Discovery Center long-term funding is an ‘issue,’ says authority Executive Officer Belinda Faustinos

Eight months after a government agency dominated by unelected water executives and public employees gave its approval for a controversial publicly funded $22 million water museum, the same agency appears to have no firm idea of the project’s long-term operations and maintenance costs. Nor has the agency been able to secure funding commitments to pay the long-term costs.

At a meeting of the authority board of directors in June, the agency’s executive officer, Belinda V. Faustinos, conceded that long-term funding was an “issue.”

In January, the San Gabriel River Discovery Center Authority approved the water museum and meeting hall proposed for the Whittier Narrows wildlife sanctuary between the Montebello and Puente hills. Yet in April, the LA Weekly reported that the authority, in addition to being short of needed construction funds, “does not even have an updated estimate of future operating costs.”

At a meeting of the authority board of directors in June, the agency’s executive officer, Belinda V. Faustinos, conceded that long-term funding was an “issue.” She said that costs beyond what the Los Angeles County Department of Parks and Recreation pays for its existing Whittier Narrows Nature Center and what two authority-member water districts pay for their current education programs would likely be a minimum of $200,000 annually, “if not more.”

It appears that officials prefer to dedicate meeting time, as they have recently, to selecting logos and letterhead and coming up with a design for a facility they can’t afford to build and probably can't afford to operate or maintain.

A document from the same June meeting shows that the authority had failed to secure commitments for long-term funding even by that point. Board agendas from a second June meeting, the authority’s July meeting and its August meeting show no attempts by the authority to address the critical matters of the project’s long-term costs and funding.

Long-term costs and the ability or willingness of organizations to pay those costs are at the heart of the viability question for such projects. “What comes to me is that it’s easy to build something [but] it’s hard to sustain the operation,” Michael Feeney, of the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, told the LA Weekly, reflecting on the county’s troubled Watershed Resource Center.

“Everyone was excited to build it and there was a lot of enthusiasm at first,” he said. But, writes LA Weekly journalist Tibby Rothman, “the officials at the various agencies grew reluctant to devote the funds needed to keep it going. According to Feeney, the resource center is largely shuttered now, though not only for financial reasons.”

Similar problems contributed to the failure of the multimillion-dollar Children’s Museum of Los Angeles and to the troubles of the Metropolitan Water District of Southern California’s big-ticket Center for Water Education in Hemet — today a costly white elephant for MWD ratepayers.

But rather than address the serious problems that plague the Discovery Center project, it appears that officials prefer to dedicate meeting time, as they have recently, to selecting logos and letterhead and coming up with a design for a facility they can’t afford to build and probably can't afford to operate or maintain.