Pacific Airshow, related lawsuits remain hot topic in Huntington Beach
The Pacific Airshow is less than a month from returning to Huntington Beach on Sept. 29. Though the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds, Canadian Forces Snowbirds and other planes remain right on schedule, the event continues to be politically charged following the May settlement of a lawsuit against the city.
About 100 people attended Huntington Beach Mayor Tony Strickland’s monthly town hall meeting at the Senior Center on Wednesday night. Strickland, City Atty. Michael Gates, Visit Huntington Beach CEO Kelly Miller and Visit HB chief marketing officer Omark Holmes gave remarks on the air show and its benefits before a question-and-answer period.
Strickland has laid claim to saving the show, with the settlement ensuring that Code Four CEO Kevin Elliott didn’t take it elsewhere. The settlement, related to the cancellation of the final day of the 2021 Pacific Airshow due to a massive oil spill, calls for the city to pay Code 4 at least $4,999,000 over the next six years, with an additional up to $2 million possible if Huntington Beach recovers money in its own to-be-filed oil spill lawsuit against the alleged polluters.
“It’s crystal clear to me, no settlement, no air show,” Strickland said Wednesday night. “When we talk about the numbers, the settlement, yes, is a little bit higher than I wanted it to be. But I will tell you, that pales in comparison to the value that we’re going to have from this air show moving forward in perpetuity. The goal is that we have this air show every year in perpetuity.”
Gates said the process of negotiating the settlement was long — about five months — and arduous. But two lawsuits related to the Pacific Airshow remain unresolved, though a judge ruled against former Mayor Connie Boardman and Mark Bixby in their attempt to stop the settlement payouts from occurring.
Gina Clayton-Tarvin, vice president of the Ocean View School District Board of Trustees, filed a lawsuit demanding Gates release the full settlement with Code Four. And though the city itself has settled with the Pacific Airshow, former Mayor Kim Carr remains a defendant in a pending case.
Both Clayton-Tarvin and Carr attended Wednesday night’s meeting.
Gates said he has not released the full details of the settlement because attorneys representing the city in the pending, larger oil spill lawsuit advised him against it.
“It was my judgment that doing so would compromise the success of the city in that lawsuit,” he said. “Under state law, I was not required to. There’s an exception under the Public Records Act.”
He reiterated that he would release the full settlement if a judge ordered him to do so.
“We’re not hiding anything,” Gates said. “We’re trying to be careful and diligent toward the city. My job is to protect the best interests of the city, period.”
Gates and Strickland both said that Code Four’s Elliott did not donate to their 2022 election campaigns, though Code Four did produce a campaign event for the four eventual winning conservative City Council candidates prior to the election.
“I am a member of the State Bar of California,” Gates said. “I could lose my entire livelihood over something like that.”
But town hall attendee Bill Nees, who identified himself as a 79-year-old retired attorney and U.S. Marine Corps veteran, questioned the settlement. He said he saw no evidence that the show cost $21 million to put on, if the loss of a day was worth up to $7 million.
“A lot of information was shared during confidential settlement negotiations,” Gates responded to Nees’ comments. “I will say that their demands were on an order of magnitude much higher than it was settled for.”
Resident Diane Bentley asked why the city wouldn’t open the air show contract to a competitive bid.
“[Code Four has] done a remarkable job ... and why wouldn’t we want to go with a company from Huntington Beach if we can?” Strickland replied.
Strickland, who has about three months left in his stint as mayor, said that saving the air show would be at the top of his list of accomplishments. According to the 2022 Pacific Airshow economic impact report conducted by Destination Analysts, the show brought in a total direct economic impact of $70.4 million spent by people coming from outside Surf City.
Carr, who was mayor in 2021, remains a party to the lawsuit, with the Pacific Airshow seeking unspecified damages and the city defending her.
An amended complaint submitted by Pacific Airshow lawyer Suoo Lee in late June alleges that Carr and former Interim Police Chief Julian Harvey halted the air show because of animosity toward Elliott and a “personal need for media attention, in furtherance of [Carr’s] political career.” Harvey is not named as a defendant in the lawsuit.
“If you read the amended complaint, it wasn’t so much that [the air show] was canceled ... but how it was canceled,” Gates said at the town hall.
Carr responded Thursday in a phone interview.
“My answer to him is that, oh, you saved the air show?” she said. “Well, we’re not talking about that you saved the air show, but how you saved the air show, which is that you settled a frivolous lawsuit to pay off your political ally, friend and donor ... [Gates] should have recused himself from the get-go on this.
“Again, this is a frivolous lawsuit. I have no doubt that we will be victorious on this. It’s really sad now that the air show has this cloud over it, because it really is something to be celebrated. There’s numerous videos of me promoting the air show prior to the oil spill.”
Carr added that she was a fan of Elliott at the time and hoped that year’s air show would be successful, especially since it had to be canceled due to the pandemic in the previous year of 2020.
“This was the first time that we were actually going to be able to get together and celebrate,” she said. “I was totally looking forward to this. Any kind of idea that Julian Harvey and I had some sort of personal vendetta against Kevin [Elliott] is absolutely false.”
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