clark for no fee, they just wanted some signage--no go. Countless opportunities have come up, in good taste and in good match, for the city to increase revenue by partnering with private sector participants and nothing has happened. For Gabelich to take the leap to "Long Beach brought to you by Coca-Cola" is intellectually deficient (no surprise for her). Further she seems to think that the graffiti on the bus stops are because of the advertising in them, how ridiculous is that? The graffiti is because the city/county/state have wasted billions of dollars on anti-gang/graffiti programs that have not worked and will not work but they feel good about them so they spend more money. I would love to see a garbage truck go down my alley some Thursday painted like a Glad trashbag box, knowing that several hundred thousand dollars was being paid into our general fund by the company; or the street sweeper painted Simple Green; or our maintenance vehicles orange with a Home Depot logo on them. Simple partnerships that make sense could bring in significant money--seven to eight figures--not "nothing" as Gabelich claims. We are broke but somehow can take huge revenue possibilities off the table so as not to offend the evidently delicate sensibilities of the genius representing the 8th District.
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    Dave - perhaps I could have phrased that a little better. To clarify, I don't have much faith in the level of competence in our local gov't. There are too many examples to list, but I'm sure you get the point, since you have a good history of reporting some of these examples. You have to admit that our local electeds have clearly demonstrated their loyalty to the unions (as it pertains to salaries, pensions, etc.) and the power pricks over the needs of LB residents. Bloated salaries and pensions have contributed mightily to our city's fiscal woes. Incompetence in handling corporate sponsorship opportunities shouldn't come as a surprise. I'd like to see more time and energy expended to report on the city's budget, with an emphasis on salaries, pensions and city hall's never-ending hunger for the residents to bail out the electeds with a tax increase. Or isn't that sexy enough?
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    I'm with you in many ways regarding the lack of effectiveness of local government, although I'm not always sure that is because of incompetence. Instead, I think that in many ways these are example of very competent people doling out benefits to insiders. But I must say that in this case I was very unimpressed with the presentation by Premier Partnerships, which seemed very tentative, very piecemeal and without substantial benefit to the city -- especially after its fees were deducted from the sponsorships. Gabelich did not seem opposed to meaningful sponsorships of specific things, but more the here-and-there application of corporate decals without any real benefit. Also, I think she is rightfully concerned about how much power we want our government to cede to corporations. Relying on corporate money -- especially, as has been mentioned, when it pays for crucial city services like trash pickup -- inevitably gives away power to people we did not elect and whose loyalty is ultimately to their company, and not our city.
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    Dave: Poor presentation does not make the idea poor--the choice of company may have been poor. Regarding how much power we want our government to cede to corporations--selling naming rights or service mark placement rights is ceding power? I don't see it as a displacement, or hand over, or reduction of government power but as an opportunity to increase needed revenue without taxes and without relinquishing any control. Contracting out services diminishes government power a lot more than advertising and sponsorship opportunities and that is something the city should also be looking at. As to the statement about giving away power to people we did not elect and whose loyalty is ultimately to their company...most companies treat their customers and clients better than they treat their employees, given the level of service and type of treatment many of the "customers" (i.e. you and me) receive from the city having a company with sponsorship rights in charge of customer service might just see an increase in customer/public service. I would take the customer service at Disneyland, or from American Express over that of our collections department or animal control or....
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    The idea was floated about having corporate sponsorship of the Golden Gate Bridge. Needless to say, in a city like San Francisco, the notion was D.O.A.
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    I see some of your points, LBRez, but when I talk about ceding power, I'm talking about a scenario something like this: Let's say a company becomes a big-money sponsor of a vital city service, and the city comes to depend on that money. Then let's say that after awhile that company wants a favor of some kind -- some special deal on a project, the appointment of a favorite son or daughter to a city post, I don't know -- and it becomes obvious that unless that company gets that favor, it will not be renewing its sponsorship deal for that vital city service. What happens? Or let's choose a less-diabolical example: what if after several years of providing a vital city service, that company is absorbed in a merger by a company without the same interest in Long Beach or what if it simply decides to go in a different direction with its sponsorship money? What happens then? And as Juan says above -- and as every modern sports fan knows -- what happens to our sense of pride and public ownership of a place? Stadiums change names so often we don't really know what they're called, anymore. College bowl games are known as the Weedwacker Bowl and the Chick-a-Fil Bowl. Personally, I don't mind higher taxes if I am getting something for them (and by the way, somebody is paying for those sponsorships in higher prices for whatever product the sponsor makes; it's just hidden). And getting something for our tax dollars brings the whole equation back to more public involvement in the governmental process -- paying attention to our representatives, monitoring them, hassling them, voting them out if we don't like them, charging them with crimes if they do wrong. That is the American way -- or do you think it oughtta be the Washington Mutual Monument, the Lincoln Financial Monument, the White Castle House, the Vietnam Airlines Memorial, the Ronald McDonald Reagan International Airport?
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    $175,000 is nothing? Charter could buy 2 very nice bucket trucks and have money left over to build a few miles of plant. I guess from a government stand point (The folks who have no concept of fiscal responsibiilty) this is nothing.
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    "To clarify, I don’t have much faith in the level of competence in our local gov’t."

    Nor do I, but too often it's because we elect people--and not just at the local level--who have even less faith than drnoe. PJ O'Rourke once said, "The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then get elected and prove it." Those of us with a few miles remember that the Reagan crowd came to Washington bent on creating a budget crisis that would provide them with the excuse to (a) slash government spending, (b) produce public outrage about the subsequent crappy delivery of government services by cutting even more deeply into government programs "that just don't work"; (c) more evidence that government doesn't work; (d) more cuts; etc.

    Modern American--and especially but not only Republican--politics, starting with Goldwater, is built around the idea that government doesn't work; that breeds anger, at best, and apathy, at worst. When voters stop paying attention--and when they stop rewarding the media for digging into government--democracy falters and then fails. We've seen it here right here in Long Beach.
 
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