Chris Pook was supposed to do for the summer Sea Festival what he did for the Grand Prix. So far he hasn’t done much of anything—except spend your money
By Dave Wielenga

City manager Jerry Miller is due to appear before the City Council on May 15 to deliver a report about the Long Beach Sea Festival. Actually, he’s nearly a year overdue. Miller was scheduled to report to the council about the Sea Festival last June 20, too. But he blew it off. Councilwoman Rae Gabelich, who requested both reports—who has been trying to wring some Sea Festival information from Miller for more than two years—kind of suspects he’ll blow it off again. Why not? He’s retiring at the end of the month.

“I’m still waiting for Jerry to bring his report back to me,” Gabelich says with some frustration. “But since he’s going to be leaving, I have a feeling I’m never going to see it.”

It sounds strange, but the scenario isn’t especially uncommon in Long Beach’s form of government. The people elect the City Council and mayor, but they come and go depending on popularity and term limits, and they work only part time. The city manager is Long Beach’s most-powerful official—a difficult-to-depose appointee who is supposed to serve the council, but whose authority over city departments makes him a municipal czar with the power to impose his will on the community.

“In many situations I find that council requests for information can become a game of chess,” says Gabelich. “Sometimes projects are openly displayed to show the knowledge. But sometimes they’re not presented to the council until the very last minute.”

Maybe that’s why Miller didn’t respond when The District requested an interview early last week to address troubling questions about the Sea Festival; Long Beach assistant public information officer Ed Kamlan suggested that one of Miller’s assistants could be made available, then never called back. Sea Festival Association president Christopher Pook didn’t respond to interview requests left last week on answering machines at two phone numbers. When a reporter dropped by Pook’s office unannounced, his assistant, Gemma Bannon, explained that Pook was out of town.

And so we’re left with the documents, hundreds of pages of City Hall files The District obtained through the California Public Records Act. Those documents show that Pook and Miller commandeered the Sea Festival, spending tens of thousands of city dollars on a project with no clear public benefit, no signed contract between the city and Pook, and no oversight. Communications among city officials show the contempt of city staff for elected officials and, worse, that they knowingly solicited donations from companies seeking business contracts with the city.

Specifically, public records suggest that Miller and Pook have tended to organize and operate the Sea Festival out of political and public view. Documents show that they have sometimes ignored City Council directives and city government process. Financial statements indicate they have produced the Sea Festival principally with money—thousands upon thousands of dollars of it—from city-related agencies and man-hours compensated by the public payroll. Sponsorship lists reveal that they have not delivered the support, publicity or revenue that was promised. E-mails among city departments illustrate a climate of secrecy while sometimes expressing outright disrespect for elected officials.

Most egregiously, Miller allowed Pook to run the Sea Festival for two years—2005 and 2006—without a signed agreement to do so, completely disobeying the unanimously passed instructions of the City Council. The lack of a signed contract relieved Pook of the responsibility to pay the city $20,000 from festival income.

City officials finally drafted a contract with Pook on July 27, 2006, but only after they learned that three citizens—Bill Pearl of the local news website LBReport.com, Ryan Smolar and Chris Campbell—had invoked the Public Records Act to request documents related to the Sea Festival.

THE BOSS OF LONG BEACH
The Sea Festival may be Long Beach’s oldest civic event. It’s a loosely assembled celebration of coastal living—sand castle-building contests, fishing derbies, water-skiing races and the like—that’s been observed in an assortment of fits and starts and incarnations as far back as 1908. But it has never caught on to the point that it could be called a tradition, or even a success.

A few years ago, Pook decided he wanted to change that. Miller hired him—at a reported $40,000, according to LBReport.com—to write a feasibility study. Pook came back to Miller with an 11-page prospectus that he promised would finally bring some structure, identity and energy to the Sea Festival—involving corporate sponsorships that would not only pay for the event, but also generate revenue for the city.

Central to Pook’s proposal was the creation of what he called “an umbrella organization that will license each and every activity . . . For the purpose of this paper, such an organization could be named—‘The Sea Festival Association.’”

Miller loved Pook’s proposal for the redesign of the Sea Festival, including the part in which Pook wrote he’d be happy to oversee it. Miller apparently wasn’t fazed when Pook added that “the work load will require some sort of structured business relationship.” By March 2005, Miller had Pook on the city payroll at $6,500 a month—plus reimbursement for out-of-pocket expenses—for six months a year. The package soon included a city-funded assistant, a secretary and extensive use of various city departments and resources.

