Mackston-Solomon Returns to Controversial Commission

The Long Beach City Council reappointed three city officials, but not without some contention, at the Aug. 17 meeting.

While the council voted unanimously to return David Bythewood and Roy Ellmer to the Zoning Board of Appeals, Council members Mike Fagan and Len Torres opposed the reappointment of Susan Mackston-Solomon to the city's Civil Service Commission.

Their fellow council members, President Thomas Sofield, Vice President Mona Goodman and John McLaughlin, however, gave Mackston-Solomon the majority votes that she needed. Her second six-year term on the commission began effectively June 1, 2010.

"I'm actually looking forward to serving on the Civil Service for another six years because I feel that it's definitely going in the right direction now," Mackston-Solomon said. "We have a great secretary and I'm feeling very confident about it."

The Long Beach CSC oversees more than 1,000 Civil Service employees  — 576 in the school district, 477 employed by the city and 33 in the Housing Authority, and an undetermined number of library workers, according to 2008 work force data.

What gave Fagen and Torres pause in reappointing Mackston-Solomon is Nassau County District Attorney Kathleen Rice's ongoing investigation into whether members of the city's commission engaged in criminal activity or mismanagement, following a state report that indentified numerous irregularities in the three-person commission's operations. The most important charges, announced in March, are that it continues non-compliance in two fundamental operations: payroll certification and appointment.

"Understanding that there is a criminal investigation that … involves our current civil service commissioners, is it wise for use to be appointing someone knowing that there is the possibility that something negative comes from that investigation?," Fagen asked before the vote.

Disagreeing with this characterization of the circumstances, Sofield told Fagen that this was a matter he'd have to judge going forward. "If you don't think so, then vote accordingly," he added.

Mackston-Solomon declined to reply to Fagen's comments. On recommending her reappointment, City Manager Charles Theofan said, "I would without any hesitation whatsoever ... offer her reappointment to a six year term."

A Long Beach real estate agent, Mackston-Solomon serves on the Civil Service commissioner with Leary Wade and William Miller. Miller was appointed to the commission in June 2009, after he vacated his seat on the zoning board that Ellmer was appointed to the same day.  

At the Aug. 17 meeting, Ellmer and Bythewood were reappointed to the zoning board for three-year terms that effectively began on Jan. 3, 2010.

Ellmer said that the city faces some major issues that pertain to the zoning board, including implementation of new FEMA regulations on the height of new construction, the clean-up of brown fields in North Park, boardwalk reconstruction, and a proposed liquefied natural gas island 13 miles off Long Beach's shore.

"These are zoning issues that apply to the city, so I would be taking an active role [in addressing them] as a commissioner of the zoning board and as a private citizen," said Ellmer, who is a real estate attorney in Mineola.

Bythewood is a criminal and civil rights attorney who will start a second term on the board. Asked about his plans for the next three years, Bythewood said that he'll continue to do what he has done all along. "That is to look at everything very carefully and sometimes to raise issues of environmental impact," he said. "And also then to screen people who are, in effect, charlatans that will give misinformation to the board."