Signal Hill Hears Views on Putting School Near Plant

SIGNAL HILL —  Mayor Richard Ceccia made no bones about the intent of the public hearing Tuesday night.

In a prepared statement highly critical of the Long Beach Unified School District, Ceccia asked residents to come forward with their concerns about the district’s plan to build an elementary school next to an oil refinery.

The request brought out an interesting mix of people and reactions.

Mike Miller likened an explosion at the MacMillan Ring-Free Oil Co. to hell. He said he should know. He was seriously injured in an accident at the site in September, 1986. That accident killed one of his co-workers.

Miller, 32, said he would never again work at a refinery nor would he want his two children anywhere near one.

No Prior Accidents

Another speaker, Ron Hurte, said the issue is not the oil refinery; the issue, he said, is the city’s opposition to a school on the proposed site. Hurte is the former headmaster of the now-closed Southern California Military Academy where the district wants to build the new school. He noted that the military academy existed next to the refinery for 63 years without a problem.

Signal Hill has been on the losing side of a court feud with the school district. But city officials say they are losing on technical matters and not on the merits of their case. The city has appealed a Superior Court judge’s August ruling in favor of the school district.

The city wants the district to conduct an environmental impact study before it builds a new school, contending that such a study would show the site that the district has chosen is unsafe. But the district, arguing that the site is safe, says it is exempt from conducting a review because a school already exists at the site.

The debate has become bitter. Each side says the other is greedy and has ulterior motives. Both accuse the other of not having children’s interests at heart. And in the midst of both council and school board races, the matter has become an election issue.

City officials say the district rushed its project on the 5.4-acre site on Cherry Avenue to meet a deadline for funding. According to the city, district administrators refuse to conduct an environmental study because, if they did, it would show that a school should not be built there.

“All they have to do to quiet this down is have an environmental impact report,” said John L. Fellows III, an attorney representing the city.

District administrators say the demand for an environmental report is a delaying tactic. They say Signal Hill doesn’t want the school because the city wants to use the site for a commercial uses to increase its tax base.

City officials respond that only about 200 feet fronting Cherry Avenue could be used for commercial purposes, bringing in little additional tax revenue.

Residents also have complained that their small city does not need another school, and the children who would be bused in would increase traffic in an already congested area. But school supporters criticize that stance, saying that the military school site was the best choice of the locations available, and they point to a crucial need to relieve overcrowding in the district.

Armed With Studies

“A year ago, they (the council) told staff to do anything they need to stop a school there,” said Mary Anne Mays, the deputy director of facilities funding for the school district.

Both sides also are armed with their own consultants’ studies. The city’s consultant says accidents at the refinery would present hazards that include heat, flammable gas and flying debris. The district’s consultant said that the probability of a serious accident occurring at the refinery is small.

M. Alan Joncich, the consultant hired by the city, said that the methodology used in both studies was similar but the scenarios were different.

Joncich, of Atlantic Scientific in Beverly Hills, said he looked at worst-case scenarios. The district’s consultant, Tim Chambers, of Reese-Chambers Systems Consultants Inc. in Somis, Calif., said he looked at more probable reasonable accidents. “We didn’t get into these worst-case domino-type effects,” Chambers explained.

There was no question even from the onset of Tuesday’s meeting that it was bound to turn confrontational. On one side of the room, a small hand-printed sign reading Signal Hill City Council was posted above the five council members. On the opposing end, a similar sign reading Long Beach Unified School District hung over empty chairs.

Pointing to the vacant table, Ceccia said district trustees “have refused” to cooperate with the city. School district representatives responded that it would be improper for the board members to attend because of the pending litigation.

In what was probably the most heated moment of the evening, Ceccia repeatedly asked the district’s consultant if he would recommend doing an environmental study on the site. Chambers responded that he was not hired to decide that issue. Ceccia insisted.

Then Mays, of the district, intervened and told the mayor the district representatives had not come to the meeting to be harassed. With everyone speaking at once, a court reporter hired to keep a record of the evening, threw her arms up in the air and, interjected, “Wait a minute. If you want a record. . . .”

And so the evening went.

District administrators and their supporters said that if the oil refinery is dangerous, the city has shown a surprising lack of concern for the safety of nearby businesses and homes. At Ceccia’s request Tuesday, the council plans to discuss the oil refinery and its potential effect on the entire surrounding community at its next meeting.

The military academy, city officials said, was built at a time when little was known about potential dangers of a refinery. Today, the city would not approve a new military academy next to an oil refinery, they said.

“You don’t keep doing the same mistake over and over again just to be consistent,” Councilman Louis A. Dare said.

Hurte, the former military school headmaster who sides with the district, told the council: “It doesn’t take a crystal ball to see this has become a very political issue.”

Attending the public hearing Tuesday night were four school board candidates and a representative of a fifth candidate. Also attending were three out of the four Signal Hill council candidates who are challenging the three incumbents seeking reelection. They were joined by one Long Beach mayoral candidate, retired firefighter John Kearney, who said it is dangerous to open a school next to a refinery.

Jenny Oropeza, who is running in District 3, which includes the military school site area, told the group she supports conducting an environmental impact report.

Jerome Torres, another school board candidate in District 3, said in an interview that he questions the motives of the City Council, which was “planning to rezone (the area) to commercial industrial in conjunction with the widening of Cherry Avenue.”

Torres called the public hearing “pathetic theatrics.”