If your name is not on the Orange County Great Park's Christmas list this year, that makes two of us. Only two of us judging by the number of folks and companies lined up to have the OCGP Corporation Board of Directors begin the process Thursday of stuffing their financial stockings.
(The Great Park is also on the receiving end, winning the National Excellence Award for Innovation in Regional Planning from the American Planning Association.)
Totaling up the amounts listed on an action-packed OCGP agenda, the board is poised to recommend the Irvine City Council dole out $9,384,265–only a small portion of which is reflected in the budget. Since all council members sit on the OCGP board and a majority of members always vote the same way, passage is as much of a lock.
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Among the items to go before the board Thursday to recommend to the council:
*$320,000 for a Feasibility Study Funding Agreement with Clearwater LLC.
The board is also asked to approve increasing revenues $320,000 and
expenses $320,000 in the fiscal year 2008-09 budget to cover the amount
of the contract.
*$2 million for winter, spring, summer and fall
community events, cultural activities and programming in 2009. The
budget will have to be increased by that amount.
*$500,000 to Irvine Barclay Theatre
to help secure talent and provide production help for those '09 arts
and entertainment events, plus $100,000 for “reimbursable expenses.”
*$100,000 to former city official and current OCGP chairman Larry Agran crony Henry Corn
to provide “management, oversight and coordination” of the events,
activities and programming as well as oversight of the private Great Park Design Studio's plans for the more artsy and cultural attractions in the future park.
*$4,228,500
for design and construction of capital improvement projects in '09.
This will be paid to private consultants and the Design Studio that
already receive millions under contracts with the city.
*$45,000 to lobbying firm Townsend Public Affairs, which is also paid under a separate contract to lobby for the Great Park, and $38,000 to consulting firm Empower/Excel, Inc., which is run by former Irvine Schools Foundation president Tim Shaw.
Why? Because separate contracts each Irvine-based firm has with the
Design Studio is set to expire. The OCGP Corp. board is thus being
asked to essentially pick up those contracts starting in '09.
*$205,000 to Irvine-based engineering firm Dudek N Associates
and $200,000 to three aircraft restoration mechanics, to be funded by a
reduction of that amount in the budget's Schematic Design Contract
section.
*$75,000 to Kevin O'Leary to provide “public
information services” for six months. (If this is the same Kevin
O'Leary who was once a UCI political scientist and OC Metro editor, anti-Agran conspiracy theorists will love this.)
*347,765 for engineering change orders.
*700,000, of which $100,000 is reimbursable, to extend the scope of part of the Design Studio's work.
*250,000 to San Francisco architectural firm WRNS Studio to double check architectural plans, plus another $150,000 to whip up a “Structured Parking Construction Feasibility Study.”
A
cynic might conclude that someone waited until the November election
guaranteed a bullet-proof Great Park/City Council majority before
sprinkling all these goodies on the December agenda. Good thing there
aren't any cynics around here. Hey, who put coal in my stocking?
OC Weekly Editor-in-Chief Matt Coker has been engaging, enraging and entertaining readers of newspapers, magazines and websites for decades. He spent the first 13 years of his career in journalism at daily newspapers before “graduating” to OC Weekly in 1995 as the alternative newsweekly’s first calendar editor.