The meeting started like most others, with role call and a salute to the flag. We spent received presentations from various city staff. Newly hired Harbor Projects Analyst, Veronica Wolkow, reviewed her progress on the harbor resort web site.
Harbor, Business and Transit Director, Gwendolyn Parker reviewed the 6 month strategic plan and the water quality matrix. While it may not always be obvious, the harbor does make progress.
The idea behind branding Redondo's waterfront as a resort destination has been embraced by many stakeholders. When people plan their vacations to this part of the country, they have lots of choices. The city wants to put itself up at the front of the line when those decisions are made. It's a way to package and brand the harbor and its surroundings.
A few of us have voiced our strong objection to creating a new name, Redondo Harbor Resort when there's no such thing as Redondo Harbor. Our harbor already has a perfectly good name, King Harbor.
Aside from that, the web site is coming along fine. It's due to roll out by the end of the year.
An outside consultant has been hired to prepare a business plan for the harbor. It has great potential for guiding one of our city's most valuable assets to bigger and better things. It's in the early stages, so it's too soon to tell how it will turn out.
We had a short discussion on harbor reserves but it seems as though specific numbers are still somewhat vague.
The Harbor Department has created some pamphlets with guidelines for handling potential sorces of pollution. They're being called Best Management Practices.
The anxiety level rose when we landed on the subject of the August joint meeting with the City Council and the Budjet and Finance Commission. The best way to sum it up is to say some of the commissioners felt we were more like observers than participants. This has become a chronic complaint among some Harbor Commissioners, me included. It's a subject for another post, but it made for some lively debate in September.
We tabled a discussion about sub-committes for another meeting.