But the hush-hush nature of the arrangement comes through in a March 16, 2005 e-mail from Sue Williams, Pook’s assistant, to David Ashman, who heads the city’s Special Events department. Williams had received a telephone call from Fred Khammar, owner of the Alfredo’s beach concessions, who had been running many Sea Festival events and was concerned by rumors that Pook would soon be taking over. Williams wasn’t sure what to do. “Knowing how political and confidential this matter is,” Williams wrote to Ashman, “I felt it crucial that I check in with you before I proceed.”

Miller officially revealed the Sea Festival setup to the City Council during a special study session on March 22, 2005. He returned to a regular council meeting on May 3 to get the panel’s rubber stamp. During that meeting, Gabelich expressed concern that Pook had been paid as a consultant to do a feasibility study on a project that he ultimately inherited—without anyone else being considered.

“Why did the city manager not send out an RFP to see if there would be other promoters that might be interested in performing this work?” she asked, referring to a Request For Proposal—a standard procedure that opens up discussion and bidding on city projects to the public.

The city manager let the City Councilwoman know who was boss.

“Should I have RFP’d that?” Miller responded rhetorically. “Perhaps I could have or should have, but I thought that his [Pook’s] skills were so unique, frankly, based upon his track record here in the City of Long Beach that they warranted my consideration of him, and again, I notified the entire Council before acting . . . you certainly had the opportunity to notify me if you had concerns about that.”

The council obediently committed the city to Miller’s deal with Pook by an 8-0 vote, instructing Miller to “negotiate and execute a five-year agreement with the Sea Festival Association of Long Beach.” That was, of course, the name that Pook had used in his feasibility study—you know, just for the purpose of that paper.

THIS YEAR’S MODEL
There’s no mystery to Miller and the council’s common faith in Chris Pook. He’s a plucky former travel agent who 33 years ago founded the Long Beach Grand Prix, the visionary promoter who transformed the outrageous idea of racing cars through the decrepit streets of a sleazy Navy town into an internationally esteemed sporting event.

In fact, it’s impossible to overstate Pook’s unofficial role in the remaking of Long Beach since he emigrated from England more than 40 years ago. When Brian Redman raced to victory in the first Grand Prix, in 1975, Long Beach was so embarrassed by its downtown that city workers draped huge curtains over the marquees of the skin-flick theaters on Ocean Boulevard to hide their titles from the national TV audience.

The Grand Prix never exactly dethroned the Queen Mary as the symbol of Long Beach, but the race provided a desperately needed antidote to the wacky souvenir of a bygone era that was rusting in the harbor. The Grand Prix became the model for the city’s bold, can-do potential. Chris Pook was its hero.

Nonetheless, it’s difficult to understand the official relationship that Pook has forged with the city these days, since selling off his interest in the Grand Prix and setting his sights on working similar magic on the Sea Festival.

Has he become a de facto arm of city government? Or is he just another of many private contractors doing business with Long Beach—that is, now that there finally is a signed contract?

THE BACK-DATING GAME
Word of the July 2006 Public Records Request by Pearl, Smolar and Campbell provoked a City Hall freakout—which ironically produced an e-mail that was covered by the request. The Sea Festival contract was put on such a fast track that it almost went back in time. An e-mail exchange among three city officials on July 6, 2006, actually discussed back-dating the agreement to 2005.

“After you left this morning, the thought occurred to me that we SHOULD start the Agreement in 2005, not 2006 [emphasis in originals],” senior deputy city attorney Donna F. Gwin wrote to Ashman in Special Events.

“I went to see Donna and went over the Sea Festival Agreement,” Ashman then e-mailed Phil Hester, director of the Parks, Recreation and Marine Department. “She has a suggestion regarding when to start the agreement. Please read the attached e-mail and let me know what you think.”

“I am okay with this,” Hester responded to Ashman. “We just need to get it signed. You saw that Bill Pearl is looking for a copy?”

As Gwin pointed out when suggesting the contract be back-dated, the current deal turns out to be financially better for Pook because it effectively rewinds the calendar to Year One of the agreement—a fee-free year for the Sea Festival Association—thus forgiving $20,000 that the Sea Festival would have owed the city in Year Two.

“We’re just happy to finally have an agreement in place,” deputy city attorney Charles Parkin told The District. He added that the City Attorney’s office advised city officials against proceeding with the Sea Festival without a signed contract. “Why the agreement took so long to sign? I have no idea.”

