No Festival news still may be good news

Barbara Diamond

The city and the Festival of Arts have been negotiating a new

lease for almost six years, mostly behind closed doors.

It’s time already to get it signed and that could happen soon,

officials on both sides of the table said this week. If it doesn’t,

it may be time for the negotiations to come out of the closet and let

the public know what is stalling the talks.

“If the city and the festival have not come to an agreement by the

end of this season, it is my personal opinion that both sides should

offer an outline of their positions to the press and to the public,”

said Mayor Wayne Baglin. “It should be verbatim, rather than an

interpretation.”

However, Baglin thinks negotiations could be concluded

satisfactorily in a week, certainly by the end of the month, based on

the report made Monday night in a closed session by city negotiators

Paul Freeman and Steven Dicterow.

This was the team’s second tour of duty. They took over from the

mayor and Councilwoman Cheryl Kinsman. Baglin served during both his

most recent non-consecutive terms in office. Kinsman had previously

been paired with Freeman.

Turnovers in the city team were a pretty good indicator of the

frustration level, according to one former negotiator.

“Steve and Paul were happy to get back in the fray,” Baglin said.

“They met Sunday with the festival negotiators and all four worked

very hard.

“Cheryl and I had worked on three or four deal points -- the

amount of the lease, capital improvements, length of the lease and

how to deal with an impasse between the festival and the city. Paul

and Steve expanded that to 10 or 12 points.”

Freeman and Dicterow described in the closed session the points on

which they felt they had reached an agreement with festival

negotiators. The council quickly -- the whole meeting lasted less

than an hour -- and unanimously endorsed the proposals and directed

City Manager Ken Frank to forward the deal as outlined by Freeman and

Dicterow to the festival negotiating team.

“Of course the devil’s in the details, but Steve and Paul came to

the meeting with extremely encouraging information,” Baglin said. “I

think we are on the road to put this behind us.”

It is not the first time that city and festival representatives

have expressed optimism only to find themselves still at the table.

At the November 2001 festival membership meeting, the mood was

upbeat.

“We’re negotiating as a partnership,” said Councilwoman Kinsman at

the time. “We’re negotiating as friends, not adversaries.”

However, when budget time rolled around this spring, no long-term

lease had been signed. According to Frank, the city expected to get

$230,000 from the Festival for the 2002 season. The money was

designated for grants to community agencies. There was no allocation

to the general fund or the capital improvement fund projected for the

2002-03 fiscal year.

That last city offer made public was in December of 1999 to a

board that was subsequently recalled and replaced.

Kathleen Blackburn, who was elected mayor for the second time that

month, announced the unilateral offer at the Dec. 16 meeting. In a show of good faith, she said, the city would deposit half of the 1999

lease payment and future payments in a special fund for capital

improvements of the festival grounds and building; reserve 36% of the

revenue for grants to strictly local organizations and put the

remaining 10% into the general fund to offset the city’s expenses

related to the festival and Pageant of the Masters.

However, just two months later, the festival board announced that

it planned to move the Pageant of the Masters and the Festival of

Arts out of town.

Councilwoman Toni Iseman, the only current council member who has

not served as a city negotiator, said this week that she remembers

being astonished at the number of people who said, “Good riddance.”

Other residents, business people and particularly the festival

artists harshly condemned the proposal.

By the time the festival board actually voted in August 2000 to

move to San Clemente, negotiations between the Festival and Laguna

Beach, which had been underway for more than four years, had already

begun to go south. The city initiated the negotiations in 1996 under

then-mayor Wayne Peterson, five years before the lease was due to

expire in September 2001.

Trust eroded on both sides in the four years of fruitless

discussions. Some board members accused the city of looking at the

festival and pageant as cash cows. Much lower leases for other

city-owned property looked pretty tasty to festival negotiators and

came back to bite the city.

City negotiators agreed on day-one that the rent was exorbitant,

but were unwilling to relinquish all financial benefits from the

property owned by the people of Laguna.

But the day the board announced its intention to take the festival

and the pageant on the road the slow, painful downhill slide in

relations escalated. It culminated in the recall of the board led by

Sherri Butterfield, then mayor of Mission Viejo.

Attorney and festival exhibitor Bruce Rasner was in the vanguard

of the festival artists and members who challenged the outcast board.

He now chairs the festival’s lease committee, which negotiates with

the city team.

“We have met recently and we are optimistic about the possibility

of signing a lease in the very near future,” said Rasner.

“I think we have been well advised to discuss these matters in

private since each side has all the details of some fairly complex

issues.

“You have to remember we are negotiating a 40-year lease and we

are resolved to make it a long lease so neither side has to deal with

it again for a very long time

“On the issue of complexity, we are discussing the redevelopment

of the grounds; we are discussing a public park that both sides are

bent on enhancing for the use by the local community and the patrons

of the festival and the pageant; we are trying to intelligently

address parking.”

The viability of the pageant is based on a substantial number of

volunteers who need parking, according to Rasner.

“And we have some ambitious programs making the festival a center

of arts and perhaps culture in Orange County,” he said. “We don’ t

take that lightly.”

If the council and the festival board actually do come to terms,

the city won’t have to add the word former to the “Welcome to Laguna

Beach, Home of the Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters” signs

at the city’s boundaries, as it has had to do with Ballet Pacifica,

the Laguna Beach Chamber Music Society performances and almost, the

Laguna Art Museum.

* BARBARA DIAMOND is a reporter for the Laguna Beach Coastline

Pilot. She may be reached at 494-4321.