Friends of the Whittier Narrows Natural Area
Public records
On Jan. 5, 2011, our law firm, Angel Law, sent a letter on our behalf to the head of the state Department of Parks and Recreation's Proposition 84-funded Nature Education Facilities Program requesting that the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority's July 1, 2010, application for a $7 million grant be rejected due to its numerous and stunning misrepresentations, omissions and unproven claims. The authority requested the grant to fund construction of its proposed, controversial $22 million water museum and meeting hall.
The letter is based on a review of public records conducted by the Friends and Angel Law. Some of the most pertinent and revealing documents appear below.
Click here to open the letter as a PDF file.
Click here to open the accompanying press release as a PDF file.
Click on the icon to the left of the text below to open a document as a PDF file.
Authority budget for fiscal year 2010 - 2011, approved June 21, 2010
The four members of the authority board of directors in attendance at the June 21, 2010, authority board meeting voted unanimously to approve and adopt a $1.1 million budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1. (See page 4 for the budget.) Click here to see the meeting minutes. The approval and adoption are included in Item G, PDF page 5.
The vast bulk of the budget is dedicated to pre-construction costs ("Capital Outlay," $1,085,318) and comes from bond funds provided by the San Gabriel and Lower Los Angeles Rivers and Mountains Conservancy, or RMC, the authority's parent agency and a member of the authority.
The staff report accompanying the budget also noted a deficit of $890,000 for construction drawings. (See bottom of page 1.) The expense and deficit were omitted from the required cost estimate and funding sources forms (below) the authority included in its application for the $7 million grant.
In the report to the authority board, staff proposed tapping $2.2 million in “Supplemental Environmental Program Funds” to pay the $890,000 expense. But the following week $2.2 million in “Local Funds: Supplemental Environmental Project” were listed in the application, fully committed to paying other costs.
Grant application "Grant Scope/Cost Estimate Form," June 28, 2010
Required form, signed and submitted with the authority's application for a $7 million grant of state bond funds. Two things are noteworthy.
First, in an apparent attempt to skirt a grant program requirement that "the total grant alone, or grant plus additional committed funds, must be equal to the funds needed to complete the project" , the authority requested money for only the 14,000-square-foot main building. (See Nature Education Facilities Program application guide, page 8, available at link below.)
Second, with his signature, the authority board president certified that the "estimated total project cost" was $12.2 million and that there were no pre-construction costs, including costs related to required compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act, or CEQA.
But the cost estimate form omits the $1.1 million in pre-construction costs he voted to approve with the FY 2010-2011 budget a week earlier, including $194, 000 for "Legal-CEQA" costs. The form also omits the $890,000 construction drawings discussed in the authority staff report in the June 21 budget item.
Grant application "Funding Sources Form"
The authority also submitted this required, signed form with its grant application.
With his signature here, the authority board president certified there were three "total funding sources," providing a total of $12.2 million: "LA County Sanitation Districts," "Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District" and the State Parks grant program.
A comparison of the authority budget with the cost estimate and funding sources forms reveals that there is no money to pay for the $890,000 cost of construction drawings. And as with the cost estimate form, the Rivers and Mountains Conservancy and its $1.1 million in contributions is once again omitted.
It should also be noted that the $890,000 project deficit raises the true estimated cost of the building nearly a million dollars above the total of disclosed and undisclosed funding. Thus, even the reduced project fails to meet the requirement that all committed funds equal the amount needed to complete the project.
Grant application "Project Summary," July 1, 2010
A page from the narrative portion of the authority's grant application, the project summary concedes that the authority does not have the committed funds needed to complete the project or qualify for the $7 million grant.
The summary states: "Separate funding will be secured to develop the other site components. . . ." The authority appears to have failed to secure any additional funding since it submitted the grant application in July 2010. The requested $7 million grant would bring the committed funds to only $12.2 million leaving a budget deficit of more than $9 million for the actual $22 million project. The deficit grows to more than $10 million when the unfunded $890,000 is included.
If additional funding is not found and the project not completed, then important, even legally required components may never be built, for example, the Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant parking lot, walkways and trails or the artificial wetland meant to capture runoff before it enters the San Gabriel River.
Links
Audit of Rivers and Mountains Conservancy’s Propositions 40 and 50 Bond Funds, Office of State Audits and Evaluations, California Department of Finance (Opens as PDF file)
The RMC, which is identified in the grant application as "the lead of this collaborative project," was pilloried in a 2009 state audit for its failure to exercise "adequate fiduciary oversight of bond funds."
The $1.1 million in pre-construction costs the RMC is paying for the Discovery Center project -- but which are omitted from the grant application cost and funding forms -- also are bond funds.
Nature Education Facilities Program, California Department of Parks and Recreation
The grant program application guide is available as a PDF file.
The following is contact information for the program lead (also available on the NEFP website):
Sandy Berry, Nature Education Facilities Program, (916) 651-7741, sberr@parks.ca.gov
Last updated or reviewed on 1/6/11.