OIL & FIREWORKS
Operating without a contract certainly provided Pook’s association and Miller’s various city departments with leeway as they orchestrated the 2005 and 2006 Sea Festivals—even though one of the strongest points in Pook’s original proposal was the need for imposing rigorous discipline on the typically haphazard beach party. He emphasized that “the need for structure is paramount” and tossed off terms like “continuity and placement” and “marketing and servicing.” He spun visions of “the Sea Festival Brand” and “Sea Festival Official Products—Automobile, Soft Drink and Beer.” But most of those were just euphemisms for the licensing fee that all vendors would remit to the Sea Festival Association before they would be permitted to participate.
Meanwhile, Pook was supposed to leverage three decades of Grand Prix promotions into major corporate sponsorships. Instead, financial records show, city-related departments and agencies mostly underwrote the 2005 and 2006 Sea Festivals—in effect, with taxpayer dollars or ratepayer fees. According to city-released documents, institutions like the Port of Long Beach, the Parks, Recreation & Marine department, the Long Beach Airport, the Water Department, the Gas and Oil Department and the Convention and Visitors Bureau kicked in to the tune of at least $100,000.

Additionally, Pook pursued but failed to collect equal amounts of support from Sound Energy Solutions, Diversified Developers Realty, Home Depot, the Olsen Company and Signal Hill Petroleum. Some of those companies are or were involved in business negotiations with city departments connected with the Sea Festival.

And this may be the darkest chapter in the Sea Festival scandal: city documents make it clear that Pook, at least, was well aware that he was seeking financial support from companies seeking business at City Hall. Consider a couple of e-mails from Pook regarding Signal Hill Petroleum, whose permit from the Special Events Department to conduct a seismic study was revoked in January 2006 after residents complained to the City Council. On May 10, 2006, Pook ordered Hester (Parks & Rec) and Ashman (Special Events) to have Community Development Director Pat West “call Signal Hill Petroleum and get them to sponsor the Fourth of July Fireworks and Festival.” In a follow-up e-mail to Hester and Ashman on May 25, Pook says: “Re: Signal Hill Petroleum—it is important that we talk to [David] Slater directly and not through Diane! Remember the meeting in your conference room when she said they [sic] she did not want to go back to them unless she could deliver the seismic testing schedule they wanted!”

SPIKED
The centerpiece to the Sea Festival was supposed to be a professional volleyball tournament on the beach, a high-profile contest among the tanned, swim-suited athletes from the Association of Volleyball Professionals (AVP).

But when AVP got its first look at Pook’s structure and branding and licensing fees, it said no. On January 9, 2005, AVP executive David Williams sent Pook a long e-mail that itemized 11 objections to the Sea Festival schematic before concluding thusly: “Your deal as presented to us, even with 100% tickets being sold, would take us longer to reach a breakeven point than by doing it ourselves, or going to another market.”

The AVP has finally agreed to hold a tournament in Long Beach this July 19-22. It’s unclear if—or how—Pook changed his terms to make that deal. On the other hand, nobody in the City Manager’s office, the Parks and Rec department or Special Events could even say whether the coastal permit for the beach tournament had been approved.

‘YADA, YADA, YADA’
Meanwhile, since voting to approve a contract between Long Beach and the Sea Festival Association, Gabelich has periodically tried to get progress reports from Miller.

On May 16, 2006, the City Council passed her motion to “request City Manager to provide an update to the City Council within the next 30 days on the planned activities and sponsorship for the 2006 Sea Festival.” Said Gabelich: “I would like a report to show what Long Beach companies, if any, are providing sponsorship.”

Miller responded: “We are happy to come back in about 30 days. Best to plan this for June 20. That would be ideal from our perspective.”

Behind the scenes, however, department heads didn’t sound so happy to have an elected official poking around in Sea Festival business. A May 18, 2006 e-mail from Tom Shippey of Parks & Rec to Hester and Ashman says, “At City Council the other night, Rae had an item asking about the Seafest. She played it pretty dumb, like she didn’t even know if we were having one again, asking who is involved, what is happening, what events, etc. etc. Jerry promised Council an update at the June 20th meeting. At the Department Head meeting yesterday, Jerry indicated he will want a PowerPoint presentation, with Chris Pook and other board members present, giving an overview of the events, sponsorships, the organization behind it all, yada, yada, yada . . . ”
Nobody from the city ever showed up to update the council.

Gabelich tried again on March 13, 2007, drafting another unanimously passed council motion giving Miller 45 days to report on “planned activities and sponsorships, and the level of City involvement, both financial and in-kind” for the 2007 Sea Festival.
Gabelich isn’t holding her breath.

“My frustration over the Sea Festival organization is that this is the second request that was made by the council to come back with an update on what the program is, what the financials are,” she said. “Now I’m hearing questions about the financing, about the sponsorship. We’re waiting patiently. Hopefully, he’s going to show up.”

Ryan Smolar assisted in researching this story.

Tags: Chris Pook