55 Named to Disney Task Force on Disney Park : Development: Critics say business interests are overrepresented and that panel is too large to be effective.

LONG BEACH — The City Council this week approved appointments to one of the largest citizen task forces in recent memory, a 55-member panel created to advise Long Beach officials on Disney Development Co.’s proposal to build a huge theme park on the city’s waterfront.

City officials said they wanted a large committee to ensure broad representation, yet some critics say the group will be too unwieldy to be effective. And despite the panel’s more than four dozen members, there are complaints that the committee is not diverse enough.

“I think it’s strong on banking, real estate and business interests, weak on minority, weak on community activists,” contended Alan Lowenthal, president of Long Beach Area Citizens Involved, a citywide political watchdog organization.

Each council member appointed five committee members from that district, and the mayor named 10 people from the city at large. The group includes a number of representatives of neighborhood organizations, some blacks and Latinos and a generous supply of business people. The local Chamber of Commerce alone has four representatives, the Long Beach District Board of Realtors, three. There are also numerous other committee members who work in real estate, port businesses and in banking.

“I think this is a business proposition,” said Councilman Les Robbins, whose appointees include individuals in real estate, in the aerospace industry and in banking. He said Lowenthal’s comments did not surprise him, but added that the watchdog group’s political views were not shared by the majority of the city’s residents.

Political supporters of the mayor and council are also in evidence on the task force. For example, one of Councilman Douglas Drummond’s appointees, James Sullos Jr., an accountant and past president of the Chamber of Commerce, was Drummond’s campaign treasurer in last year’s council election. Among those named by Mayor Ernie Kell is Vincenzo Cristiano, a member of the Bixby Knolls Assn., a contributor to Kell’s campaign and the owner of Nino’s, one of Kell’s favorite restaurants.

Other Kell appointees include Felice Strauss of the Teachers Assn. of Long Beach and E. Gerrie Schipske of the Long Beach Chapter of the National Organization for Women. Both organizations supported Kell in the last election.

Councilman Thomas Clark named Paul Schmidt, a Cal State Long Beach professor who belongs to Long Beach Area Citizens Involved, which backed Clark in his challenge to Kell.

Absent from the long list of appointees was any representative of the city’s 45,000 Cambodian residents or its vocal gay and lesbian community.

“I had no one speak to me (from the Cambodian community), so I thought someone else was addressing it,” said Clark, one of several council members whose districts have Cambodian residents. Likewise, a spokesman for the mayor’s office said no Cambodian asked Kell to be on the Disney committee until after the list of nominees was released last week.

Donald Snow, vice president of the Long Beach Lambda Democratic Club, a gay and lesbian political group, said no one from his organization sought an appointment. “There’s a large belief that this committee was made for window dressing,” Snow explained. “It’s going to be too large to effectively do anything.”

City officials counter that the 55 members will be divided into five subcommittees to study the Disney project’s probable impact on transportation, the environment, jobs, the port and the local economy. Each subcommittee will choose a chairman and vice chairman, who will sit on a smaller steering committee.

The group may be at work for a year before making recommendations about Disney’s proposal to construct an expansive sea-oriented theme park and resort in the port area. Disney is also considering Anaheim--the home of Disneyland--as an alternative site for a new park, and has pitted the two cities against each other. The company is not expected to choose a location until next year.

Lowenthal lamented that the committee was not formed until more than a year after Disney first announced its intentions of building a second Southern California amusement complex.

“(The city is) already making lots of decisions that impact the environment,” Lowenthal said, referring to the City Council’s recent decision to back legislation that would allow a waterfront park in Long Beach under the California Coastal Act.

Others wondered whether Disney and the city will be forthcoming with the panel. “I’m not clear they’re even going to the get the information they need to work,” remarked Melinda Cotton, a community activist in Belmont Shore who has been closely following the Disney proposal but who did not ask to be named to the committee.

She cited as an example the refusal by Disney and the city thus far to release a transportation study conducted in connection with the Disney project. She also maintained that Disney has been evasive about project specifics when questioned at the series of public relations meetings the entertainment company has held throughout Long Beach.

Disney’s Long Beach spokesman could not be reached for comment.

Cotton, a veteran of 10 months on another city task force that examined local transportation issues last year, also questioned whether the 55-member panel will have much influence on the city’s ultimate decision to accept or reject the Disney project.

“A lot of people feel the decision is kind of preordained (in favor of Disney),” Cotton said.

PORT DISNEY CITIZENS ADVISORY COMMITTEE

The mayor appointed 10 committee members from throughout the city, and each councilman appointed five members from his council district.

City Council District 1

(Evan Anderson Braude):

Steven Alari

Mavis Becker

Joy Harris-Bayonne

Louis Skelton

John Torkelson

District 2

(Wallace Edgerton):

Elizabeth Kuehne

Randolph W.M. Linehan

Robert McCabe

Luanne Pryor

Nita Scott

District 3

(Doug Drummond):

Larry Keller

Charles Legeman Jr.

Jeanie Miller

Harriett Rothenberg

James Sullos Jr.

District 4

(Thomas Clark):

John Cleveland

William Oscar Hall

June Mulcahy

Paul Schmidt

Tom Teofilo

District 5

(Les Robbins):

John Crochet

Phil Infelise

Carmen Perez

Shirley Saltman

Tom Spence

District 6

(Clarence Smith):

Elijah Buggs

Sharon Hayes

George Johnson

Ahmed Saafir

Charles Ussery

District 7

(Ray Grabinski):

Carol Christ

Mike Donelon

Mary Fennessey

Basil Missios

Marva Stewart

District 8

(Jeffrey A. Kellogg):

Beryl Brooks

Jim Craig

Don M. Muchmore

Leslie Munger

Patrick Rodriquez

District 9

(Warren Harwood):

Betty Garrels

Elmo (Bill) Jaques

Carol Monson

Virginia Sache

George R. Thompson

Appointees of

Mayor Ernie Kell:

Aurelio Agundez

Carey L. Asuncion

Vincenzo Cristiano

Michele Hansen

Edward J. Kaveney

Jane Netherton

Bea Ortega

E. Gerrie Schipske

James Spaulding

Felice Strauss